Notes From My Knapsack 3-16-08
Jeff Gill

Is Your Street a Fjord?

From the seat of a basket-laden old bike, the streets of my paper route looked like fjords this time of year.

The high walls of plowed snow started calving off bergs in the late afternoon onto the shiny blacktop of the street, almost looking like dark still water. March snows work against the higher sun angle, meaning that the roads would clear, but freeze quickly in a glare of ice as soon as the sun’s direct light dropped even before dark fell.

Growing up further north and off of Lake Michigan, the snow of Christmas tended to form a base which ebbed and grew, but never vanished until past St. Patrick’s Day. Shoveling took extra oomph to toss over the ever higher embankments.

What I loved about that time of year was flying my Ford Trimotor with Bernt Balchen towards the South Pole, where I’d meet Paul Siple, the Eagle Scout who won a contest to go with Admiral Byrd on an expedition.

Yes, just try to imagine that happening today – it would be an on-line competition and the winner would get a live uplink for their classroom, but to go with them? Ha.

No, I didn’t go myself, but in the 60’s and 70’s I got interested in all the Shackelton, Scott, Amundsen tales of polar adventure, right down to the story of the submarine Nautilus running right under the North Pole.

Where my imagination ran more amok than usual was in making my bike a plane, and the necessary landscape of street and sidewalks a geography of adventure, with each driveway the bumpy landing zone marked out for my craft, where there were no runways, and vivid since many driveways weren’t shoveled, either. That would be when the dads got back from their shift at the steel mill, after the sun went down.

Sometimes I was Noel Wien, flying a Misso Standard or even a Curtis Jenny through the Alaskan bush, looking for a starving camp of prospectors. Most often I was flying along with Balchen or Bennett over the poles in a Trimotor, the plane which I’d actually seen up close at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.

Books like “The Sledge Patrol” by David Howatch, set in Greeland’s fjords, or “Snow Treasure” by Marie McSwigan about the Norwegian kids who helped smuggle gold past the Nazis on their sleds to a waiting ship in a real, honest-to-Norway fjord: these were the context for my paper-delivering reveries. “Snow Treasure” didn’t have a plane in it, and there’s only a brief sighting overhead in “The Sledge Patrol,” but I had no trouble extending an aviation component to my internal versions.

I learned later that the events in “Snow Treasure” probably didn’t happen, but on the other hand I learned that Paul Siple, Eagle in the Antarctic, went on to get a Ph.D. and invented “wind chill” and the original scale for measuring it.

The point wasn’t the history as much as the immersion I could feel, gliding on my path between grey-blue walls of snow and ice, bumping to a skidding stop, and making a delivery. The Gary Post-Tribune wasn’t sulfa drugs or emergency rations, but it was my job to get it through the snow, and I took pride in keeping on my bike when other route carriers gave up and slogged on foot through the snow. (Purely pompous paperboy note: those other ones also went door to door direct, and I stayed on sidewalks. Which always helped at Christmas tip time, since many folks didn’t like you walking right past the front windows and squishing onto their porches. You saved time, but like I said, it paid off at Christmas, along with getting the screen door latched after delivery.)

Then you turned in the runway, got moving, gear up, and into the air – onto the street – and circled to find your point of entry through the mountain ranges to the next bush camp or science base or hidden military installation, and then swooping past the glacier’s face to a narrow landing zone, marked (in my mind’s eye) with smoke grenades laid by grateful troops down below.

Spring was almost a disappointment after a few months of that.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell your story about stories to him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

For a little more context, click the video at the head of my link blog, http://latentmaniacaltendencies.blogspot.com and read the note posted with it at YouTube . . . more to come.

Not to be confused with an endorsment, but what a nice and fully informed advocate for her mom . . . I can only imagine dinner table conversation as she grew up:

Chelsea Clinton, standing with a couple of happy Republicans -- the Little Guy said she was smart (true) and she did her best to defend the Democrat stance on federalism (didn't sell me, but a good effort)

Faith Works 2-8-08
Jeff Gill

Striding Across the Sky, Among the Stars

When the melted snow of daylight hours is freezing to a glaze below your feet, and a wind creaks the young oak in the front yard, it may not be a prayerful time to be outdoors.

A few nights back, I was caught looking up, not quite frozen, but feeling a still moment that brought a memory of warmth to the nighttime.

Directly overhead in the southern sky was Orion, the Hunter. One of the winter sky’s most recognizable constellations; three stars for a belt, a dangled scabbard of two more angled back, a jaunty red Betelgeuse as cap, arm outstretched towards the bull’s horns of Taurus, aiming for the heart made of the Pleiades, the seven star cluster hanging to the west.

I’ve looked at and pointed out this sight many times, on Scout campouts and collecting for my paper route and going from car to meeting and out again later to head home. When the winter evening is far gone, Orion is now chasing his prey past the height of the sky and down the far slope, Sirius chasing his master with all the enthusiasm of a dog on the hunt.

Those longer ago recollections of looking up and seeing this great figure striding across the sky, shrouded by my own breath misting up into the night, are now mingled with a very particular time of this ancient sight.

Fifteen years ago last week, I stood on the end of a dock at Kibbutz Nof Ginosaur, stretching into the Harp-shaped Sea, Har-Kinnereth, the Sea of Galilee. Thanks to the kindness of John and Marguerite Jones, may they rest in joyful peace, I was at the last night of ten spent in Israel, with a caravan of clergy that had landed at Tel Aviv and was now about to round the bend of Caesarea the next day and return to Lod airport where late the next night we would take flight back home.

We had been out on these waters the day before in a fisherman’s boat, reading just what you’d expect a bunch of Christians to read from the Gospels in a moment like that. The outlet into the Jordan River we had crossed, and rolled up through Tiberias to this guesthouse in an Israeli kibbutz.

Night fell, my roommate was watching (no, really) “Tango and Cash” dubbed into Hebrew on the TV, and I walked out to the dock, and to the end. It was warm, though the Israelis thought it a cool March night, so I was alone.

At the end of the dock, I saw Orion standing on his head in the still water, and then looked up to see this vast figure in his usual posture, walking out of myth into my awareness. Hebrew myth had him a giant, a fool, who challenged God and was bound to the heavens as punishment; Greek myth wavered between Orion and Adonis; the Babylonians saw a shepherd, while Norse mythology a goddess weaving, either Frigg or Freya.

Jesus saw this constellation, on a cool spring night. This I knew more certainly than I was sure of any other site or object that I had been shown the last ten days. Jesus looked up from his journey and saw just this, as had the boy I was knocking on doors years ago, as my loved ones were, a bit lower in the sky, right now – well, not right now, but would in about five or six hours, but these stars, this sky.

I looked at Orion, and saw Him. And I see Jesus still, not in the shape of the stars, but as one looking on them, perhaps now from the other side. To see the stars over Kinnereth’s lake, to see their reflection in those waters, is one of my more permanent memories.

Somehow Jerusalem became a bit more real in that moment, and the cross, and the empty tomb (or tombs, we saw a few). Not the items or objects, but the reality of the event, and the connection to my life, and all our lives.

How’s your Lent going? And don’t forget to spring your clocks forward, ready to rise . . .

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your star-strewn story at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 3-8-08
Jeff Gill

No Doubt Who Wrote This

Larry Fugate and I share at least this one quality – our writing is not likely to be confused for each others’ or much of anyone else’s.

For those of you who enjoy our commentary and columnizing, thanks for your patronage! In the newspaper business, from the days of “Benj. Franklin, printer” to the present internet-ified era, we’ve never been quite sure if you want the ads and put up with the content, or want a heaping helping of fresh, informative text and sift through the ads to find it.

A healthy balance is probably what we all benefit from, advertisers not the least.

I’ve written for publications in a wide variety of venues, and worked alongside quite a few journalists, freelance writers, and others who make part or all of their living in the salt mines of prose construction.

Some of us write better than others, a few write easily, while not a few are just prolific. Some of us write better on some days than others, others can handle deadlines while they leave many distraught -- but we all know that writing creatively when the Muse is not in residence can be worse than shoveling sand.

Writing columns is a uniquely rewarding task, but I’ve watched a number of folks over the years dive into the work with enthusiasm, and then suddenly hit a wall a few weeks or months in. They realize “I have no good ideas today, and not only do I need to come up with one, but I’ll have to next week, and the week after that, and . . .”

And they quit. No shame in that – like knitting or welding, it isn’t for everyone. Especially if it isn’t a required task for your job, though clergy know this sort of dilemma when it comes to preaching (plus, for many, a regular newsletter column). Clergy, and writers who have to keep writing columns or personal essays or what have you for their work, learn how to deal with “a season of dryness” and push through, or they find a new field of work.

When you’re writing columns for no pay, no job requirement, and no reason other than to see your name in print, you usually can just wait for lightning to strike. Which is what makes the tale of Tim Goeglein so odd.

Mr. Goeglein was personally hired by Karl Rove to work in the White House Office of Public Liason, co-ordinating Bush administration initiatives with faith-based and religious conservative groups. He’s from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and while he’s been in Washington, D.C. he’s semi-regularly sent “guest columns” on a variety of subjects back to his hometown paper. The frequency of them has increased the last few months, no doubt to prepare the way for a return home to run for elected office in Indiana.

This is where I feel both sad and angry. There’s a blog written by a former columnist in Fort Wayne, who now lives in Detroit, called www.nancynall.com, and I often comment there myself, having been referred to Nancy’s work by a friend years ago. Nancy and others of us were throwing comments around in the wake of William F. Buckley’s death last week, and I looked right away to see what Tim Goeglein had written, since – to be perfectly candid – his writing style was so odd as to make us all enjoy making fun of it.

Nancy looked further the next evening, and read, or felt a bit more oddness than usual, and did a simple Google-check of a phrase.

Between the end of that sentence and a week later is the revelation that the fellow had stolen vast swaths of other people’s writing, in (as of this writing) 20 of his last 38 columns, in some cases almost the whole length of the piece.

He even plagiarized the pope.

And you can imagine that, once this was all out and started to echo around the internet, Tim Goeglein was humiliated and finally turned in his quickly accepted resignation. I’m thinking running for governor is out, too.

Plagiarism is paradoxically easier to catch, and more common today, than perhaps at any point in history. Ask a teacher in high school or college, let alone an editor, how they feel about plagiarism. For that reason alone, as a chastening example, the job loss seems fair. Crooks on “Law & Order” don’t seem to understand that cops can pull cell phone records, and writers should know that Google goes both ways.

I’ve often come to the end of a column thinking “I wish I wrote that better.” Trust me when I say that worry has never caused me to then think “so, let’s see who else said it better, and print that as my words.” Why a White House official would do so may be the story that is yet to be told.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he doesn’t much like any form of theft, including plagiarism. Tell your original story to him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Words fail me in describing what went on yesterday at Nancy Nall's blog -- http://nancynall.com/2008/02/29/copycat/#comments -- and i'm both proud and saddened to have played a small constructive role in the whole bizarre thing (see the last couple days before "Copycat" to see how this came about). The "resignation" is now front of the Nytimes.com and WashingtonPost.com, but will soon fade. The puzzle of why someone would do something so stupidly public and easily catchable will linger.

Anyhow, i'm sure we've all helped set a Nancy Nall record in the comment box: 278 when last i looked. This was truly a team effort led by a sharp journalist who happens to have a regular blog . . . or is that a regular blogger who happens to be a sharp journalist?

My dad's new toy down in Pharr, Texas; he calls him "a Danish sentry"

Faith Works 3-1-08
Jeff Gill

Marching Into a Sea of Numbers

Christians aren’t exactly known for their math skills.

Maybe “be fruitful and multiply” and “they divided his garments,” but generally the practice of adding one to one to one and getting not three, but one – well, that makes you an unlikely candidate for treasurer.

There is one math problem that gets frequent discussion around Christian circles, and that’s how to calculate ten percent (hint: divide by ten).

The Biblical tithe gets a fair amount of discussion and debate, with some arguing that the storehouse tithe spoken firmly of in Malachi is still binding on believers today, and others looking at tithing from one set of qualifications or another.

Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, hold to a firm tithe on the gross that is used for what the storehouse tithe was intended to do, which was feeding the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the sojourner. The “Bishop’s storehouse” is meant to provide for member needs, so that they can count on the faith community for support and not a governmental entity, but is often used for general relief as well.

Islamic folk have a smaller percentage that goes to the poor and needy, but the “zakat” is also for them a firm number, easily calculated. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll call it 2.5% of your gross income, beyond the amount of your income needed for basic subsistence.

What bothers me as a Christian pastor is that so many believers and couples don’t know what 100% is, which puts every other percentage into play.

What’s 100%, and why do I care?

Well, if you don’t know what you make a year, then you can’t honestly make plans for the year in giving or saving or anything else by percent or even in round numbers. So many people only know what they make an hour, or a week, maybe what they bring in per month.

If I were to suggest to such a person that the monthly figure could be put times twelve, there might be an angry “sure, I knew that” coming back at me. OK, fine.

But you need to know what your personal or household gross, or total income is before any other percentage has any meaning, from giving to savings to taxes.

A for instance – many households see their tax refund as “magic money,” a kind of bonus that shows up to brighten their springtime.

But the reality is that the refund is your money, withheld beyond what you owed in taxes, returned with no benefit from savings or investment. You earned it, pay period by pay period, but if you enjoy general ignorance of what you’re making, you won’t be bothered by what is or isn’t coming home.

This is why I’d say, before anyone gets out in the weeds of debating what constitutes a proper modern-day tithe, they need to know a) how much does this household bring, in total, from our paid efforts per year, and b) add up all the federal, state, local, property, and calculated sales taxes, and divide b) by a) and multiply times 100. That will tell you what percent of your gross income goes to care for today’s poor and needy, maintain education, and other functions once provided by religious bodies.

Some folks get all rhetorical and think “I pay half my income in taxes,” and others have no idea how big the number is, never having considered the question. I’ll tip y’all off that most of you will come up with a number somewhere between 18% and 40%, with a third most common.

Is doing that math a religious duty? Nope, but if you think your faith calls you to be responsible and accountable for your overall stewardship, I’d think that this is a necessary first step towards your religious duty.

So, if you’re entirely average, you’re now looking at a bit more than 75% of what you earn in total. What will you do with that? Set aside ten percent for the work of your faith community?

That’s fine, except if you think doing so means you can do whatever you want with the stuff that’s left over, I’ll hazard a guess that God would rather you kept your money, although the church treasurer would have different opinions in all likelihood.

The point of tithing, however defined, is to remind us that the money we receive is a gift, no matter how hard we worked for the paycheck. We give so that we learn how all our income is a blessing, which is from God, and all that we have will be God’s again, if not into a landfill. Our giving is where we come to understand what the true nature of what we “have” can be, and starts the process of looking at everything from a different, eternal point of view.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him how your church deals with stewardship and giving at knapsack77@gmail.com.

[soft, distant whisper . . .] "Baseball season, baseball season..." [fades slowly, repeating]
Cubs, 1969 –

A summer day, a pennant race — Fergie Jenkins pitching to Randy Hundley;
Joe Pepitone, Glenn Becker, Don Kessinger, Ron Santo;
Billy Williams, Jose Cardenal, Ernie “Let’s Play Two!” Banks; Leo Durocher in the dugout, Jack Brickhouse in the WGN booth. Park district bus tours to 1:10 pm weekday games, coming back with mini-bats ("kids, don’t swing those at each other!") and real cloth baseball caps in Cubbie blue. Vienna red hots, and Heilmann’s Old Style beer scent on our sneakers, even as we drove past the steel mills (still operating, still erupting smoke and flame) on the way home.

There is an angel with a flaming sword standing between me and that Wrigley Field scene.

Notes From My Knapsack 3-2-08
Jeff Gill

Ohio Gets National Attention, Not Bad News

Ohio has gotten some major national press in the last few months, over home foreclosure, declining property values, job loss (well, second in this one area to Michigan), college grad departure rates, and bankruptcy.

Yippee.

Tuesday will give us a little different coverage with the primary vote, since against all expectations back in Iowa and New Hampshire, the Democratic presidential race is open while the Republicans are busy laughing over Nader’s entry into the race as an Independent (no final word from Ron Paul yet on a third or, uh, fourth party run).

How do the tough economic circumstances impact the decision on who will run for the D’s in November? Some say the proposals of Clinton and Obama are barely distinguishable, and that leaves style – advantage Obama. Others say that the ability to deliver complicated policy maneuvers through Congress takes a skilled and experienced politician – advantage Hillary.

Others say we need a strong international presence which is willing to project force to defend the national interest against global terror blocs – advantage Republicans, already forming up behind McCain. And some say we should treat foreign entanglements like the flu and wash our hands of ‘em, while stripping back the feddle gov’mint as small as we can get it – there’s your Paul/Nader support.

So, which course will Ohioans follow? I wouldn’t betcha a nickel on any of ‘em, but a close vote in November is likely, while in the short run I think Hillary will turn out the most core supporters, whatever early March weather throws at us next Tuesday between 6:30 am and 7:30 pm. Clinton will win Licking County on the D-side, but Obama will make the state as a whole closer than Bill would like.

And on we go to Denver and the convention? Could be . . .

Local races will be all about name recognition, and the best known folk will beat the lesser known names. Levies and bond issues will be the focus of interest and discussion, mainly for schools but Fire/EMS and cemeteries and senior services are way up there this go ‘round.

Full disclosure: I have a part-time job that takes me in and out of the Licking County Court Annex, aka the old Children’s Home, quite often. If I wanted to stay quiet and comfortable, I’d want to stay put there, but in the debate over the Senior Levy a bunch of chatter has focused on that building and its likely demise.

Folks, if this were an historic church building, it would be doomed. If George Washington slept here (a neat trick, given that he died in 1799 and it was built in 1886), it would still be slated for demo. The problem is that to save the building you’d have to start by pulling the slate and cast-iron trusses off the top, and tear down the third floor. Then you’d have to rebuild either a new floor or just rebuild the roofline a story lower, at the cost right there of many millions – at which point you’d still have a rabbit warren of small rooms with heavy masonry walls between them, with little adaptability for any purpose other than offices, which can be provided more cheaply any number of places.

The basement would need to be entirely dug out around the exterior and resealed and properly drained, as mold and damp are endemic in the gloomy depths now. Heating and cooling are currently provided room by room mostly, at major electric cost, while the wiring and phone lines would need a long-overdue upgrade. We’re getting into $13.5 million territory right there. It just isn’t worth it, and it isn’t historic enough for anyone to help pay for it.

I hope people understand I love history and respect greatly the particular history in the walls of this structure, which Jon Emler has done much to keep in the public eye. But I’ve rambled from the bat-filled attic to the depth of the old laundry and kitchen in the basement, and this building can’t be saved.

Designing the new senior center to echo the outline of the Licking County Children’s Home of 1886, and reincorporating some ornamental stonework, is a wonderful and appropriate gesture by the county officials in charge. Add to that the fact that Licking County school districts are across the board spending less per pupil than almost any other neighboring or state-wide comparable districts, and I can say honestly I hope both the seniors’ and the school levies up this Tuesday all pass.

As for the state funding system for education, well, that’s another day.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’d love to hear your ideas about how to reform the state funding formula at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 2-23-08
Jeff Gill

Worse Yet, The Subject Is Money Next Week

If I told you that it might be worth your while to go check out the website of http://www.relevantchurch.com in Tampa, Florida, it might just be another congregation doing something interesting on the internet.

You might go, you might not, but no big deal either way.

If I told you this was the church which also has the website http://30daysexchallenge.com, would you move a bit faster to the computer?

Which is clearly a part of the strategy, maybe even an outreach agenda, of this church plant which is largely younger couples and singles, which meets in a rented hall.

To be perfectly candid, when I first heard about “The 30 Day Sex Challenge” on TV, I assumed it was a cheap play for coverage – which worked, since I’m hearing about it in Ohio – and was more flash than substance.

After going to the website, particularly the blog they’ve set up for participants (which I’m sure is moderated verrrry closely), and from reading the guides they offer for download for free (as .pdfs) at http://blog.relevantchurch.com, I have to repent of my initial skepticism.

What the pastors are offering in their congregation, and to others who wish to participate over the internet, is a season that is clearly embedded in Lent, while not mentioning those 40 days and Sundays since their target audience is a largely unchurched bunch for whom Lent is something under the bed.

As for what going on in the bed, well . . .

This 30 day challenge is to be defined by the individuals and couples involved, between Valentine’s Day and Easter, and will be accented by sermons and studies in and through the church. But the core idea is that divorce and alienation is rampant, as people “hook up” casually and over-commit to work and amusements to the detriment of their marriages.

So Relevant Church is actually swinging a double–edged sword, starting with asking singles to commit to 30 days of NOT having sex. Many of us who are life-long church goers and committed Christians are saying, “Um, guys? Your job is to tell them they shouldn’t be having sex in casual relationships at all, not for 30 days.”

I’ll admit that was part of my initial reaction to the “30 Day Sex Challenge.” Looking closely at what the church is saying and doing, though, I have no doubt that this is their consistent teaching. But they know who they’re trying to reach, and to unchurched borderline seekers, they’re saying “Hey, we know this sounds crazy, but single folks, what if you spent 30 days without sex as an excuse not to communicate, and looked at your current relationships and approach to relationships during that time?”

It seems to be striking a chord. Will Relevant encourage them to not stop with 30 days of self-control and restraint? I think so.

And then there’s the challenge to married folk. They have lots of young folk with small kids, and double career strivers. What they’re challenging them to do is make a major commitment to each other, and it’s not just about sex, though that is unapologetically the baseline they’re proposing. Focus on each other, and your relationship, and make time and space and privacy for intimacy, and leave the bars and the BlackBerries and buddies behind. Just the two of you, and a time commited to closeness.

The study guides are very simple, which means folks will do them (Rick Warren should get a royalty), but they are affecting and engaging in how they use the point of married intimacy as a potential blessing from God, and not an oxymoronic punchline of a TV sitcom.

They recommend Bible readings and suggest reflections, with the Song of Songs prominently featured (well, duh). There is a starting questionnaire that is licensed from Willard Harley of Marriagebuilders.com, whose materials I’ve used in pre-marital counseling for years. He’s an excellent Christian counselor with much wisdom around marriage, and doing this questionnaire alone could open up marriages in growing directions, with or without the 30 days.

Before anyone writes me to say “no, the Song of Songs isn’t about couples and sex, but about the relationship between Christ and his church,” yes, I know the citation. But what about this: might God intend the healthy intimacy of a married couple to interpret for us the relationship between Christ and his church?

Kudos to Relevant Church, and Amen!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him where he’s off-base at knapsack77@gmail.com.

* * *

Notes From My Knapsack 2-24-08
Jeff Gill

Make More, Take More, Now or Later

If you’re working the plan properly, we all should be well into figuring and filing our taxes for 2007.

For some of us, that includes estimating our income for 2008 and getting a legally mandated head-start on paying those taxes, too.

We who proudly number ourselves among the self-employed include a number of odd categories that the Tax Code includes (yes, they call it a “code” right up front, which is mighty honest of ‘em).

Clergy, for instance, are often considered “self-employed” for tax purposes even when you serve a specific congregation. Many other so-called “independent contractors” are considered self-employed, which can be a nice deal for their employers.

This means you pay both halves of your FICA, also known as your Social Security payments. Some churches and other contractors offer offsets for that difference, but many working folk don’t even know their employer pays half when they do.

What really makes this interesting is that the feds, the state, and for many of us the local government when there’s an income tax all require you to estimate your income for the coming year. Well, if I knew that, would I be a free-lancer? Anyhow, I have goals, I have dreams, and a whole lotta hope.

On the other hand, I have to pay quarterly estimated taxes, often (usually) before I’ve actually gotten paid for the contract writing or teaching or speaking that I’ve done – being an adjunct or supply or freelance contributor means I’m at the end of the line, payroll-wise, which is just how it is.

What makes this a truly intriguing system is that if I estimate too low what I think I’ll make, that I’ll have to pay taxes on before I receive, then I have to pay an extra penalty on top of my additional tax obligation, for having “paid too little” in estimating the money.

Checking with the Lovely Wife, aka The Brains of the Outfit, she confirms that we’re “Okey Dokey” if we pay (in advance, remember) at least 90% of our taxes that we’re estimating. So if I earn 11% more than my wildest dreams or most prudent imaginings can calculate, I owe both the additional taxes and a little bonus to each of the Federal Treasury, to Gov. “Keno” Strickland’s coffers, and to my beloved village of Granville.

All this in the same country that solemnly declared after the last Christmas season that consumer spending was “only” up 3.5%. That’s an economic crisis, but 11% improvement of my lot is penalized – what’s the deal with the narrow 7.5% window of permissable success?

Candidates like Mike Huckabee can make lots of hay while the sun doesn’t shine on shenanigans like this. His IRS eliminating, national sales tax establishing plan doesn’t make a lick of sense when you try to break it down, but there’s a good reason why people feel unreasonable about the Infernal Revenue Service.

Which is what I write every year on the envelope with the 1040 form. And it’s never been sent back to me “Addressee Unknown.” You know what Attorney Fred Gailey proved in “Miracle on 34th Street,” right?

Every year the Lovely Wife and I do one extra calculation not required by the forms, but ought to be for citizenship. We add up all our income, and all our taxes – federal quarterly and final, state income and sales taxes, local income and property taxes – then we do the division. This year looks to be about 34% of our income going to the common weal, not counting the extortionate penalty factor, admittedly small.

Having said that, we’ll likely be voting for pretty much all of the local levies for our schools and public services. You pay those taxes to support the value of the real estate they’re calculated on. I still think taxes in that form for those purposes make plenty of sense, though the monkeying around with rollbacks and formulas to help make things “fair” (i.e., take from some, keep most, give a little to poorer districts) does more harm than good.

That has nothing to do with my sense that the overall payroll and sales tax system is dangerously near broke, and no amount of “gaming” will fix it. Disincentives in the tax structure work even better than incentives, and they’ve gotta go. If someone doesn’t come up with a better alternative, sheer frustration is gonna get some Huckaplan shoved through Congress. Ideas, anyone?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is no tax accountant. Set him straight on the numbers through knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 2-16-08
Jeff Gill

Clergy Calendars Askew

This year Easter is really right up in our faces and calendars. Barring major developments in human longevity, none of us alive today will see the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus come this early again -- we’re talking 2160.

The last time we had a March 23 Easter was 1913, which few of us recall. It can also come as early as March 22, but so rarely “we” won’t see that until 2285.

So Ash Wednesday and Mardi Gras before and Lent that follows after are all way too early from what we’re used to. The idea is that after Easter there’s a bit more slack in the schedule before graduations and summer programs start to press in, though that may be a concept more than a reality.

A number of special training programs for church staff and leaders are wisely aiming for the season after Easter, and I plan on letting y’all know about them in good order.

One that I’m particularly impressed by is organized through “The Kids’ Team of Licking County.” The Kids’ Team is a group of community professionals who work with the results of child abuse and neglect, and sadly they have plenty of work to do.

This team, including folks like Ken Oswalt, our county prosecutor, and staff from Children’s Services in the Dept. of Job and Family Services, is putting together an educational training seminar on how clergy and church staff should handle identification and reporting of child abuse and neglect.

They’re offering two dates for pastors to choose from, and you can just pick the one that fits best in your schedule. The first training will be held on Wednesday, April 9th, at 9:30am at the First Methodist Church located at 88 N. 5th St in Newark, and the second will be held on Tuesday, April 22nd at 7pm at the Jersey Baptist Church located at 13260 Morse Road, Pataskala. Their goal for this training is “to help you better understand your role in this process of suspected child abuse or neglect and offer support and information on what to do when you suspect such situation. We are aware that making a report is often a complex task. Not only is it difficult to know when to report, it is equally as difficult to deal with the aftermath when families are in crisis.”

This well-timed training opportunity is open to all clergy in the Licking County area, as well as youth pastors, classroom teachers, or child care staff associated with your church. This training is offered at no cost to you or your staff, and every church in the county will soon get a letter with more info, or you can call at 740-670-8914 for reservations by Friday, April 4th.

Not to discourage you from marking this right now on your calendar, but I not only plan to attend, I’ll be helping deliver some of the content at these training events at the invitation of the Kids’ Team. I’m often responsible for sharing this kind of material for fellow counselors and camp directors in church camp settings, and work closely with the Scouting program along these same lines, called “Youth Protection Training.”

They don’t teach you much about this in seminary, if at all, and dealing with child abuse is a bad place to learn by experience.

While many are aware of stories that have been in the media over the last few years about clergy and church staff involved inappropriately with children, less well known is how often pastors and church leaders have helped to end situations of molestation and abuse, and lead families to the full range of healing assistance available in our community.

Suffering in silence and solitude is not necessary, but too many think it is the only path available. Attending this training event can give your church a road map for getting where you really want to be going in the first place, even if a detour suddenly blocked the way ahead for your youth ministry.

God has a way of showing up along detours, y’know.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your story at knapsack77@gmail.com.

[Scroll down if you're looking for the pictures from the "A Christmas Story" house!]

Notes From My Knapsack 2-17-08
Jeff Gill

The Man Who Would Not Be King

George Washington fought against King and Country, from the point of view of George the Third of Great Britain.

The House of Hanover’s hapless heirs had helped many like Washington see the hopelessness of reaching a negotiated democratic settlement with an hereditary monarchy.

Lord North didn’t help much, either.

Next year about this time the main attention will rightly go towards Honest Abe, as Lincoln’s 200th birthday will come February 12, 2009. (And that same day, Charles Darwin, for those of you completing your set of historical coincidences!)

What has picked up the unofficial name “Presidents’ Day” comes from the coincidence of Lincoln’s Feb. 12 birthdate and Washington’s Feb. 22, which just to make matters worse, or more interesting for real history geeks, is Feb. 11, because he was born 276 years ago, before the British Empire adopted the full Gregorian system of keeping a calendar, shifting dates forward by eleven days. Anyhow.

(And Black History Month comes from the conjunction of Lincoln’s and Frederick Douglass’ birthdays in what was first called by Carter Woodson “Black History Week.” Anyhow.)

But the federal holiday we observe tomorrow is, in fact, “Washington’s Birthday,” and Millard Fillmore and Richard Nixon will have to look elsewhere for their day in the sun.

Why this focus on one individual?

When King George III was told in 1783 that Washington declined further power and wanted only to return to his farm, he declared, "If Washington does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." For once, King George III may have been right.

George Washington was repeatedly asked to become monarch of the new nation he helped bring into existence as commander of the Continental Army, especially by folks like Alexander Hamilton who thought they stood a chance of being named George’s heir (Washington had no children.) It was only with great reluctance he allowed himself to be elected President, and more so for a second term, where he drew a line, and rode home to Mount Vernon. For this Lord Byron picked up on his ruler’s earlier comment, and on the end of Washington’s political career called him the “Cincinnatus of the West,” echoing a figure from the classic period of the Roman republic who voluntarily gave up power, and accidentally named an Ohio city some years later.

In light of the example and role of “the man who would not be king,” Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News editorial board asks on his blog: “Which ten American historical figures would you cite that would give a high school student a decent, if incomplete, grounding in American history? The question is not about the Ten Most Important Americans, though certainly the lists could overlap. Think hard about this. Think about the lives Americans have lived since the colonial times, and come up with ten reasonably well-known people whose biographies convey something essential about the American character and experience.”

With the added qualification of “Presidents excluded,” Rod has picked up a bunch of suggested lists that often go something like this: “Muhammad Ali, John Wayne, George S. Patton, Neil Armstrong, Mark Twain, William Randolph Hearst, Robert E. Lee, Alexander Hamilton, Davy Crockett, and a combo pick, Sitting Bull/Geronimo/Crazy Horse.”

A woman, reading a series of lists of ten with all men, suggested this list: “Abigail Adams, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth Blackwell, Margaret Sanger, Mother Jones, Mary McLeod Bethune, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Cochran, Margaret Chase Smith.”

Go to http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon and search for “Ten Names” to see quite a slew of suggestions along these lines, but actually almost any of them would create an interesting framework for teaching the outline of American history through the lens of lives such as these.

But whatever list you might most prefer, there’s no such roster that would be as complete or effective without George Washington’s presence. Monday, enjoy a pancake, his favorite food, and salute him in your own way.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s tried the Mount Vernon recipe for “hoecakes” and will stick with Bisquick. Send him your historic recipes at knapsack77@gmail.com.

[The pictures from the "A Christmas Story" house are just after this post; scroll on down! pax, jeff]

Faith Works 2-9-08
Jeff Gill

Food As an Act of Faith

There’s a little seven word phrase that’s been stuck in my head the last few weeks, and look out – I’m trying to stick it in yours.

It comes from the writer Michael Pollan, who wrote “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” a few years back, tracing food from the land to your table, and all the long, strange trips edible items take to get there.

He didn’t end up a vegetarian by the conclusion of his journey, but it was a near thing.

Pollan’s latest is called “In Defense of Food,” and in the magazine article that was the basis for the book, he came up with the tagline “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

For some of us, that sounds like a Lenten discipline right there. But Pollan is no ascetic, calling for an entirely meatless regimen or a life of deprivation. He is asking of those of us who eat – that’s a pretty inclusive category, sweeping up people of faith in many quarters – to just be more mindful of what it is we’re putting in our bodies.

Paul the Apostle had some hard words for the Christians in Corinth about “the body is a temple” of the Holy Spirit, and his general statement moves towards the folk wisdom “we are what we eat.”

Chemistry and biology remind us “we really, really are what we eat.” Religious traditions of all sorts have asked hard questions about what food is proper, or right, or “clean.” Some of those answers are cultural norms dressed up for church (“don’t eat those guys food”), and some have practical underpinnings, such as the relative unhealthiness of swine in desert environments (“don’t eat pork”), and others have ethical groundings.

Observant Jews keep a separate set of dishes for dairy and meat products, and even non-traditional Jews in Israel have those foods kept at a distance from each other. Why this concern? Well, as the nation Israel grew in the land of Canaan, many of their neighbors considered a particular dish as a real delicacy – a youngling, lamb or calf, boiled in the milk of its mother. The Old Testament dietary code said this was a vile practice that led to cruelty and insensitivity to suffering, and you should bend over backwards to avoid it.

Today, avoiding yogurt sauces over chicken might seem to be missing the point, but when you know the source of the practice, you can appreciate the concern.

In the season of Lent that began last Wednesday, many Christians are looking to their diet for a source of conscious discipline, and may be giving up cookies or candy or some treat for Monday through Saturday (with a modest exceptions on Sundays to Easter). Catholics traditionally give up red meat on Fridays, which is why Friday Fish Frys are so common right now, and everyone from Wendy’s to MickeyD’s is promoting fish sandwiches.

I come back to Pollan’s thoughts, asking us all in a way that should be of particular interest to religious folk “What are we eating? What are the implications of how that food got to our tables? What should we then eat?”

Or – “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” Pollan is suggesting that we consider food as items where we can know where it comes from and how it got here (mostly); preferring butter to margarine and fruit to fruit snacks and vegetables to oddly colored specks embedded in our pre-made entrees.

What is your diet saying about your beliefs, especially through this Lenten season?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; toss him an answer at knapsack77@gmail.com.

"A Christmas Story" in Cleveland

On Feb. 3, 2008, this fellow got a delightful opportunity to wander about and be photographed in the house used for all the exterior and some of the interior photography of "A Christmas Story." The 25th anniversary of that movie is coming this November, and the staff at the house and museum and gift shop has done a great job creating a unique visitor experience.

A few of the shots taken by me and by Monica, one of the curators of "A Christmas Story" house, follow:







The stairs up, which Ralphie famously descends in the deranged bunny pajamas --

-- and this is Ralphie and Randy's bedroom looking towards the street, while this next is the view east over the Cuyahoga River valley which you see a number of times in the movie, usually wreathed with snow and ice --

-- they even let me pick at the turkey in the stove, before the Bumpuss' dogs got to it --

Can you see the Red Ryder air rifle behind the desk?

And i brought the Little Guy back a Little Orphan Annie decoder pin, which i tested out next to the sink, with the laundry hamper as a desk, with the bar of Lifebuoy bearing a distinct set of toothmarks (not mine!)

Notes From My Knapsack 2-10-08
Jeff Gill

Eating Your Words, and Tasting Good

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

With those seven words, Michael Pollan has provoked quite a storm of discussion, maybe even a teacup’s worth of controversy.

Pollan wrote “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and more recently “In Defense of Food.” These books follow what we eat back to the literal roots, the sources in the earth of everything we consume as food.

He makes a number of points about chemicals and contaminants that vegetarians and organic food fans have been making for many years, but with an easy tone and a comprehensive attitude that makes it all go down smoothly.

The coverage of his latest book, which began as a newspaper article, has focused on Pollan’s admitted free gift of the contents of the whole book in seven words on the cover.

What makes the whole text worth your time is how Pollan unpacks a concept he calls “nutritionism,” which is what he calls the tendency of scientists and nutritionists to break food down into the sum of the nutrients involved.

Vitamins and minerals and fiber are all well and good, Pollan argues, but “nutritionism” takes us further from a focus on food to the mass consumption of what he calls “edible food-like substances.”

Fruit, for example, is food; chewy wrapped vitamin-C enriched fruit snacks are “edible food-like substances.” Butter is milk with some churning and maybe a bit of salt, while margarine is . . . anybody? Bueller?

Tea or coffee can even be food, while a bottle of “energy drink” that is clear but claims to have 47 elements off the periodic table somehow suspended in the fluid is . . . can we just say is an EF-LS? A good tamale is food, with ground spiced beef wrapped in a corn flour dough baked in a corn husk, while the deep fried tubule injected with materials labeled “Southwestern” is probably an EF-LS, too.

The more you can recognize the what and the where of the material you eat, the more it’s likely to be “food” as Pollan is defining it. What got me really nodding my head with Michael was where I read his observing in an interview that the nutrition community is fascinated by the “French paradox,” where residents of France eat all kinds of fatty foods but don’t get fat.

Pollan points to what he calls the equally intriguing “American paradox,” where a people so obsessed with nutritional information but whose dietary health is so poor. In the USA, we lead the world in obesity, diabetes, heart problems, and all the diet-related cancer problems known to date by science, and maybe some still under review. How do we have so much information and awareness in some areas, but have such awful outcomes?

I’m tempted to put out there again the concept of “datasmog,” the information overload that pervades so much of everyday life in this country and much of the modern world. David Shenk pointed out in 1997 that we may have so much information we’re shutting down and falling back on the easiest myths to live by.

While Pollan has some observations along that line, his main points have to do with eating well by living well, making meals with others, eating with others, and eating real food. Which is where his poetic (if you like haiku) seven word phrase comes into play.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mainly plants.” Pollan isn’t proposing a diet, for a small planet or a large family, just some simple guidelines. Eat stuff that you can recognize as food, and that you could, if need be, figure out where it came from. Don’t eat too much, which is always the kicker, but is the container for eating good stuff – butter, olive oil, cheese, eggs, even some meat is all food and fine to eat . . . if you don’t get carried away.

And mainly plants means just what it says. If you’re getting most of your calories from meat and dairy, you’re going to have problems health-wise no matter how free-range and hormone free it all is.

My colleague Trish Mumme in the Wednesday Advocate food section always has a few new ideas each week for how to get some real food, not too much, mainly plant based into my eating. She’s likely to agree with Michael Pollan – we shouldn’t be afraid to eat, and eat well, if we just use some simple common sense and basic guidelines.

And pig out once in a while. Maybe even on chips, but not too much.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who loves cooking and teaching his son how to prepare a good eggplant parm; send him your seven word life plan at knapsack77@gmail.com.

What's for Lent?

For me, this Lenten season, my spiritual discipline will be:

http://www.churchyear.net/lentfathers.html

Other than some reading in Desert Monasticism (St. Anthony, Abba Poemen, et alia) and Ephrem the Syrian, I mainly know the early church second-hand in history and theology, so this felt like a good plan for me.

If you're looking for something different from giving up chocolate, this might be the Lenten practice for you!

Faith Works 2-2-08
Jeff Gill

Give Churches Some Credit

Consumer spending only increased 3.5% last Christmas season, say economic news stories.

Only? Only that percent of growth in spending is bad news for our economy?

Our economy is well and truly broke, then.

Economic news is everywhere, and much of it sounds bad. The worst stats have to do with foreclosures, and I keep thinking I’m missing something. In Licking County, for our 150,000 souls we have 55,000 households, with not quite 42,000 owner-occupied households.

When I read that we had nearly a thousand foreclosures a couple years ago, a thou one year back, over a thousand last year, and we’re guaranteed 1,200 at minimum this year, that’s 4,000 plus households dealing with mortgage foreclosures in the current time frame.

That’s one in ten Licking County households.

Faith communities obviously have a stake in talking about finance and personal restraint and stewardship in a good season, let alone right now. With the deeply disturbing trends knocking around, there are a number of good responses from church bodies and gatherings of concerned religious folk.

One is just called “The Compact.” You can google around a bit and find some of the groups, which started on the West Coast and Pacific Northwest but is spreading to all kinds of locales around the county.

Their proposal is simple: we make a compact together not to buy anything new for a season, whether Lent or a year or whathaveyou. If you need something, you find it used, you trade or borrow, or you figure out how to do without. Food stuffs are an exemption (more on faith and food next week!), and there are some other common-sense exceptions, just look for “The Compact” and add in search terms “consumer, consumption, used” to find all you need to know.

There’s a fellow called “the Cheapskate” who has been writing about living cheaply for years; with Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent this Wednesday it makes sense to lift up his new idea -- a money fast! Jeff Yeager is looking for meaning and purpose in life, and one of the steps he commends is to set aside a week a year to spend no money.

If that sounds silly to you, ask yourself: “Why is that?” Why should our need to define ourselves by what we purchase, the things we consume, be an absolute?

And that’s what any discipline of fasting is about: remembering that eating or whatever special thing we set aside for a fast is not who or whose we are. Yeager says try a day, or a day a month, but try a money fast. I think he’s on to something important.

Over in England, the Methodist Church of Britain is launching a credit card. Today, it seems every organization wants us to get “their” credit card, to merge their identity and our own into another tool to consume.

But this credit card goes in your wallet, in front of your cards that work, because it doesn’t. it just makes us stop and think. The English Methodist card is a bright cheery red plastic reminder saying on its face “Buy Less, Live More,” meant especially for the Lenten season. Where the card number would go, it says “Mark 10: 17-27.”

Go to their website, www.buylesslivemore.org.uk and you can register to get daily e-mails with ideas on how to “live life in all its fullness” by buying less and living more. They welcome Americans, too.

Or you could just look up the Bible quote on the card each day.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your Lenten discipline at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 2-3-08
Jeff Gill

Do Not Call Me, Skip the Please

Rudeness is something we’re trying to avoid teaching the Little Guy, whether at home or away.

Away is going fine, but at home . . .

It’s hard to hide your phone etiquette from your son, especially around dinner time while you’re preparing a meal and he’s doing homework at the kitchen table.

The phone rings, and the mental algebra begins: what are the odds? Where is the Lovely Wife at currently, could it be her calling, is there anyone else with a pressing need for your ear today, this week, right now?

You shift into “I’ll answer it mode,” dry your hands, catch the receiver before the machine picks up at ring number four (and when nine out of ten calls click dead at the start of the message).

“Hello, Gill residence,” you say as you were trained from a pup, on a large heavy black unearthly dense plastic phone. Today’s device is smooth and light and small, but the courtesies are the same.

Your greeting gets no response, other than a crackling silence and then a very faint click, followed by a voice of robotic precision and recorded cheer. “If you are interested in a great deal that sounds too good to be true, please hold the line . . .” the disembodied lady’s voice went on in this vein a bit as I fumed and planned my next step. She concluded with “if you would like to hear more about this offer, press 1.”

Grimly, I stabbed the first key. Immediately as a voice began to ask me something, I said with great clarity and firmness “I would like to speak to a supervisor, immediately.”

You see, that’s supposed to be a law or something – you ask for a supervisor, they have to give you one. And obviously I’m not the only one to know this, because his response carried the mild weariness of someone who’s been down this route before. “I’m sorry, my supervisor does not wish to speak to you.”

Let’s just say I wasn’t surprised by this news, but thought a little persistence might help. “I am asking you, sir, officially and formally, to please connect me with a supervisor.”

With equal politeness, almost to the point of derision, he replied “Sir, my supervisor has specifically said he does not wish to speak to you. That is not going to happen. Are we done here?”

With the last idea I had, my retort was “If there is no supervisor available, I’d like a mailing address for your business, please.”

There was a brief silence, and then I think I heard a soft chuckle. “Sir, we have no address. We do not exist. And that, I believe, is the end of our conversation; good night.”

Well, if I were more committed to spending my precious free time aggravating people calling numbers on the “Do Not Call” registry, I could have played along a while and at least found out what they were selling – some kind of financial instruments, probably sheep futures or hedge trimmer funds or something like that – and maybe gotten a business name before calling on the no doubt still distant and inaccessible supervisor.

On the other hand, yelling and ranting on the phone while the Little Guy listens isn’t my best use of time, near 6:00 pm or any other time.

For all of you who have wondered, the “Do Not Call” registry at www.donotcall.gov is still working, works for mobile phones, and isn’t going to require you to call in every five years. Many of us did register our phones five years ago, but Congress has put the renewal question on hold.

If you’ve gotten one of the every January and July e-mails that float about referring to releases of cell phone numbers to telemarketers, don’t panic, and you can go to www.snopes.com and type in “Do Not Call” and “cell phone” to learn more about that internet myth (always check Snopes.com for those fwd: e-mails you get).

And if your phone isn’t on the registry, click or call 888-382-1222 and get yourself some minimal protection from the phone vultures. I can say when a local business in Licking County called at dinner time and I asked for a supervisor (they said, “I’m my supervisor, sir”), then pointed out it was illegal to call me, they immediately apologized and said they’d fix their, um, list (right, they have a list – they have an auto-dial machine is what they’ve got).

Then they offered me something free that was what I didn’t want to be called about, to make it up to me. I cheerfully observed that, from where I knew they were, it was five minutes to my house, and if they brought it, I’d feed them dinner. We both agreed that neither of us needed what the other offered, and there it ended.

For now.

Jeff Gill is in the book, perhaps foolishly; just e-mail him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 1-26-08
Jeff Gill

In the Shadow of a Mighty Fortress

Rev. Dr. Vernon Johns is not a terribly well-known name even among folks who know the story of the American Civil Rights movement. I’ve got a couple reasons to lift him up this week after the King commemoration last Monday.

Almost 40 years older than the newly ordained young fellow who succeeded him at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, named Martin Luther King, Jr., it could have been Johns’ shadow that obscured King. He refused to get off of a bus years before Rosa Parks, but his stubbornness on all fronts was so usual that no one took any notice, leading civil rights advocates to say they needed someone “a little more surprising than Dr. Johns.”

Johns advocated economic empowerment as a vital first step to empowerment under the law and in the schools, but shocked his upwardly mobile African-American congregation by practicing what he preached alongside of rural, uneducated black sharecroppers, bringing them and the produce he helped them raise to the congregation for sale on Sunday, and setting them up outside the church door on elegant Dexter Avenue, in the shadow of the statehouse dome.

He passionately preached for full access to public services and education, and for that access to come right now, immediately, with a deacon board that constantly asked him to tone it down and slow up. When they tangled, he began in his first year to simply threaten to quit, and would seemingly always have a letter of resignation in his coat pocket to throw down on the table.

For five years he preached political action and economic co-operation with his sermons and his deeds, selling stocking from classroom to classroom one week and the next week, waving produce from his own garden, roots still attached to prove their origin, bits of dirt scattering across the well-dressed front rows and fine carpeting.

Finally, he showed up one Sunday in coveralls, intending to preach in them, with a cart full of watermelons fresh from the market garden. The deacons told him to move the cart and get a suit on, Johns threatened to quit, and the board shocked him by saying “fine.” His next, and last Sunday in the pulpit, he was asked from the sanctuary if he had anything to say about his departure, and his answer before stalking away can’t be published in a family paper.

Dexter Avenue had been slow to take up the letter because it was a hard time to find clergy, and indeed it was two years (very long in those days) before they found a fresh graduate who they thought would be a calming influence after the turmoil of Vernon Johns. They hired Martin Luther King’s son out of Atlanta by way of Boston, and the rest is history.

Except the other aspect of the story that fascinates me is that Vernon Johns was every pastor’s nightmare of a predecessor. Five conflict wracked years, two of interim where Johns was still quite prominent in Montgomery while traveling to his wife’s new job at a college in Virginia, and then the offer of a trial sermon.

That week, King opened the door of his family home in Atlanta to see – Vernon Johns. Johns had been asked to preach at the “other” prominent black church in Montgomery on the same Sunday (itself a breach of the vast body of unwritten but very firm clergy ethics), and wondered if he could hitch a ride with King.

And King said “yes.” Johns, by all accounts, tried to tell him who to work with and who not to. After King took the offer, Johns would still show up from time to time in coveralls with a cartload of produce in front of the church on Sunday, delighting a few but angering many. And Johns would call to tell King what he should do about this or that.

Through it all, somehow King managed to become not only a loved, trusted, and respected pastor for a very risk-averse congregation in a time of great trial after just one year, but he also became Vernon Johns’ friend. Many who know Johns’ work well (he left very little written material behind) hear a distinct echo of Johns’ classic preaching structure and images in the “I Have a Dream” sermon of 1963.

But that achievement of coming into a divided, fearful church with a fiery, muddy prophet still haunting the sidewalks, and building that bridge, is almost as amazing to me as what King was able to do in Montgomery and Birmingham and Selma.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he tells any skeptic about the King holiday each year to go out and read Taylor Branch’s “Parting the Waters.” If you have a book or story that makes you proud of your church and nation, tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 1-27-08
Jeff Gill

When the War Strikes Close To Home

One day last year I came home, north a bit from Cherry Valley Road and Rt. 16, and from our driveway I could see a column of black smoke south of Rt. 16, as it turns out right along Cherry Valley Road.

It was a blow from the Iraq war striking within a mile of my house.

If you didn’t know the war had come to Licking County, let me explain, or at least explain my inference.

What had happened was a young man, new to driving a tanker truck, just back from surviving a tour driving such heavy vehicles around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, had rolled over the edge of the 175 year-plus Showman Bridge into Raccoon Creek.

He was not impaired, and the weather was fine, and in my opinion there is only one explanation for what killed him. When you don’t know which curve harbors snipers or which bridges hide bombs, and you deal with that uncertainty for a year, you don’t just shift back down to civilian pace overnight.

The young man who had proudly and honorably served his country by getting supplies and gear from point A to point B quickly and in one piece came home to support his new family in Ohio by doing much the same, but the tendency to punch the accelerator and go easy on the brake led to a load slosh that tipped him onto a railing, into a creekbed, and to his death a mile or so from my home.

Can you see why I think it’s fair to say he’s a casualty of the Iraq war? Sure, young drivers misjudge curves and turns all the time, and he might have lost his ticket if he had never been overseas. But I make that sweeping left turn from Reddington onto Cherry Valley over the old aqueduct all the time, and I keep thinking about how just a little too much “gung ho,” a bit too edgy a nerve ending about crossing where you can see the piers where they meet the water, and whoosh, bam, boom. You’re dead.

Of course if the military paid a full benefit for such a death after discharge and coming home, they would end up spending billions, right? Insert your favorite military spending joke here.

This won’t be a Purple Heart or a name for some future Iraq “Conflict” memorial, just an unlucky guy who died trying to make a living after surviving military service. Now, if he had some kind of brain injury, which the VA tells us is showing up for one in five returning vets, maybe he could have gotten a medical check that would have taken him out of the cab of that truck on that day.

Did he have some level of post traumatic stress, undiagnosed, that could have been treated to help him throttle back in life in general, and in heavy trucks specifically? They’re suggesting that half of returnees from both Iraq and Afghanistan should get assessment and treatment for PTSD, helping them ease back into the rhythms of hometown life.

With the primary debates and discussions, I heard an interesting quote out of South Carolina from a man who said he voted for John McCain. “I think he’ll get us out of Iraq fastest.”

That’s interesting, since many other candidates are working hard to say specifically that they’ll get the troops home fastest. McCain’s said quite a few things about Iraq, but getting the troops back home soon isn’t one of them.

But this fellow was a retired soldier himself, and what he seemed to be saying was that he knows how soldiers feel about war, and about being overseas, and he knew McCain had spent five and a half years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton wanting to get home.

What too many folks don’t seem to know is that soldiers and sailors and Marines and aviators all have three things in common if they’re career professional military. 1) They love training. 2) They are made somewhat uneasy by peace and quiet, ‘tis true. 3) They hate war.

Truly, the warrior class as a whole hates war. They like knowing that their training and preparation makes them ready for actions that most citizens are not capable of, and need someone to perform from time to time, such as flying helicopters out over the Gulf Coast and New Orleans to save 30,000 people from rooftops after Katrina. They like that knowledge, that capacity in themselves, a great deal.

They hate war, though. They know what it does to their friends and to the innocent and they know full well what it does to themselves. They love training all the more, so that sweat displaces blood.

Will McCain get our troops back to driving tanker trucks, slowly, down Cherry Valley Road? I don’t know about that, but I can see why someone would think he’d try, and try effectively.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your story of war and peace at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 1-19-08
Jeff Gill

Open All the Time, Not Always Possible

With some hesitation, “Faith Works” jumps into the discussion around Britney Spears.

Yes, Britney Spears.

You heard the story from last week, and I write this with real fear that almost anything could happen by the time this column sees print. She’s a mother who has already lost custody of her children, and when she had a hearing where there was a chance of getting some kind of visitation back, she showed up late, then backed out of the court building, drove around the LA area, and then . . .

What was little discussed but generally noted was that Ms. Spears drove past a place in Studio City, California called “The Little Brown Church of the Valley,” came back around the block with a flotilla of photographers chasing her from vehicles and in the air, and stopped to go into the church.

Why that church?

No one knows for sure, but the sign out front likely had something to do with her decision. “Come in and pray, the door is open night and day.”

The Little Brown Church was born in 1930 when Rev. John Wells felt a calling to build what he called “a refuge” in the growing fringes of Los Angeles. The church looks like a piece of middle America from the middle of the last century. Knotty pine furnishings, a pulpit to the left, a Warner Sallman portrait of Christ to the right, and communion table in the center.

Did it look like a church from the Louisiana of Britney’s not so distant youth? Or was it the wording of the sign, probably passed many times before?

In 1989 Central Christian Church of Van Nuys and the Little Brown Church combined their ministries, creating the Church of the Valley, with “The Little Brown Church of the Valley” an outreach ministry of the core congregation. (Look around at their work through their website, www.covtoday.org)

And don’t confuse this body with “The Little Brown Church in the Vale,” also known from the hymn as “The Church in the Wildwood” which is in Iowa, and online at www.littlebrownchurch.org.

The Church of the Valley is part of my home tradition, the Disciples of Christ, and I’ve worked with their music minister, Bill Thomas, at a number of Disciples’ events. Bill wasn’t in the area of The Little Brown Church when Britney arrived, but the youth minister, Michael Kosik was, and even for an Angeleno, the media frenzy was more than he’d ever seen.

As a pastor, his first instinct was to give the person some privacy who had come in response to the sign, “Come in and pray, the door is open night and day.” But by the time he had made a circuit of the building and reminded all the gathered press that this space was indeed a sanctuary, the person who came in had gone out, leaving almost as quickly as she had arrived.

What I’ve heard secondhand is that Britney was distraught, distracted, and could barely even sit down, pacing about as if pursued by . . . what? There are many descriptions we might fill into that gap of the kind of haunting specters that might drive such a soul from place to place, pew to pew, and then out the door.

I’m proud of The Little Brown Church for trying to remain a refuge, even in the San Fernando Valley, opening their doors to all comers, and putting out a brave sign advertising that fact. Britney Spears did not find peace, not yet, but I am heartened even in my sorrow that it was a place that said they were open for prayer that she came to when she didn’t know where else to go.

Bill and Michael and the rest of the staff at COV have, in fact, bent over backwards not to join the media maelstrom. Kudos to them, as everyone from former security guard employed for a week and garbage collectors have taken money from tabloids to tell their stories, true or fabulized. All we can know is that a woman with a troubled heart stopped by, looked for a moment of peace, and then moved on.

Should our doors be open? In the heart of an urban neighborhood, out in an isolated rural location, can we safely keep our doors so open we could erect such a sign, even if it meant just a few minutes refuge for a lonely, maybe even lost soul, to come and kneel?

“Come in and pray, the door is open night and day.” We are in all likelihood not each and all called to provide such a ministry. But are circumstances such that your place of worship, or at least some corner for prayer, could be available for a passer-by?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s delighted in open doors to places of worship in some of the most unexpected places. Tell him where you’ve paused to pray at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 1-20-08
Jeff Gill

Looking To a Wider View

One of the advantages of this generally harsh time of year outdoors is the view.

To take advantage of it, you have to bundle up and go for a walk, but you can catch enough of a hint through car windows to get the motivation you may need to do that.

The last of the dried leaves have fallen away from the trees, shrubs and taller grasses are now bent and broken, and even evergreen boughs are lifted a bit, reaching for what light the short days bring.

From all this, you see the land and the horizon and the undulations of the terrain in ways you don’t normally, at least for nine or ten months of the year. Walks that are shrouded by overhanging green canopies or walled in by undergrowth higher than your head are now strolls through vast halls and open arenas of nature.

Taking a number of classes from OSU-N out to Octagon State Memorial, hiking about (with care to avoid the greens of the warmer weather golf course, now approaching its own century mark), I found that you could easily see, from near the center of these 2000 year old marvels, the entire circumference of the 50 plus acre enclosure.

Strolling up the “causeway” connecting the Octagon Mounds to the Observatory Circle, the same was true in the 1054 foot diameter circle. Perspective and view was enhanced, and it almost seemed as if the cold air magnified my distance vision. If I recall my meteorology classes correctly, it is moisture that magnifies as storms in summer come along, but the dryness of the air must add clarity.

Walking along some local park trails, I see down into ravines and drainages, and up along slopes or tree trunks that are usually invisible to me. Add to all this the effect of a light fall of snow to accent elevation and angle like a topographic map, and you find yourself simply aware of a larger space even when you’re just walking along noodling at other thoughts.

After those peaceful thoughts, if you’re still with me, I ask your forebearance as I offer a small rant. Last weekend, the New York Times ran an absolutely appalling cover story that went on to receive more column inches than anything I’ve seen in their pages for many a moon, including lack of health insurance among the poor and the foreclosure crisis in the banking industry.

Does anyone in the Big Apple care what’s said about them in a free weekly paper in Ohio? Likely not. Should you care about what they said? Well, yes, because what the NYT says on a Sunday is often what local news and magazines say the next couple weeks. Respect them or not, they set the tone for national media and debate.

Their major story was that veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have committed murder on returning home, often against family members. Story after painful story was told in the lengthy piece, seemingly almost a bit about all 121 murders that were committed by returning service members since the conflicts began, from the start of 2003 to the end of 2007.

I don’t subscribe, but for the reasons noted above, I often buy a copy on Sunday. Seeing the “vets run amok” story, I read, flipping forward impatiently to see if they got to the comparison.

What comparison? Oh, just the fact that 18 to 34 year olds commit most of the murders in this country as it is, so how did veterans compare to their population? Sadly, tragically, I would say almost viciously, the comparison was never made.

Let me make it here. Returning veterans were FIVE TIMES LESS likely to commit murder than their age cohort. And don’t tell me New York Times reporters are less able to get Justice Department numbers from their website and do simple math than freelance columnists in Ohio.

In the service of what I’m sure they think is an honorable anti-war agenda, the Old Grey Lady of journalism defamed and slimed our nation’s servicemembers, tarring them with the “they come back crazy killers” brush. Someone should be ashamed; I know I am.

A returning vet is five times more likely to have more self-control, better self-knowledge, and improved problem solving skills than their peers. Should we get our troops home soon? Yes we should, and I’ll have something more to say about that next week.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he enlisted when he was seventeen, and if he’s crazy it has little to do with his brief period in the service. You can tell him he’s crazy at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 1-12-08
Jeff Gill

Yeah, More Football

If you’re weary of football and don’t want to hear anything more about a sport whose ball doesn’t even bounce properly, I understand.

Please summon up your last resources of pre-Lenten forebearance, and consider the “Souper Bowl.” Technically, the Souper Bowl of Caring.

Held on the same weekend as the Roman numeraled Super Bowl (XXL this year, or something like that), this is a now seventeen year old (XVII) event, started in 1990 by Brad Smith, a youth pastor at Spring Valley Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina.

All it was can be summed up in the prayer we still use: “Lord, even as we enjoy the Super Bowl game, let us be mindful of those who don’t even have a bowl of soup to eat.” The youth at Spring Valley challenged the congregation to buy canned goods for the food pantry when they bought their munchies for the game, and also took donations of cash for the food pantry on the collection Sunday.

The next year they invited other Presbyterian churches to join them, and got a few dozen. Some churches had team-based challenges and piles in the narthex, and others just stood at the church door with pots in their hands to collect.

A couple years later, they went multi-state, and then Brad became Rev. Dr. Smith, and now . . . well, now the Souper Bowl of Caring is 14,000 youth organizations, generating over $8 million last year for food pantries, at a time which just happens to be a real challenge for them, after the rush of Christmas and before the advent of warmer weather.

Personally, I suspect the actual total, with in-kind amounts gathered can by can by youth groups in this innovative and very productive fashion, is waaaay more than the $41 million of documented cash contributions. And it really doesn’t matter.

The point is to make some of our purchasing decisions accompanied with a conscious choice to help the hungry while stuffing our overloaded gullets on Super Bowl Sunday, baptizing the pagan rites of championship football into the waters of compassion and caritas.

To read more about Souper Bowl of Caring, go to: www.souperbowl.org. Their story is a marvelous one, including Rev. Dr. Smith going from another youth pastor with a crazy idea to executive director of a national foundation to help manage the wild beast he’s helped create.

Many Licking County congregations already have youth doing some kind of special food pantry promotion on Souper Bowl, I mean, Super Bowl Sunday, and whether there’s a formal relationship with the wider organization or not, what a great day to make a little extra effort to feed those in need?

The Licking County Food Pantry Network does great work, and any canned goods or cash contribution we add to the effort will be well used; your local food pantry probably has a productive relationship with them already. Pick up a can or two of soup, some beans and veggies, and some canned meat or peanut butter, and take it to church on Feb. 3.

Even if you don’t have a “Souper Bowl” program going on, it’s a forward pass for a first down to defeat hunger. And we all win in that game.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; yes, he stayed up last Monday night and isn’t sure why he did. Share your puzzles of life an faith with him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 1-13-08
Jeff Gill

Change Your Life, Step By Step

A cynic might say that I’m about to tell you what you already know, and never will do.

Could be.

An educator would observe that people need to hear things six or seven times before they really “hear” it, which experience tells me is true.

Candidates for national office will say that they have a program to implement most of these steps, which cause most of us to roll our eyes and look for the remote, which is generally the correct response.

With the beginning of a new year, though, life-changing decisions are very much in vogue, as is the usual February collapse of those good intentions. But if you would change your life for the better, a few commonplace everyday thoughts for you:

What would happen if we filled store parking lots the way we do church pews? Everyone knows that no one wants to be in the rows closest to the front, and a seat in the farthest reaches of a sanctuary is often hardest to find.

Step one is MOVE. Anything that gets you moving about a bit more is a step in the right direction, so why not park farther away from the door? C’mon, everyone’s pushing a cart on the way out anyhow, so it isn’t for carrying stuff out that we jostle and wait and pound steering wheels waiting for a front row parking space.

Plus, you’ll hardly ever get door dings out beyond the last car.

A few stairs here, a little stroll there, and you’re exercising as much as many folks who paid for gym membership last week . . . but never go. Just move more, step one.

Step two is EAT COLOR. More salsa on your food is one step (Cholula and Tabasco don’t quite count here, but actually, they just might). Add some pickles here, a slice of tomato there, even just a handful of salad on the side to start, and your diet and digestion are entering new territory.

Food that is all grey, brown, and tan, with splashes of yellow-brown, is food that is sticking to your artery walls. Oatmeal is about the only real exception to this rule, and if you pile brown sugar or syrup on it and mix in cream, we’re right back to where we started. A handful of frozen blueberries thrown in the mix, or raisins, or an orange on the side, and you’ve got the color thing goin’ on.

Yes, fruits and vegetables require a side trip to the produce aisle when shopping, some cleaning and storing and preparation. Doing all that gives you an extra jump on step one, tho’, and gives you the dietary basis to make step two happen.

The other thing about “eating color” is that is usually requires intentional eating, not casual snacking. Unwrapping cellophane or tearing open a bag barely requires thought, which is the whole problem. When you eat color, your brain gets involved, and often tells you things, like . . .

Step three: SLEEP.

Is this one of those magic TV diet secrets: “let pounds melt away while you sleep?” Nope, just the wisdom of letting your body set the rhythm of life, and not the pattern of stimulants and depressants. We often eat and drink stuff we know darn good and well we shouldn’t because we’re trying to wake up, stay awake, or get relaxed enough to go to sleep.

A healthy sleep pattern pays all kinds of amazing benefits, and it comes out in our bodies, our lifestyles, our very lives.

Which also means we find the right time and space to MOVE, which takes us back to step one; lather, rinse, repeat. Three steps, no big deals, and you can change your life.

You may want to try that plan or not, but what I do want to make sure of is that you’re all invited to come Sunday, Jan. 13, to “The Works” just south of Newark’s Courthouse Square, for a 2:00 pm lecture kicking off the Licking County Bicentennial year. I’m coming in the garb and guise of one Chaplain David Jones, the second recorded European visitor to the terrain of what’s now Licking County, a county that formally came into being on March 1, 1808, carved out of Ross County, which came out of Fairfield County which itself was taken from Washington County, the original county of the Northwest Territory.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s been digging away at the story of Rev. Jones since 1989, and can’t wait to tell someone about it. Tell your unappreciated story to him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Diving into 2008, head-long, feet-first --

"What other church is there besides institutional? There’s nobody who doesn’t have problems with the church, because there’s sin in the church. But there’s no other place to be a Christian except the church. There’s sin in the local bank. There’s sin in the grocery stores. I really don’t understand this naïve criticism of the institution. I really don’t get it. Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There’s no life in the bark. It’s dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it’s prone to disease, dehydration, death. So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive. And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn’t last long. It disappears, gets sick, and it’s prone to all kinds of disease, heresy, and narcissism."

-Eugene Peterson