Notes From My Knapsack 4-9-09
Jeff Gill
Who Do You Say Is Lord?
___
“Dominus Caesar est.”
Three words, and a pinch of incense on a sacrificial altar.
“Caesar is Lord.”
Statements like that, and statues and inscriptions on public buildings proclaiming the “King of Kings” and “Prince of Peace” all were common almost 2000 years ago. They referred, of course, to the ruler of Rome, whether Julius Caesar who made his family name a title, his adopted son Octavian, soon known as Augustus Caesar, the first Emperor, or the Roman rulers who followed – Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero.
Julius was born in the month that was known as Quintilis, but after his death, famously on the Ides of March, became known as July, named for the man who was believed to have become a god upon his death. Octavian saw with all of Rome a daytime comet in the sky, and declared his father “Divus Iulius,” or the “God Julius” – which conveniently made the August one “divi filius,” “God’s son.”
The month he died, Sextilis, became August as part of the proclamation that the “Son of God” was now a member of the Roman pantheon himself. Worship of at least the “divine spirit” of the ruling emperor began with Augustus, but it was Caligula who began to insist that he be considered a god while alive, and in person.
So all around the Roman Empire, it became a part of simple transactions and legal business, already taking place in the basilicas, or law courts, of the imperial authority, that participants would step to the altar on the elevated platform before all witnesses, and say “Caesar is Lord,” dropping a pinch on incense into the perpetual vestal flame.
John Dominic Crossan is a controversial Biblical scholar, but one I hope Denison or some other local effort could bring to town. He is a charming and brilliant fellow, who is not at all afraid of controversy while trying to provoke careful and consistent thought about the claims of the New Testament, particularly about Jesus of Nazareth.
One of the debts I feel that I owe this scholar is a greater awareness of the very personal, yet extremely social tension in the earliest days of the Roman Empire, and for the birth of the Christian Church.
To say “Caesar is Lord” is to make a much broader statement than those three words appear to say. “Caesar is Lord” is to say that the methods and approach of Julius and Augustus and even crazy old Caligula were divinely ordered, the expression of an ultimate nature about how human creatures were to relate to each other.
“Caesar is Lord” is saying that the crushing grip of military conquest is the best way to reach a “Pax Romanum,” a peace that is easily understood as the absence of war, under the authority of emperors and consuls and prefects and procurators. You know, procurators, like that sharp-edged tool of empire, Pontius Pilate.
Or you could say something else, a different statement that not only cut you off from the protection of empire, but left you open to the punishment, the ‘poena,’ the penalties of the amphitheater and Colosseum. You could claim a peace that passes all understanding, but one that grows far beyond even the reach of a Caesar.
You could say instead “Dominus Iesus est,” but God help you if you did.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow on Twitter at “Knapsack.”
Monday, April 06, 2009
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Faith Works 4-4-09
Jeff Gill
Taking a Walk Around the Block, or a Bit Farther
____
‘Tis the season . . . for processions.
Coming into Holy Week for Christian observance of the last earthly week of Jesus’ life, we’ve got a number of special occasions on the worship calendar, what some churches call “liturgy.”
Liturgy translates, roughly, as “the work of the people,” meaning the call and response of certain set prayers and actions needs the active involvement of the people in the pews. Liturgy is not – contrary to many misconceptions – just the script for the ordained clergy, but the work all of God’s people do together.
In the sanctuary, the worship space, with a robed and vested minister leading from behind the pulpit, it can be easy to confuse liturgy at any season, let alone through Easter season, with the work of what’s going on up front.
Which is where religious processions come in, where they have for millennia been a crucial part of acknowledging what “leitourgia” is really about.
Palm Sunday in many traditions has the congregation process into the building with their palms, echoing the impromptu parade into Jerusalem behind Jesus on the prophetic white donkey, the crowds acclaiming him as the coming king, stripping the palm trees for branches to lay down on the road so the dust would not obscure the view.
Mostly this has turned into the kids marching briskly up and down the aisles with their eco-palms waving (sustainably) and singing suitable acclamation to King Jesus. Many Catholic churches still have at least the officiants march in from outside, or at least from the narthex (entry room from door to worship space).
In fact, through Lent these last few weeks, many Catholic churches have a weekly Stations of the Cross procession within the sanctuary, either on Fridays or after a parish retreat or dinner on another evening. Large numbers of worshipers skip the sitting and work their way around the walls of the worship space, praying at panels recalling crucial events from the original Good Friday.
Francis of Assisi began this custom when the original Stations of the Cross, the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, became inaccessible to Christian pilgrims after the Moslem takeover of the Holy Land. That journey, following the steps of Jesus himself from his trial to crucifixion and burial, became a set of 13 stations (or in some places today, 14, adding the Resurrection) around the inside of the church.
There are locations on the grounds of churches, or at the Sts. Peter and Paul Retreat Center (former PIME Seminary), where outdoor Stations of the Cross are walked.
In some locations, a Good Friday “Cross Walk” is an ecumenical way to recall those steps of Jesus, bringing more traditionally ordered churches together with less formal approaches to worship in an outdoor procession, usually trying to end atop a hill, echoing Jesus’ carrying of his cross up Calvary, or “Golgotha,” Aramaic for “Place of the Skull.”
Some towns hold theirs on the grounds of a church, and many do so in a cemetery, especially if there’s a hill for the closing portions recalling the crucifixion itself.
In Granville, the Good Friday Crosswalk starts at 11:00 am at the parking lot of St. Edward’s Catholic Church, and winds through town and up the hill to the front of Denison University’s Swasey Chapel.
For some of the observant in New Mexico and the Philippines, there is a fellowship called “Los Penitentes,” whose penitential observance takes “the work of the people” to a whole new level, with members of these fraternities actually re-enacting the scourging, crossbearing, and crucifixion itself, using the actual equipment in modified form as an act of devotion.
Yes, that means sometimes people actually not only bleed, but are nailed up onto a cross. They’re brought down pretty quickly, and those who choose to endure this tangible symbolism are considered particularly devout, but the official church does not approve of or participate in these re-creations.
Some of you might prefer being nailed to a cross to staying up until dawn, which in Eastern Orthodox Churches is a central element of the Easter Vigil. Some Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican/Episcopal churches have an Easter Vigil from Saturday night into Easter Sunday morning, where a flame is supposed to enter the building from without, and in some areas a midnight bonfire is part of the tradition (along with various strategies for staying warm).
But few keep a procession outside of the church as central as Orthodox churches do, with one element of the service requiring the officiants and entire congregation to not only walk out the church door, but to walk around the building three times before re-entering to celebrate the lighting of the Holy Fire.
Among Protestant Christians, the last vestige of these customs is in the sunrise service, where a pre-dawn awakening for the worship leaders often leads them and the worshipers to an outdoor service as the sun rises, as Lakewood area churches hold on Easter morning at Dawes Arboretum.
Then there’s the procession traditions behind Rogation Days and Ember Days. What are those? I’ll save that for after Easter, but they involve . . . more processions! A walk, a parade outside by young and old, clergy and laity together, is not an exception to “liturgy,” but maybe the very best embodiment of it!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about a religious procession from your tradition at knapsack77@gmail.com, or on Twitter at Knapsack.
Jeff Gill
Taking a Walk Around the Block, or a Bit Farther
____
‘Tis the season . . . for processions.
Coming into Holy Week for Christian observance of the last earthly week of Jesus’ life, we’ve got a number of special occasions on the worship calendar, what some churches call “liturgy.”
Liturgy translates, roughly, as “the work of the people,” meaning the call and response of certain set prayers and actions needs the active involvement of the people in the pews. Liturgy is not – contrary to many misconceptions – just the script for the ordained clergy, but the work all of God’s people do together.
In the sanctuary, the worship space, with a robed and vested minister leading from behind the pulpit, it can be easy to confuse liturgy at any season, let alone through Easter season, with the work of what’s going on up front.
Which is where religious processions come in, where they have for millennia been a crucial part of acknowledging what “leitourgia” is really about.
Palm Sunday in many traditions has the congregation process into the building with their palms, echoing the impromptu parade into Jerusalem behind Jesus on the prophetic white donkey, the crowds acclaiming him as the coming king, stripping the palm trees for branches to lay down on the road so the dust would not obscure the view.
Mostly this has turned into the kids marching briskly up and down the aisles with their eco-palms waving (sustainably) and singing suitable acclamation to King Jesus. Many Catholic churches still have at least the officiants march in from outside, or at least from the narthex (entry room from door to worship space).
In fact, through Lent these last few weeks, many Catholic churches have a weekly Stations of the Cross procession within the sanctuary, either on Fridays or after a parish retreat or dinner on another evening. Large numbers of worshipers skip the sitting and work their way around the walls of the worship space, praying at panels recalling crucial events from the original Good Friday.
Francis of Assisi began this custom when the original Stations of the Cross, the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, became inaccessible to Christian pilgrims after the Moslem takeover of the Holy Land. That journey, following the steps of Jesus himself from his trial to crucifixion and burial, became a set of 13 stations (or in some places today, 14, adding the Resurrection) around the inside of the church.
There are locations on the grounds of churches, or at the Sts. Peter and Paul Retreat Center (former PIME Seminary), where outdoor Stations of the Cross are walked.
In some locations, a Good Friday “Cross Walk” is an ecumenical way to recall those steps of Jesus, bringing more traditionally ordered churches together with less formal approaches to worship in an outdoor procession, usually trying to end atop a hill, echoing Jesus’ carrying of his cross up Calvary, or “Golgotha,” Aramaic for “Place of the Skull.”
Some towns hold theirs on the grounds of a church, and many do so in a cemetery, especially if there’s a hill for the closing portions recalling the crucifixion itself.
In Granville, the Good Friday Crosswalk starts at 11:00 am at the parking lot of St. Edward’s Catholic Church, and winds through town and up the hill to the front of Denison University’s Swasey Chapel.
For some of the observant in New Mexico and the Philippines, there is a fellowship called “Los Penitentes,” whose penitential observance takes “the work of the people” to a whole new level, with members of these fraternities actually re-enacting the scourging, crossbearing, and crucifixion itself, using the actual equipment in modified form as an act of devotion.
Yes, that means sometimes people actually not only bleed, but are nailed up onto a cross. They’re brought down pretty quickly, and those who choose to endure this tangible symbolism are considered particularly devout, but the official church does not approve of or participate in these re-creations.
Some of you might prefer being nailed to a cross to staying up until dawn, which in Eastern Orthodox Churches is a central element of the Easter Vigil. Some Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican/Episcopal churches have an Easter Vigil from Saturday night into Easter Sunday morning, where a flame is supposed to enter the building from without, and in some areas a midnight bonfire is part of the tradition (along with various strategies for staying warm).
But few keep a procession outside of the church as central as Orthodox churches do, with one element of the service requiring the officiants and entire congregation to not only walk out the church door, but to walk around the building three times before re-entering to celebrate the lighting of the Holy Fire.
Among Protestant Christians, the last vestige of these customs is in the sunrise service, where a pre-dawn awakening for the worship leaders often leads them and the worshipers to an outdoor service as the sun rises, as Lakewood area churches hold on Easter morning at Dawes Arboretum.
Then there’s the procession traditions behind Rogation Days and Ember Days. What are those? I’ll save that for after Easter, but they involve . . . more processions! A walk, a parade outside by young and old, clergy and laity together, is not an exception to “liturgy,” but maybe the very best embodiment of it!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about a religious procession from your tradition at knapsack77@gmail.com, or on Twitter at Knapsack.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
[from my Facebook Notes]
What Must Change
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 8:25am http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=59873428180&1&index=2
My title is a question, and a multi-directional one at that, and it's also a statement, but one i can't quite feel certain how i want to aim.
Since i started working with Gay Reese on the Bethany Project, and did some research that led to sitting down and reading the 1963 Blakemore "Panel of Scholars" report, all three volumes, i've been haunted by a bit of a ghost, one that many be appearing out of the corner of my eye more than is actually appearing in actuality. I still don't know.
For those lucky enough to have not picked up the task, self-appointed or class-assigned, to read these three thick, heavy tomes, this was meant to be the scholarly, academic, thoughtful, procedural basis for Restructure of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a process that picked up speed with the "Panel of Scholars'" publication and culminated in the Design proposed in 1967 and formally adopted in 1969, making official the denominational structures and self-understanding of the "Brotherhood" into regions and general offices and . . .
Well, there are a number of references in the "Panel of Scholars" (henceforth POS) to the fundamental element of "Congregation" in the life and activity of the denomination. The mentions become more and more rueful as you read through the various reports, as if the fact that "the congregation is the basic element that makes up the CC(DoC)" is an unfortunate but unavoidable historic reality that has to be dealt with, but surely there could have been a better way.
I should also note that i see Loren Lair's "The Christian Church and Its Future" (1971) as a kind of coda and summary to the POS, written by someone who, like Willard Wickizer, was not formally a member of the POS but strongly shaped the process that called them together and also influenced the final papers. In Lair's book, the stream that i trace through the POS come together in an ocean of certainty that our problem as a church is congregationalism, and the answers are to be found in leadership, guiding if not directing the placement of clergy, teaching elders about more effective management of congregational affairs, and proclaiming social justice on behalf of the church as a whole.
Item by item, the POS/Lair agenda makes a certain kind of administrative and efficiency-based common sense, but in sum, the proclamation is "what's wrong with the church is 'congregations' and what will fix/help/renew the church is academically-trained leadership." Elders as an expression of local leadership are caustically described (in courteous '50's type terms, but harshly), and largely given up on, not even discussed as possible targets for training and equipping themselves. The Renewal/Restructure plan is -- create new structures that make congregational elders largely irrelevant, then these uneducated bossy folk won't get in the way of ministerial leadership showing the way to the Kingdom.
And you know what? That mindset took, with a vengeance. Elders, a local source of spiritual leadership, tend to see themselves as peripheral to congregational life in most DoC congregations; there have been some initiatives to train elders as spiritual leaders that can themselves model and teach spiritual growth to their fellow members, with a "preaching and teaching elder" as the pastor sitting among them as a set-apart ordained or licensed person, but as a part of a spiritual leadership team, yet none of these attempts (Peter Morgan, Gary Straub) have really caught fire or seized the vision of key leaders regionally or generally.
The model that informs much of our common life is that the basic unit of the CC(DoC) really is and/or should be the individual believer, and the wider church itself best expressed by the region in some forms, the general offices in others. And i perceive, i believe, i fear that the entity that is called a "Congregation," that particular manifestation of church life, is still seen among us, particularly among clergy, as the Problem, not in any way a Solution. If we could get the message from the General or Regional offices more effectively to individual believers, everything would be different, everything could change -- but Congregation, and congregational life is what's in the way.
Nothing makes me go back to these dark imaginings as much as going to a clergy gathering. Yesterday, i saw quite a few smart, friendly, cheerful, even some spiritually robust fellow clergy, ordained and licensed (ok, only 3 licensed, but that's another discussion, and sadly another rant, related to this one, but not right now). And to be candid, i don't know what to extrapolate, exactly, from 40 pastors out of 191 churches claimed by the region. That 191 probably is more like 140 if you discount for leadership and communcations purposes the congregations that haven't given to DMF since 1986 (or earlier).
But even of the not quite 40 present (plus another 10 regional and general staffers for a high presence of 50 yesterday), you had three or four retired, not currently serving pastors, myself not serving a pulpit on an ongoing basis, taking us to 35 congregations, and 7 or 8 who are "intentional interims" (bless 'em all). Take out the 3 licensed pastors, and we had maybe 25 ordained, pulpit serving leaders present; whether out of 140 as i estimate or 191 as we officially state, that's a pretty thin robed & stoled line of "well-trained, well ordered preachers" to build the hopes of the institution upon.
And the heart of my darkness is that through the course of the day, i spoke to five pastors who simply despise their congregations. They might say that's not true if you asked them cold, first thing this morning, but any dispassionate hearer of their conversation would assert that this isn't venting or stress relief or a bad day, but that these folk truly can't stand the people they are called to serve, the congregation that called them, pays them whatever it is that they receive in compensation, and is their preaching audience each Sunday. The congregation won't listen, won't follow, and won't heed the pastor, and they (the congregation, mind you) are the problem. They won't buy a projector, they won't upgrade the office computer, they won't pay you proper mileage, they won't send people to General Assembly, they won't come to adult Bible study, they won't support this or that regional/general cause.
They are the problem. The congregation, that is.
I don't know what we can do to renew and transform congregational life until we change this essential, default mode of clergy and wider church life -- that congregations and congregational leadership is the problem that must be fixed, that they are the heart and source of what's wrong with the church, and that where their interests and intended activity leads is almost unfailingly misguided, and certainly misled. I'm not sure that the general or regional expressions of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) have much capacity to try, not as mere concession or abdication of leadership, but with hope and eager listening, to hear what 'congregation' is saying to the church.
It surely is not the case that i idealize elders or congregational life, potlucks and rummage sales and committee meetings (though it's good to remember they didn't start doing endless committee meetings until we pounded that model into them from 1947 to 1987, when suddenly we started saying "Bad, bad congregations, stop doing so much committee stuff!). I've been frustrated and indeed wounded by local petty tyrants in life-tenure congregational slots myself. But that doesn't mean that congregational expressions of Church are always that way, any more than the regions should be ignored because they ran a poor capital campaign once or put on a dumb program at some regional assembly.
Is 5 out of 25 an unfair sample, or the tip of an iceberg? My worries run to the latter, and based on what i'm now confounded to realize is 28 years of mucking about in the vineyard of area, regional, and denominational life, most often working alongside fellow well-trained, well educated clergy. I fear that the contempt and fundamental disdain i keep bumping into among pastors for congregations is the one thing that is going to have to change before anything else even can. I will continue to pray for individual clergy and the conversion of their hearts, but it's the institutional bias about the problematic-ness of congregations that worries me.
"Has anything good ever come out of a congregation?" That's a phrase that has some resonance for me, one whose irony may not be as obvious as i might like!
What Must Change
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 8:25am http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=59873428180&1&index=2
My title is a question, and a multi-directional one at that, and it's also a statement, but one i can't quite feel certain how i want to aim.
Since i started working with Gay Reese on the Bethany Project, and did some research that led to sitting down and reading the 1963 Blakemore "Panel of Scholars" report, all three volumes, i've been haunted by a bit of a ghost, one that many be appearing out of the corner of my eye more than is actually appearing in actuality. I still don't know.
For those lucky enough to have not picked up the task, self-appointed or class-assigned, to read these three thick, heavy tomes, this was meant to be the scholarly, academic, thoughtful, procedural basis for Restructure of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a process that picked up speed with the "Panel of Scholars'" publication and culminated in the Design proposed in 1967 and formally adopted in 1969, making official the denominational structures and self-understanding of the "Brotherhood" into regions and general offices and . . .
Well, there are a number of references in the "Panel of Scholars" (henceforth POS) to the fundamental element of "Congregation" in the life and activity of the denomination. The mentions become more and more rueful as you read through the various reports, as if the fact that "the congregation is the basic element that makes up the CC(DoC)" is an unfortunate but unavoidable historic reality that has to be dealt with, but surely there could have been a better way.
I should also note that i see Loren Lair's "The Christian Church and Its Future" (1971) as a kind of coda and summary to the POS, written by someone who, like Willard Wickizer, was not formally a member of the POS but strongly shaped the process that called them together and also influenced the final papers. In Lair's book, the stream that i trace through the POS come together in an ocean of certainty that our problem as a church is congregationalism, and the answers are to be found in leadership, guiding if not directing the placement of clergy, teaching elders about more effective management of congregational affairs, and proclaiming social justice on behalf of the church as a whole.
Item by item, the POS/Lair agenda makes a certain kind of administrative and efficiency-based common sense, but in sum, the proclamation is "what's wrong with the church is 'congregations' and what will fix/help/renew the church is academically-trained leadership." Elders as an expression of local leadership are caustically described (in courteous '50's type terms, but harshly), and largely given up on, not even discussed as possible targets for training and equipping themselves. The Renewal/Restructure plan is -- create new structures that make congregational elders largely irrelevant, then these uneducated bossy folk won't get in the way of ministerial leadership showing the way to the Kingdom.
And you know what? That mindset took, with a vengeance. Elders, a local source of spiritual leadership, tend to see themselves as peripheral to congregational life in most DoC congregations; there have been some initiatives to train elders as spiritual leaders that can themselves model and teach spiritual growth to their fellow members, with a "preaching and teaching elder" as the pastor sitting among them as a set-apart ordained or licensed person, but as a part of a spiritual leadership team, yet none of these attempts (Peter Morgan, Gary Straub) have really caught fire or seized the vision of key leaders regionally or generally.
The model that informs much of our common life is that the basic unit of the CC(DoC) really is and/or should be the individual believer, and the wider church itself best expressed by the region in some forms, the general offices in others. And i perceive, i believe, i fear that the entity that is called a "Congregation," that particular manifestation of church life, is still seen among us, particularly among clergy, as the Problem, not in any way a Solution. If we could get the message from the General or Regional offices more effectively to individual believers, everything would be different, everything could change -- but Congregation, and congregational life is what's in the way.
Nothing makes me go back to these dark imaginings as much as going to a clergy gathering. Yesterday, i saw quite a few smart, friendly, cheerful, even some spiritually robust fellow clergy, ordained and licensed (ok, only 3 licensed, but that's another discussion, and sadly another rant, related to this one, but not right now). And to be candid, i don't know what to extrapolate, exactly, from 40 pastors out of 191 churches claimed by the region. That 191 probably is more like 140 if you discount for leadership and communcations purposes the congregations that haven't given to DMF since 1986 (or earlier).
But even of the not quite 40 present (plus another 10 regional and general staffers for a high presence of 50 yesterday), you had three or four retired, not currently serving pastors, myself not serving a pulpit on an ongoing basis, taking us to 35 congregations, and 7 or 8 who are "intentional interims" (bless 'em all). Take out the 3 licensed pastors, and we had maybe 25 ordained, pulpit serving leaders present; whether out of 140 as i estimate or 191 as we officially state, that's a pretty thin robed & stoled line of "well-trained, well ordered preachers" to build the hopes of the institution upon.
And the heart of my darkness is that through the course of the day, i spoke to five pastors who simply despise their congregations. They might say that's not true if you asked them cold, first thing this morning, but any dispassionate hearer of their conversation would assert that this isn't venting or stress relief or a bad day, but that these folk truly can't stand the people they are called to serve, the congregation that called them, pays them whatever it is that they receive in compensation, and is their preaching audience each Sunday. The congregation won't listen, won't follow, and won't heed the pastor, and they (the congregation, mind you) are the problem. They won't buy a projector, they won't upgrade the office computer, they won't pay you proper mileage, they won't send people to General Assembly, they won't come to adult Bible study, they won't support this or that regional/general cause.
They are the problem. The congregation, that is.
I don't know what we can do to renew and transform congregational life until we change this essential, default mode of clergy and wider church life -- that congregations and congregational leadership is the problem that must be fixed, that they are the heart and source of what's wrong with the church, and that where their interests and intended activity leads is almost unfailingly misguided, and certainly misled. I'm not sure that the general or regional expressions of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) have much capacity to try, not as mere concession or abdication of leadership, but with hope and eager listening, to hear what 'congregation' is saying to the church.
It surely is not the case that i idealize elders or congregational life, potlucks and rummage sales and committee meetings (though it's good to remember they didn't start doing endless committee meetings until we pounded that model into them from 1947 to 1987, when suddenly we started saying "Bad, bad congregations, stop doing so much committee stuff!). I've been frustrated and indeed wounded by local petty tyrants in life-tenure congregational slots myself. But that doesn't mean that congregational expressions of Church are always that way, any more than the regions should be ignored because they ran a poor capital campaign once or put on a dumb program at some regional assembly.
Is 5 out of 25 an unfair sample, or the tip of an iceberg? My worries run to the latter, and based on what i'm now confounded to realize is 28 years of mucking about in the vineyard of area, regional, and denominational life, most often working alongside fellow well-trained, well educated clergy. I fear that the contempt and fundamental disdain i keep bumping into among pastors for congregations is the one thing that is going to have to change before anything else even can. I will continue to pray for individual clergy and the conversion of their hearts, but it's the institutional bias about the problematic-ness of congregations that worries me.
"Has anything good ever come out of a congregation?" That's a phrase that has some resonance for me, one whose irony may not be as obvious as i might like!
[from NewsMuse -- http://disciplesworld.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/social-monday-is-it-resistance-or-is-it-just-missing-the-forest-for-all-those-darn-trees-in-the-way/#comments]
Whoa.
I’ve been to a hatful of meetings, with both clergy, church folk, and social service professionals over the last month, where everyone else at the meeting willing to speak up about “social media” all said, as if they’d gotten the same script in the mail (that’d be “snail mail”), that “All this stuff like the Twitter, or Facebooker, or these (insert anguished tones and negative adjective) blogs are really contributing to the breakdown of community and culture. They get in the way of, and replace, real/true (your choice) human community.”
Further discussion reveals the obvious, which is that they don’t use these online tools, and only know what they’ve heard at the gym, the coffee shop, or in the NYTBR about social media. They often go on to say, in my unfair and tendentious paraphrase, “I learned how to use e-mail, for pity’s sake, and i’m trying to update the church/agency website at least four times a year, so i’m not techno-phobic or anything, but this new stuff is just too confusing.”
At a congregational board meeting where a fairly healthy, vital, mission-minded group of leaders were talking about newer, younger families and how to connect them, ideas were broached like a euchre night (in the words of the theologian Dave Barry, “I am not making this up”), or more potlucks.
Another council member (yes, the youth minister) and i, at a pause in the worried conversation, pointed out to the group that there were 51 members of a Facebook group of younger, newer families, specifically identified as “Fans of [Church Name Here]” where they were already planning activities and studies for Lent amongst themselves, so we should jump in gently and help that approach along.
Someone asked, fair enough, “What’s Facebook?” The youth minister and i tried to explain, to which a senior staff member who will remain nameless said “Oh, like that Twitter thing - what a strange sounding name! And what do they call messages on that?”
“Tweets,” i said, smiling grimly, as the expected laughter rolled around the table, and then the discussion went back to when a potluck might be held where young families would be invited to come share recipes with each other (see entry, Dave Barry).
The youth pastor quietly slid his laptop over in front of me at our end of the table — the Facebook group had just silently clicked up to 52 members. The potluck was scheduled for the weekend after Easter, “so there will be time to get it in the newsletter.”
Whoa.
I’ve been to a hatful of meetings, with both clergy, church folk, and social service professionals over the last month, where everyone else at the meeting willing to speak up about “social media” all said, as if they’d gotten the same script in the mail (that’d be “snail mail”), that “All this stuff like the Twitter, or Facebooker, or these (insert anguished tones and negative adjective) blogs are really contributing to the breakdown of community and culture. They get in the way of, and replace, real/true (your choice) human community.”
Further discussion reveals the obvious, which is that they don’t use these online tools, and only know what they’ve heard at the gym, the coffee shop, or in the NYTBR about social media. They often go on to say, in my unfair and tendentious paraphrase, “I learned how to use e-mail, for pity’s sake, and i’m trying to update the church/agency website at least four times a year, so i’m not techno-phobic or anything, but this new stuff is just too confusing.”
At a congregational board meeting where a fairly healthy, vital, mission-minded group of leaders were talking about newer, younger families and how to connect them, ideas were broached like a euchre night (in the words of the theologian Dave Barry, “I am not making this up”), or more potlucks.
Another council member (yes, the youth minister) and i, at a pause in the worried conversation, pointed out to the group that there were 51 members of a Facebook group of younger, newer families, specifically identified as “Fans of [Church Name Here]” where they were already planning activities and studies for Lent amongst themselves, so we should jump in gently and help that approach along.
Someone asked, fair enough, “What’s Facebook?” The youth minister and i tried to explain, to which a senior staff member who will remain nameless said “Oh, like that Twitter thing - what a strange sounding name! And what do they call messages on that?”
“Tweets,” i said, smiling grimly, as the expected laughter rolled around the table, and then the discussion went back to when a potluck might be held where young families would be invited to come share recipes with each other (see entry, Dave Barry).
The youth pastor quietly slid his laptop over in front of me at our end of the table — the Facebook group had just silently clicked up to 52 members. The potluck was scheduled for the weekend after Easter, “so there will be time to get it in the newsletter.”
[blog post from NewarkAdvocate.com]
Manufacturing in Ohio
Duck!
I'm about to fling unsupported mullings about with abandon, so don't say you haven't been warned.
There's been an odd little subtext both here in the blog post lineup at NewarkAdvocate.com and in general discussions around Ohio, saying -- and i paraphrase, perhaps unfairly -- that the era of manufacturing in Ohio is largely over, and that we should get over it, and look to more high tech, third frontier, biotech kind of economic engines.
Everyone seems to agree, and i know of no good reason to argue, that service industries are largely maxed out, as far as jobs and opportunties. You can't really count on generating many long term, family supporting jobs out of service industry work (a waitress can get some raises and up her income a bit, but there's a pretty hard ceiling unless she saves enough tips to buy her own small restaurant and go entrepreneurial).
The travel and tourism industry wisely points out that their field is at least one kind of job that can't be outsourced -- you can't send those jobs overseas. True enough, and local direct services whether food service, health care, or custom retail tend to stay put, although you might be surprised by how much unseen backroom work can be sent to Bangalore (like the Orange County Register newspaper sending copy editor work to India, no joke).
But i'm curious about manufacturing, the basic task of taking raw materials and doing some of the core steps of turning those farmed and mined and mixed substances into finished or near-finished product. For the period after the Civil War until the 1950s, Ohio was a dominant player in manufacturing, building stoves in Newark and aluminum spars in Heath and engine covers in Hebron, et cetera around the state. Dayton made cash registers and adding machines and airplanes, Youngstown made steel to order, and Toledo made scales (thank you, John Denver).
I'll grant you that the sources of steel making are shifting away from Minnesota taconite, Pennsylvania oil, and West Virginia coal and coke, with us as the hot intersection of all that raw material. We're still at a key distribution node, logistically speaking, in relation to the entire Eastern Seaboard as Las Vegas is for the West Coast, and that gets us pear packing and glass panel shaping and rolling assembly line making in Hebron. We're still not that far from the roots of innovation with Games Slayter at Owens-Toledo for fiberglas, and John Weaver's Fyrepel Products and Tectum Panels, or Ev Reese and the beginnings of the national bank card system.
So what i'm wondering about is whether or not we're still dreaming big. Dave Longaberger was onto something, but i fear many feel like they got their civic fingers burnt because the goose didn't lay enough golden eggs. This is a good area to put stuff together that takes some willingness to be cleverly flexible and change over assembly lines in response to market conditions, now in the internet era even more than before Dave died in 1999. Here on the edge of Appalachia, we still have a fairly smart workforce that also prefers some physical labor mixed in with their cogitation, and isn't afraid of getting a bit dirty while calculating machining tolerances; we have access to an urban quality of life for knowledge workers, but also a rural quality that is attractive to those who aren't looking for the 11 pm sushi bar kind of neighborhood to live in, let alone to raise their kids.
And we still have much in the way of natural gas and even some nearby oil, coal still coming out of the hills to our south and east, and the locational leverage to pull materials together and assemble stuff like heavy industrial equipment and motorized gear, whether hybrid or infernal combustion. We won't be making from scratch much in the way of low cost, disposable consumer product, but we might up our game in packaging and distributing that stuff after it gets this far around the world from Asia, and there's stuff like transmissions and tower framing and table shakers and trackhoes that we oughta still be able to put together and stand behind right here.
There's nothing wrong with biotech and nanotech and alt-tech, but are we chasing the last craze? Is it time to be a bit contrarian, and go back to the future, and chase Kettering and Patterson and Wright and Rockefeller Sr. and Firestone, and maybe even Henry Ford? What would third generation heavy industry look like, and wouldn't it fit really well into Ohio 2010?
Manufacturing in Ohio
Duck!
I'm about to fling unsupported mullings about with abandon, so don't say you haven't been warned.
There's been an odd little subtext both here in the blog post lineup at NewarkAdvocate.com and in general discussions around Ohio, saying -- and i paraphrase, perhaps unfairly -- that the era of manufacturing in Ohio is largely over, and that we should get over it, and look to more high tech, third frontier, biotech kind of economic engines.
Everyone seems to agree, and i know of no good reason to argue, that service industries are largely maxed out, as far as jobs and opportunties. You can't really count on generating many long term, family supporting jobs out of service industry work (a waitress can get some raises and up her income a bit, but there's a pretty hard ceiling unless she saves enough tips to buy her own small restaurant and go entrepreneurial).
The travel and tourism industry wisely points out that their field is at least one kind of job that can't be outsourced -- you can't send those jobs overseas. True enough, and local direct services whether food service, health care, or custom retail tend to stay put, although you might be surprised by how much unseen backroom work can be sent to Bangalore (like the Orange County Register newspaper sending copy editor work to India, no joke).
But i'm curious about manufacturing, the basic task of taking raw materials and doing some of the core steps of turning those farmed and mined and mixed substances into finished or near-finished product. For the period after the Civil War until the 1950s, Ohio was a dominant player in manufacturing, building stoves in Newark and aluminum spars in Heath and engine covers in Hebron, et cetera around the state. Dayton made cash registers and adding machines and airplanes, Youngstown made steel to order, and Toledo made scales (thank you, John Denver).
I'll grant you that the sources of steel making are shifting away from Minnesota taconite, Pennsylvania oil, and West Virginia coal and coke, with us as the hot intersection of all that raw material. We're still at a key distribution node, logistically speaking, in relation to the entire Eastern Seaboard as Las Vegas is for the West Coast, and that gets us pear packing and glass panel shaping and rolling assembly line making in Hebron. We're still not that far from the roots of innovation with Games Slayter at Owens-Toledo for fiberglas, and John Weaver's Fyrepel Products and Tectum Panels, or Ev Reese and the beginnings of the national bank card system.
So what i'm wondering about is whether or not we're still dreaming big. Dave Longaberger was onto something, but i fear many feel like they got their civic fingers burnt because the goose didn't lay enough golden eggs. This is a good area to put stuff together that takes some willingness to be cleverly flexible and change over assembly lines in response to market conditions, now in the internet era even more than before Dave died in 1999. Here on the edge of Appalachia, we still have a fairly smart workforce that also prefers some physical labor mixed in with their cogitation, and isn't afraid of getting a bit dirty while calculating machining tolerances; we have access to an urban quality of life for knowledge workers, but also a rural quality that is attractive to those who aren't looking for the 11 pm sushi bar kind of neighborhood to live in, let alone to raise their kids.
And we still have much in the way of natural gas and even some nearby oil, coal still coming out of the hills to our south and east, and the locational leverage to pull materials together and assemble stuff like heavy industrial equipment and motorized gear, whether hybrid or infernal combustion. We won't be making from scratch much in the way of low cost, disposable consumer product, but we might up our game in packaging and distributing that stuff after it gets this far around the world from Asia, and there's stuff like transmissions and tower framing and table shakers and trackhoes that we oughta still be able to put together and stand behind right here.
There's nothing wrong with biotech and nanotech and alt-tech, but are we chasing the last craze? Is it time to be a bit contrarian, and go back to the future, and chase Kettering and Patterson and Wright and Rockefeller Sr. and Firestone, and maybe even Henry Ford? What would third generation heavy industry look like, and wouldn't it fit really well into Ohio 2010?
Friday, March 27, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Faith Works 3-28-09
Jeff Gill
Kings and Other Rulers On the Air, In the Bible
If you know your Old Testament, then you know that I & II Samuel and I & II Kings are in many ways one great work of history, starting with Eli and Samuel – ok, actually starting with Hannah and Elkanah – and ending with Zedekiah carried off, blinded and in chains, to Babylon and exile.
It is a vast and sweeping narrative, broken up to fit onto Hebrew scrolls, four even using the largest and longest that could be handled. The four books can be understood as -- I Samuel being about Saul becoming Israel’s first king, and David’s ascent from shepherd boy to de facto crown prince; II Samuel starting with David’s crowning as second king and detailing his remarkable successes and horrible failures.
I Kings opens with David’s son Solomon reaching the throne (over more than a few brother’s bodies) and building a great temple for worship of God in David’s newly established capital city, Jerusalem, but with Solomon’s decline into apostasy, shifting focus to a prophet named Elijah. In II Kings we begin with the literal root of “passing the mantle” from Elijah to Elisha, as the Israelite kingdom is first fractured into two, then destroyed from without and within, first the northern kingdom of Israel and finally Zedekiah’s southern remnant of Judah around Jerusalem . . . while a remnant remains behind on the land, near the now ruined temple.
Doesn’t that make you wonder why no one’s made a movie out of such a tale? In fact, NBC has gone and done just that, and I must confess to only having realized this last week, so I missed the first two-hour entry entirely but caught up on Hulu.com.
It’s a mini-series simply called “Kings,” and they’ve taken the plot, not “ripped from the headlines,” but pretty directly from I Samuel. As you can tell, if they get renewed from the first 13 episodes, there’s plenty of material for them to follow right on into II Samuel and beyond.
Except they are “ripping” or maybe “riffing on the headlines.” Ian McShane, he of the foul-mouthed character Al Swearingen on HBO’s “Deadwood,” is King Silas Benjamin, who rules over a sort-of modern day city with a light sci-fi spin called “Shiloh” (check your Bible dictionary, nice . . .), where he now rules as an absolute monarch over a land called “Gilboa” (ditto) which is at war against a neighboring country called “Gath” which is Canada in a really, really bad mood, and a huge, you might say giant tank called . . . wait for it . . . a “Goliath.”
Does a young soldier named David Shepherd kill the Goliath with a humble, homemade bazooka and become a national hero? Yep.
Which takes us to the mix of modern day family and political intrigue woven right into the Biblical plot, which is front and center in the most thought-provoking ways.
You think the whole “king’s daughter” being shoved at a hero to let the aging ruler pick up some gloss on his image by marrying the fellow into the family is some Mafia movie schtick? Nope, Michal is right there in Scripture, with her almost understandable mix of admiration and disgust with this nouveau poseur that she loves but was virtually forced to love. How to reconcile this tension? Princess Michelle is a vivid depiction of a somewhat shadowy figure near the core of a major Biblical story, and you’ll find yourself grabbing your Bible if you watch to see “is that actually in there, or did they add it for the modern plot?”
Over and over you’ll find as I did last week – it’s in there. I’d missed it, skipping along across the plot points I already thought I knew.
Or the role Saul, (sorry) I mean, King Silas plays in keeping the war going to keep him in power, wanting to be a hero to his people, but not enough to let his grip on power be threatened, either.
This mini-series may start Sunday nights at 8:00 pm, but it isn’t for the kids. It’s a TV movie with all that implies, and I’m not sure I really love it or even entirely like it yet, but to see Scripture brought to life in this way has certainly made me want to watch a few more episodes.
What do you think? I’ll keep you posted and would love to add some other viewpoints to my own. And feel free to e-mail me any sunrise services or special Easter programs your church has coming up in the next few weeks.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack7@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Kings and Other Rulers On the Air, In the Bible
If you know your Old Testament, then you know that I & II Samuel and I & II Kings are in many ways one great work of history, starting with Eli and Samuel – ok, actually starting with Hannah and Elkanah – and ending with Zedekiah carried off, blinded and in chains, to Babylon and exile.
It is a vast and sweeping narrative, broken up to fit onto Hebrew scrolls, four even using the largest and longest that could be handled. The four books can be understood as -- I Samuel being about Saul becoming Israel’s first king, and David’s ascent from shepherd boy to de facto crown prince; II Samuel starting with David’s crowning as second king and detailing his remarkable successes and horrible failures.
I Kings opens with David’s son Solomon reaching the throne (over more than a few brother’s bodies) and building a great temple for worship of God in David’s newly established capital city, Jerusalem, but with Solomon’s decline into apostasy, shifting focus to a prophet named Elijah. In II Kings we begin with the literal root of “passing the mantle” from Elijah to Elisha, as the Israelite kingdom is first fractured into two, then destroyed from without and within, first the northern kingdom of Israel and finally Zedekiah’s southern remnant of Judah around Jerusalem . . . while a remnant remains behind on the land, near the now ruined temple.
Doesn’t that make you wonder why no one’s made a movie out of such a tale? In fact, NBC has gone and done just that, and I must confess to only having realized this last week, so I missed the first two-hour entry entirely but caught up on Hulu.com.
It’s a mini-series simply called “Kings,” and they’ve taken the plot, not “ripped from the headlines,” but pretty directly from I Samuel. As you can tell, if they get renewed from the first 13 episodes, there’s plenty of material for them to follow right on into II Samuel and beyond.
Except they are “ripping” or maybe “riffing on the headlines.” Ian McShane, he of the foul-mouthed character Al Swearingen on HBO’s “Deadwood,” is King Silas Benjamin, who rules over a sort-of modern day city with a light sci-fi spin called “Shiloh” (check your Bible dictionary, nice . . .), where he now rules as an absolute monarch over a land called “Gilboa” (ditto) which is at war against a neighboring country called “Gath” which is Canada in a really, really bad mood, and a huge, you might say giant tank called . . . wait for it . . . a “Goliath.”
Does a young soldier named David Shepherd kill the Goliath with a humble, homemade bazooka and become a national hero? Yep.
Which takes us to the mix of modern day family and political intrigue woven right into the Biblical plot, which is front and center in the most thought-provoking ways.
You think the whole “king’s daughter” being shoved at a hero to let the aging ruler pick up some gloss on his image by marrying the fellow into the family is some Mafia movie schtick? Nope, Michal is right there in Scripture, with her almost understandable mix of admiration and disgust with this nouveau poseur that she loves but was virtually forced to love. How to reconcile this tension? Princess Michelle is a vivid depiction of a somewhat shadowy figure near the core of a major Biblical story, and you’ll find yourself grabbing your Bible if you watch to see “is that actually in there, or did they add it for the modern plot?”
Over and over you’ll find as I did last week – it’s in there. I’d missed it, skipping along across the plot points I already thought I knew.
Or the role Saul, (sorry) I mean, King Silas plays in keeping the war going to keep him in power, wanting to be a hero to his people, but not enough to let his grip on power be threatened, either.
This mini-series may start Sunday nights at 8:00 pm, but it isn’t for the kids. It’s a TV movie with all that implies, and I’m not sure I really love it or even entirely like it yet, but to see Scripture brought to life in this way has certainly made me want to watch a few more episodes.
What do you think? I’ll keep you posted and would love to add some other viewpoints to my own. And feel free to e-mail me any sunrise services or special Easter programs your church has coming up in the next few weeks.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack7@gmail.com.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Notes From My Knapsack 3-26-09
Jeff Gill
Spring, and Warmer Thoughts Blossom Forth
Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” Who would argue with Tennyson?
Not to say that young women are not affected by lighter airs, bluer skies, and new blossoms and scents all around.
Which also means that we’ll no doubt hear another round of discussions about sex education, particularly in the school systems.
I despair rarely, but often on this one subject, as one who likes to seek out or even help build consensus. There are two fairly well entrenched camps, and the consensus may well be somewhere in no-person’s land out in the shell scarred middle ground, but it isn’t a nice place to pitch camp.
On one side are those who believe that sex and sexuality is like a Promethean gift of fire. Fire is a blessing, and brings warmth while sustaining life. It can also be a curse when it burns outside of the hearth, threatening the entire household with destruction. Those who actually intentionally play with fire out away from a properly constructed and equipped hearth are willfully courting disaster, and at the very least will get their fingers burned. Those in this camp do not dislike fire, and in fact say that every home can warmed beyond the hearth itself, by its well-intended effects, but are concerned at sparks flying any farther afield.
On the other side are those who affirm that sexuality and even sexual activity itself is more like, and should be seen more akin to laughter. Everyone benefits from laughter, everyone should laugh more, and anything that promotes laughter which is not mean or hurtful, a necessary qualification, should be supported by a happy and wise community. Laugh, and the world laughs with you; why would you want to be sad? Laughing in public can be intrusive or insensitive to others, but a little chuckling and humor shouldn’t bother anyone, and we should all be able to laugh together.
Honestly, I don’t know how to reconcile those two viewpoints. Which is how we end up with so much zero-sum discussion on the subject, or “winner” v. “loser” language.
The truth is that I personally fall into the fire and hearth camp. You can tell me “that’s because you’re a religious person,” but my answer will be “really? I didn’t know that – thanks.” Seriously, my shift to a fairly conservative viewpoint on this issue came out of starting in a very liberal tradition of church life.
My religious background was, sexually speaking, silent. It assumed some things about the culture which are no longer true (another day’s discussion, but see any Sat. Newark Advocate), and is still trying to find its footing in modern culture and the debate I suggest above.
What that tradition did say clearly was that as Christians, we are called to a place where I still tend to reside, in a commitment of service to those who are often on the ragged edge of society, where need and crisis are always near.
And it was seeing how sexuality, without boundaries or limits, can wreck families, destroy possibilities, and tear up futures that led me to where I stand now. My Biblical reading was actually subsequent to those realizations, and it’s still challenging to find a precise “Biblical morality” in scripture, point by point, summed up all in one spot. That’s where Tradition informs Scripture, and vice versa (also another discussion).
So my resolution of the sex ed debate that springs up each Spring is to say, uncomfortably, that they can teach whatever they want in school, because our family has to do the real heavy lifting when it comes to communicating values, and we’ll do that.
But as a matter of public policy, given that many homes are still silent, let alone churches, I hope abstinence is not presented as a fringe idea, but as a reasoned, rational option. I hope that condoms and birth control are honestly presented with the limits they carry, and not as license to launch off into activity beyond their own self-determined limits.
And as a community we need to keep on conversing about this awkward but important subject. Perhaps someday we can all sit by the fireside and talk about this, and laugh.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Spring, and Warmer Thoughts Blossom Forth
Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” Who would argue with Tennyson?
Not to say that young women are not affected by lighter airs, bluer skies, and new blossoms and scents all around.
Which also means that we’ll no doubt hear another round of discussions about sex education, particularly in the school systems.
I despair rarely, but often on this one subject, as one who likes to seek out or even help build consensus. There are two fairly well entrenched camps, and the consensus may well be somewhere in no-person’s land out in the shell scarred middle ground, but it isn’t a nice place to pitch camp.
On one side are those who believe that sex and sexuality is like a Promethean gift of fire. Fire is a blessing, and brings warmth while sustaining life. It can also be a curse when it burns outside of the hearth, threatening the entire household with destruction. Those who actually intentionally play with fire out away from a properly constructed and equipped hearth are willfully courting disaster, and at the very least will get their fingers burned. Those in this camp do not dislike fire, and in fact say that every home can warmed beyond the hearth itself, by its well-intended effects, but are concerned at sparks flying any farther afield.
On the other side are those who affirm that sexuality and even sexual activity itself is more like, and should be seen more akin to laughter. Everyone benefits from laughter, everyone should laugh more, and anything that promotes laughter which is not mean or hurtful, a necessary qualification, should be supported by a happy and wise community. Laugh, and the world laughs with you; why would you want to be sad? Laughing in public can be intrusive or insensitive to others, but a little chuckling and humor shouldn’t bother anyone, and we should all be able to laugh together.
Honestly, I don’t know how to reconcile those two viewpoints. Which is how we end up with so much zero-sum discussion on the subject, or “winner” v. “loser” language.
The truth is that I personally fall into the fire and hearth camp. You can tell me “that’s because you’re a religious person,” but my answer will be “really? I didn’t know that – thanks.” Seriously, my shift to a fairly conservative viewpoint on this issue came out of starting in a very liberal tradition of church life.
My religious background was, sexually speaking, silent. It assumed some things about the culture which are no longer true (another day’s discussion, but see any Sat. Newark Advocate), and is still trying to find its footing in modern culture and the debate I suggest above.
What that tradition did say clearly was that as Christians, we are called to a place where I still tend to reside, in a commitment of service to those who are often on the ragged edge of society, where need and crisis are always near.
And it was seeing how sexuality, without boundaries or limits, can wreck families, destroy possibilities, and tear up futures that led me to where I stand now. My Biblical reading was actually subsequent to those realizations, and it’s still challenging to find a precise “Biblical morality” in scripture, point by point, summed up all in one spot. That’s where Tradition informs Scripture, and vice versa (also another discussion).
So my resolution of the sex ed debate that springs up each Spring is to say, uncomfortably, that they can teach whatever they want in school, because our family has to do the real heavy lifting when it comes to communicating values, and we’ll do that.
But as a matter of public policy, given that many homes are still silent, let alone churches, I hope abstinence is not presented as a fringe idea, but as a reasoned, rational option. I hope that condoms and birth control are honestly presented with the limits they carry, and not as license to launch off into activity beyond their own self-determined limits.
And as a community we need to keep on conversing about this awkward but important subject. Perhaps someday we can all sit by the fireside and talk about this, and laugh.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Faith Works 3-21-09
Jeff Gill
A Modest Proposal For Serving the Disadvantaged of the County
Last week we had the community forum on how the developing state budget will impact social services, specifically in Licking County, but actually all over Ohio.
The general outlook is, in a word, grim, which is not surprising given the state of our economy and business. What many might have been surprised by, even knowing much about the precariousness of our Statehouse budget process (I perhaps overdignify it with the word “process”), is just how bad things are likely to get in another year or two even if the economy recovers and makes a modest resurgence, starting, say, next Monday.
Given that the overwhelming bulk of our state budget (95% of outlays, says our local Representative, Jay Hottinger) goes to either K-12 education or Medicaid, and while those are the two areas where the only official rhetoric is for expanded access and services, and piling on top of that the fact that the state is phasing out the “tangible personal property tax,” we have deficits looming as far as the eye can see.
The short term solution is to put Stimulosity Bill money into budget line items, which means the support vanishes in Jan. of 2012 – but to take the money in the first place obligates the receiving state to continue offer enhanced benefits after the federal support ends (which might explain why some states are rethinking this money, a luxury Ohio clearly does not have).
So that’s what we’ll face in two and a half years: a mombo money pit suddenly appearing in front of our feet. And that takes us back to last week’s meeting, where the worry is that to balance, even with Stimulosity Bill money, the budgets starting this July 1, the agencies which brought us together will be facing major, massive cuts, cuts which in many cases are double-down anti-bets, since there are current federal dollars that require a state or local match. They vanish immediately on the loss of the state dollars that “leveraged” them.
Which is why the heads of Job and Family Services (which includes the department of Children’s Services), the Board of Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities, or just MR/DD, and the Community Mental Health and Recovery Board (our emergency counseling, mental health, and addiction prevention/treatment oversight and auditing body), all got a bunch of us together to go over the numbers.
1 in 7 Licking Countians are on Medicaid. 1 in 10 Licking Countians receive food stamp assistance; 2 out of 100 receive some form of public cash assistance beyond the basic help of food stamps. Those are numbers that you have to lay alongside the unemployment rate creeping inexorably towards two digits, and that 10% should be seen as not including the underemployed (a person in a 20 hour a week job who wants 40, but can’t find it) and the discouraged, since if you haven’t looked in the last week, you aren’t counted as unemployed.
So what is that number, really?
I’m looking on in the back of the room, a bit distracted, since I’ve heard all these numbers before, working in and around these agencies. I can tell many people of good will in the room are troubled and confused, because at first blush they represent insuperable problems.
Then I thought of that wise old sage, an English clergyman serving in Ireland long ago, Jonathan Swift. You may know his “Gulliver’s Travels,” but he also wrote an essay called “A Modest Proposal” (the actual title is much longer, but begins with those three words).
In the spirit of Swift, it occurred to me that the answer to our dilemma, and that of these public spirited entities, is obvious. We have at any given time 1000 adults and over 500 children in their care who need our immediate aid and support (the some 1000 special needs children and adults served by MR/DD we can consider at another time). There is still reasonable funding for the direct services, but the fact that budgets for staff to meet with them and screen them and implement plans is being cut, and that the ones in need are all over the county, means that wait times and delays will be snowballing even before direct aid is due to be cut.
So why not concentrate all of the people who need help into camps, which we can place on the state historic sites now being shuttered and mothballed by budget cuts? We could call them a fine old traditional name, made famous by Charles Dickens, “workhouses.” We could quickly erect huts that house 40 at a time, 60 if we triple bunk, so our Licking County needy would be neatly housed in 40 buildings (25 if you triple bunk, the older children helping up the younger).
That wise social theorist Ebenezer Scrooge said of workhouses that we should allow nothing “to stop them in their useful course.” What do you think of re-instating workhouses, where camps allow us to concentrate the needy where we can more easily direct our aid to them?
Perhaps some might even want to board trains that could be organized to send the hardier among them to the open fields of the west where land and opportunity is limitless. At any rate, I hope the churches and congregations of Licking County discuss how they think this coming challenge should be faced – and if you like my “modest proposal,” I hope you do a search for Rev. Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and read that short essay as a starting point.
[FYI --
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal ]
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he has been known to engage in irony and satire. Tell him an ironic tale at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
A Modest Proposal For Serving the Disadvantaged of the County
Last week we had the community forum on how the developing state budget will impact social services, specifically in Licking County, but actually all over Ohio.
The general outlook is, in a word, grim, which is not surprising given the state of our economy and business. What many might have been surprised by, even knowing much about the precariousness of our Statehouse budget process (I perhaps overdignify it with the word “process”), is just how bad things are likely to get in another year or two even if the economy recovers and makes a modest resurgence, starting, say, next Monday.
Given that the overwhelming bulk of our state budget (95% of outlays, says our local Representative, Jay Hottinger) goes to either K-12 education or Medicaid, and while those are the two areas where the only official rhetoric is for expanded access and services, and piling on top of that the fact that the state is phasing out the “tangible personal property tax,” we have deficits looming as far as the eye can see.
The short term solution is to put Stimulosity Bill money into budget line items, which means the support vanishes in Jan. of 2012 – but to take the money in the first place obligates the receiving state to continue offer enhanced benefits after the federal support ends (which might explain why some states are rethinking this money, a luxury Ohio clearly does not have).
So that’s what we’ll face in two and a half years: a mombo money pit suddenly appearing in front of our feet. And that takes us back to last week’s meeting, where the worry is that to balance, even with Stimulosity Bill money, the budgets starting this July 1, the agencies which brought us together will be facing major, massive cuts, cuts which in many cases are double-down anti-bets, since there are current federal dollars that require a state or local match. They vanish immediately on the loss of the state dollars that “leveraged” them.
Which is why the heads of Job and Family Services (which includes the department of Children’s Services), the Board of Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities, or just MR/DD, and the Community Mental Health and Recovery Board (our emergency counseling, mental health, and addiction prevention/treatment oversight and auditing body), all got a bunch of us together to go over the numbers.
1 in 7 Licking Countians are on Medicaid. 1 in 10 Licking Countians receive food stamp assistance; 2 out of 100 receive some form of public cash assistance beyond the basic help of food stamps. Those are numbers that you have to lay alongside the unemployment rate creeping inexorably towards two digits, and that 10% should be seen as not including the underemployed (a person in a 20 hour a week job who wants 40, but can’t find it) and the discouraged, since if you haven’t looked in the last week, you aren’t counted as unemployed.
So what is that number, really?
I’m looking on in the back of the room, a bit distracted, since I’ve heard all these numbers before, working in and around these agencies. I can tell many people of good will in the room are troubled and confused, because at first blush they represent insuperable problems.
Then I thought of that wise old sage, an English clergyman serving in Ireland long ago, Jonathan Swift. You may know his “Gulliver’s Travels,” but he also wrote an essay called “A Modest Proposal” (the actual title is much longer, but begins with those three words).
In the spirit of Swift, it occurred to me that the answer to our dilemma, and that of these public spirited entities, is obvious. We have at any given time 1000 adults and over 500 children in their care who need our immediate aid and support (the some 1000 special needs children and adults served by MR/DD we can consider at another time). There is still reasonable funding for the direct services, but the fact that budgets for staff to meet with them and screen them and implement plans is being cut, and that the ones in need are all over the county, means that wait times and delays will be snowballing even before direct aid is due to be cut.
So why not concentrate all of the people who need help into camps, which we can place on the state historic sites now being shuttered and mothballed by budget cuts? We could call them a fine old traditional name, made famous by Charles Dickens, “workhouses.” We could quickly erect huts that house 40 at a time, 60 if we triple bunk, so our Licking County needy would be neatly housed in 40 buildings (25 if you triple bunk, the older children helping up the younger).
That wise social theorist Ebenezer Scrooge said of workhouses that we should allow nothing “to stop them in their useful course.” What do you think of re-instating workhouses, where camps allow us to concentrate the needy where we can more easily direct our aid to them?
Perhaps some might even want to board trains that could be organized to send the hardier among them to the open fields of the west where land and opportunity is limitless. At any rate, I hope the churches and congregations of Licking County discuss how they think this coming challenge should be faced – and if you like my “modest proposal,” I hope you do a search for Rev. Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and read that short essay as a starting point.
[FYI --
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal ]
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he has been known to engage in irony and satire. Tell him an ironic tale at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Driving Around New York - 1928
James Lileks calls this "inadvertent documentary," and it's truly a deep, accidental look into New York in 1928 -- watch the edges of the shots!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkqz3lpUBp0
James Lileks calls this "inadvertent documentary," and it's truly a deep, accidental look into New York in 1928 -- watch the edges of the shots!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkqz3lpUBp0
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Faith Works 3-14-09
Jeff Gill
Bernie Madoff Is Set Free
So Bernie Madoff, swindler, Ponzi scheme financier, charity-robbing con man, has gone off to jail. Overdue, I’m sure, and no reason to weep for him, while there are many who grieve the loss of dreams and plans for the future because of his lies. For them, we may shed a tear.
It won't be Sing Sing that Madoff will check into, but I think Martha Stewart can assure you that the image of "country club corrections" is a bit overdone -- non-violent offenders are put in less restrictive environments, with health and recreation options that actually save the taxpayer money over the long run (inmate health care is expensive, and not because it’s so high quality), and those offerings also help maintain order by giving the staff privileges that they can withhold. I'm not bothered by some tennis courts and a few TVs with limited channel selection. Those inmates don't lose track for a moment that they're in jail.
But as for being set free -- If I can read body language at all, Bernie Madoff is utterly, utterly relieved to be done with the game, and I suspect actually relieved, if a bit apprehensive, about going to jail. It’s not a point made in sympathy, just a practical point of psychology: he’s been imagining this day for decades, apparently. He never imagined it would even last this long, and it’s done, and he’s ready to go. The fascinating story, and I look forward to Michael Lewis (I hope, I hope) writing it, will be about how it began. How did the first fateful choice to not invest the investment deposits get made?
When did Madoff first realize the how and in what way he could do this iteration of the Ponzi scheme, and at what point did he realize, probably not long after that, that he could go no way other than forward . . . or throw himself into jail by a full and immediate unprompted confession in media res (which never happens) . . . so he continued, and probably marveled over and over that it kept on going, beyond his wildest fears, let alone hopes, which he probably abandoned years ago.
Bernie Madoff, like anyone trapped in a lie of their own making that keep on growing (read or watch "A Simple Plan"), is really and truly imprisoned in a horrible place -- no matter how reprehensible they are and how deserving we may think they are of our contempt. The fact is -- Bernie Madoff has a chance at freedom now. He will have to figure out how to live his life in that newfound freedom while in jail, to be sure, but I really do think that he has a chance to figure out what freedom is once he's locked up, because he can tell the truth.
The real jail, the real incarceration, is a lie. Lies chain us and bind us and weary our body and soul. And the only freedom is truth, no matter where telling that truth places us physically. So many people try to trade a little of their freedom for the quick convenience of an easy lie, and find that it's almost impossible to give away a little of your freedom.
A closing change of subject: may I suggest to pastors and congregational leaders that there’s a meeting on Monday morning, March 16, that you might want to consider. It will be down at Opportunity Links on East Main (next to Miller’s Essenplatz), hosted by Licking County Job and Family Services, the Community Mental Health & Recovery Board, and the county Board of Mental Retardation & Developmental Disabilities.
At 7:30 am (yep, am) on Monday, a community forum has been assembled to discuss the cuts already impacting social services in this county, and ones that are coming. Some, maybe much of the fallout from where the aforementioned agencies are having to cut staff, cut outlays, and cut grants to other agencies they work with in Licking County, will mean both different stories heard at the doors of our county faith communties, and a different set of requests and needs showing up on those doorsteps as well.
All are invited, and churches in particular I think would do well to participate. I know I’ll be there!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story of freedom at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Bernie Madoff Is Set Free
So Bernie Madoff, swindler, Ponzi scheme financier, charity-robbing con man, has gone off to jail. Overdue, I’m sure, and no reason to weep for him, while there are many who grieve the loss of dreams and plans for the future because of his lies. For them, we may shed a tear.
It won't be Sing Sing that Madoff will check into, but I think Martha Stewart can assure you that the image of "country club corrections" is a bit overdone -- non-violent offenders are put in less restrictive environments, with health and recreation options that actually save the taxpayer money over the long run (inmate health care is expensive, and not because it’s so high quality), and those offerings also help maintain order by giving the staff privileges that they can withhold. I'm not bothered by some tennis courts and a few TVs with limited channel selection. Those inmates don't lose track for a moment that they're in jail.
But as for being set free -- If I can read body language at all, Bernie Madoff is utterly, utterly relieved to be done with the game, and I suspect actually relieved, if a bit apprehensive, about going to jail. It’s not a point made in sympathy, just a practical point of psychology: he’s been imagining this day for decades, apparently. He never imagined it would even last this long, and it’s done, and he’s ready to go. The fascinating story, and I look forward to Michael Lewis (I hope, I hope) writing it, will be about how it began. How did the first fateful choice to not invest the investment deposits get made?
When did Madoff first realize the how and in what way he could do this iteration of the Ponzi scheme, and at what point did he realize, probably not long after that, that he could go no way other than forward . . . or throw himself into jail by a full and immediate unprompted confession in media res (which never happens) . . . so he continued, and probably marveled over and over that it kept on going, beyond his wildest fears, let alone hopes, which he probably abandoned years ago.
Bernie Madoff, like anyone trapped in a lie of their own making that keep on growing (read or watch "A Simple Plan"), is really and truly imprisoned in a horrible place -- no matter how reprehensible they are and how deserving we may think they are of our contempt. The fact is -- Bernie Madoff has a chance at freedom now. He will have to figure out how to live his life in that newfound freedom while in jail, to be sure, but I really do think that he has a chance to figure out what freedom is once he's locked up, because he can tell the truth.
The real jail, the real incarceration, is a lie. Lies chain us and bind us and weary our body and soul. And the only freedom is truth, no matter where telling that truth places us physically. So many people try to trade a little of their freedom for the quick convenience of an easy lie, and find that it's almost impossible to give away a little of your freedom.
A closing change of subject: may I suggest to pastors and congregational leaders that there’s a meeting on Monday morning, March 16, that you might want to consider. It will be down at Opportunity Links on East Main (next to Miller’s Essenplatz), hosted by Licking County Job and Family Services, the Community Mental Health & Recovery Board, and the county Board of Mental Retardation & Developmental Disabilities.
At 7:30 am (yep, am) on Monday, a community forum has been assembled to discuss the cuts already impacting social services in this county, and ones that are coming. Some, maybe much of the fallout from where the aforementioned agencies are having to cut staff, cut outlays, and cut grants to other agencies they work with in Licking County, will mean both different stories heard at the doors of our county faith communties, and a different set of requests and needs showing up on those doorsteps as well.
All are invited, and churches in particular I think would do well to participate. I know I’ll be there!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story of freedom at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Notes From My Knapsack 3-12-09
Jeff Gill
Food Matters, and Some Food Matters Quite a Bit
____
Mark Bittman of the New York Times writes a column called “The Minimalist,” about culinary simplicity.
If that makes you think of excruciatingly tiny entrees on handcrafted pottery plates served in a restaurant with tables smaller than most of your dinner plates, think again. Mark Bittman likes to eat, and wants us to enjoy eating as well. Minimalism, Bittman style, is about offering a minimum of excess and an excess of healthy options without an extreme approach that leaves most of us thinking “that may work for some, somewhere, but I can’t live that way.”
Most of what Bittman cooks he does in a tiny kitchen with a, well, minimum of tools and gadgets. We, the readers and erstwhile home cooks, are pushed beyond some of our own minimal repertoire of staples and proteins and veggies, but not to hopelessly pine after ingredients only available two months of the year in street markets by the quays of Marseilles. Try something new, that you can find locally, and cook easily but in a new way – that’s the classic Bittman offering.
He thinks that “Food Matters,” which is the title of his new book which is as much a cookbook with an attitude as it is a polemic with recipes. Michael Pollan has trod this ground already with books like his recent “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and the mantra, which Bittman largely adopts, of “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
For that “Mostly plants” part, our author proposes a clever twist that most of us can adopt without vast contortions of adaptation: “Vegan until 6.”
The growing consensus is that Americans eat too much meat, and often in too large a portion at any given time. Our health on so many levels is impacted by the ingestion of so much high fructose corn syrup and juiced up meat (which, in brief, means that the average beef cow by slaughter has consumed through corn feed a barrel of oil).
So Mark Bittman says “try this.” He tells us how to get more whole grains and fruits ‘n vegetables into our meals, and suggests we try avoiding all meat and processed foods . . . until after 6 pm. The trick here, I think, is that if you’ve really filled yourself well with the complex carbs and fiber-rich good stuff, grown as locally as you can manage (he’s got hints on how to do that, too), you won’t be jonesing for a huge hunk of protein on the middle of your plate, shoving the overcooked and unappetizing green stuff over to the edge.
This is from “The Minimalist,” not “The Puritan,” so when life calls for a steak, enjoy! Bittman’s book is filled with little ideas and suggestions that you can act on right now, and not stuff that requires throwing out your entire pantry today and buying a tofu press or high power juicer.
My only regret about buying this book is that it doesn’t have a spiral binding for laying flat next to the stove, but I think I’ll have the spine broken down soon. Watch this column for a few more borrowed points from “Food Matters” as we head into planting and growing season for our local deer ravaged, but still doable gardens.
Speaking of food, kudos to Granville Pack 3 and all those who helped with their food drive – our community supplied the Licking County Food Pantry Network with 8,152 pounds of canned and non-perishable goods, plus a raft of friendly checks and pats on the back for the Cubs who worked so hard. In an effort like that, everybody comes out ahead.
Over 4 tons!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Food Matters, and Some Food Matters Quite a Bit
____
Mark Bittman of the New York Times writes a column called “The Minimalist,” about culinary simplicity.
If that makes you think of excruciatingly tiny entrees on handcrafted pottery plates served in a restaurant with tables smaller than most of your dinner plates, think again. Mark Bittman likes to eat, and wants us to enjoy eating as well. Minimalism, Bittman style, is about offering a minimum of excess and an excess of healthy options without an extreme approach that leaves most of us thinking “that may work for some, somewhere, but I can’t live that way.”
Most of what Bittman cooks he does in a tiny kitchen with a, well, minimum of tools and gadgets. We, the readers and erstwhile home cooks, are pushed beyond some of our own minimal repertoire of staples and proteins and veggies, but not to hopelessly pine after ingredients only available two months of the year in street markets by the quays of Marseilles. Try something new, that you can find locally, and cook easily but in a new way – that’s the classic Bittman offering.
He thinks that “Food Matters,” which is the title of his new book which is as much a cookbook with an attitude as it is a polemic with recipes. Michael Pollan has trod this ground already with books like his recent “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and the mantra, which Bittman largely adopts, of “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
For that “Mostly plants” part, our author proposes a clever twist that most of us can adopt without vast contortions of adaptation: “Vegan until 6.”
The growing consensus is that Americans eat too much meat, and often in too large a portion at any given time. Our health on so many levels is impacted by the ingestion of so much high fructose corn syrup and juiced up meat (which, in brief, means that the average beef cow by slaughter has consumed through corn feed a barrel of oil).
So Mark Bittman says “try this.” He tells us how to get more whole grains and fruits ‘n vegetables into our meals, and suggests we try avoiding all meat and processed foods . . . until after 6 pm. The trick here, I think, is that if you’ve really filled yourself well with the complex carbs and fiber-rich good stuff, grown as locally as you can manage (he’s got hints on how to do that, too), you won’t be jonesing for a huge hunk of protein on the middle of your plate, shoving the overcooked and unappetizing green stuff over to the edge.
This is from “The Minimalist,” not “The Puritan,” so when life calls for a steak, enjoy! Bittman’s book is filled with little ideas and suggestions that you can act on right now, and not stuff that requires throwing out your entire pantry today and buying a tofu press or high power juicer.
My only regret about buying this book is that it doesn’t have a spiral binding for laying flat next to the stove, but I think I’ll have the spine broken down soon. Watch this column for a few more borrowed points from “Food Matters” as we head into planting and growing season for our local deer ravaged, but still doable gardens.
Speaking of food, kudos to Granville Pack 3 and all those who helped with their food drive – our community supplied the Licking County Food Pantry Network with 8,152 pounds of canned and non-perishable goods, plus a raft of friendly checks and pats on the back for the Cubs who worked so hard. In an effort like that, everybody comes out ahead.
Over 4 tons!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Faith Works 3-7-09
Jeff Gill
Worldview, Lifestyle, Habits of the Heart, and Ritual Observances
____
Last Tuesday the pages of this paper offered an intriguing contrast between two families.
In one story, a fellow built up, over time, personal skills, community contacts, and a business that now looks situated to survive the hard times we’re in, while his family often helps others in need, even from distant lands.
The other story was about a fellow who had stumbled and fallen enough in his own choices that even those closest to him saw it was necessary to call the authorities, and report the latest bad choice, which involved more chemistry homework than said citizen had likely done in high school.
On one level, this kind of story tempts me into Andy Rooney mode, wondering what the life situation of fellow number two would be if he had put as much careful note taking and instruction following into legitimate pursuits. Maybe not a Nobel Prize in chemistry, but a good job in a laboratory doesn’t seem an outlandish hope.
(Seriously, people who cook meth are putting an amazing amount of work, mental and physical, into their quick but modest return on their investment. Not to mention creating major league toxic waste along the way, along with fire risk and asphyxiation, which is why you can’t get renters insurance to cover meth labs.)
Succeeding in everyday, business terms takes hard work over long periods without guarantee of excellent or even good outcomes. That’s a fact. Crooks and thieves work hard in short bursts, and generally lay about as much as possible in between what they semi-ironically call “jobs.”
And some aren’t even interested in the occasional effort of thievery.
When ol’ Karl Marx (not to be confused with Groucho) famously called religion “the opiate of the masses,” he meant that a faith-based worldview gave the working folk a sense that effort that was not rewarded in this world still had an enduring meaning in God’s sight, so keep on slogging.
Karl, who lived off of an inheritance (quickly squandered), then wealthy patrons after his wife’s family tired of sending him money (he did briefly write a newspaper column for a New York paper as a “foreign correspondent,” and I’ll bet he was fun to edit), was so smart he knew there was no God. Or god, as some prefer.
God would not reward the laborer for his toil, if the just reward of effort was stolen or withheld by those with capital (i.e., capitalists), so the idea of anything other than an earthly guarantee gets in the way of workers seeing the necessity of revolution.
Or Revolution, as some would prefer.
Karl would argue that some entity should be in a position to guarantee that everyone gets their just due. At its purest, that would be communism.
Except who decides what is the just due to each person? The market, I think many would argue today is, ah, somewhat imperfect at doing that. Readjustments and such are harsh. But the track record of elites and government agencies calculating that over time and applying said justice fairly is pretty weak, too (ask the kulaks).
Which is why most Christians are not quite communist, college dorm conversation to the contrary, but we all tend to lean at least a bit socialist, in believing that a nation chock full o’ believers should guarantee some set of minimums to each, especially for those who really can’t “labor” in the wage and salary sense.
Faithful people of most denominations are wrestling right now with immediate concerns of aiding the less fortunate right down the block, and often within the sanctuary sitting next to them.
But we have to ask ourselves what kind of preaching we need to offer to our society, or which policy recommendations we support, and where our beliefs should lead us to work for the greater good, as major national and even global debates are going on about these questions of labor and value.
Do we believe of our fellow citizens that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”? And to what degree does our faith lead us to propose that we should add things like food, and shelter, and health care to that list?
A believer can make a case that the state (or The State) actually does more harm than good when it goes too far, even in good deeds – maybe especially in good deeds. What no faithful person can do is say that there is no obligation on their part to work “caring for orphans and widows in their distress.”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; make a policy recommendation to him at knapsack77@gmail.com
Jeff Gill
Worldview, Lifestyle, Habits of the Heart, and Ritual Observances
____
Last Tuesday the pages of this paper offered an intriguing contrast between two families.
In one story, a fellow built up, over time, personal skills, community contacts, and a business that now looks situated to survive the hard times we’re in, while his family often helps others in need, even from distant lands.
The other story was about a fellow who had stumbled and fallen enough in his own choices that even those closest to him saw it was necessary to call the authorities, and report the latest bad choice, which involved more chemistry homework than said citizen had likely done in high school.
On one level, this kind of story tempts me into Andy Rooney mode, wondering what the life situation of fellow number two would be if he had put as much careful note taking and instruction following into legitimate pursuits. Maybe not a Nobel Prize in chemistry, but a good job in a laboratory doesn’t seem an outlandish hope.
(Seriously, people who cook meth are putting an amazing amount of work, mental and physical, into their quick but modest return on their investment. Not to mention creating major league toxic waste along the way, along with fire risk and asphyxiation, which is why you can’t get renters insurance to cover meth labs.)
Succeeding in everyday, business terms takes hard work over long periods without guarantee of excellent or even good outcomes. That’s a fact. Crooks and thieves work hard in short bursts, and generally lay about as much as possible in between what they semi-ironically call “jobs.”
And some aren’t even interested in the occasional effort of thievery.
When ol’ Karl Marx (not to be confused with Groucho) famously called religion “the opiate of the masses,” he meant that a faith-based worldview gave the working folk a sense that effort that was not rewarded in this world still had an enduring meaning in God’s sight, so keep on slogging.
Karl, who lived off of an inheritance (quickly squandered), then wealthy patrons after his wife’s family tired of sending him money (he did briefly write a newspaper column for a New York paper as a “foreign correspondent,” and I’ll bet he was fun to edit), was so smart he knew there was no God. Or god, as some prefer.
God would not reward the laborer for his toil, if the just reward of effort was stolen or withheld by those with capital (i.e., capitalists), so the idea of anything other than an earthly guarantee gets in the way of workers seeing the necessity of revolution.
Or Revolution, as some would prefer.
Karl would argue that some entity should be in a position to guarantee that everyone gets their just due. At its purest, that would be communism.
Except who decides what is the just due to each person? The market, I think many would argue today is, ah, somewhat imperfect at doing that. Readjustments and such are harsh. But the track record of elites and government agencies calculating that over time and applying said justice fairly is pretty weak, too (ask the kulaks).
Which is why most Christians are not quite communist, college dorm conversation to the contrary, but we all tend to lean at least a bit socialist, in believing that a nation chock full o’ believers should guarantee some set of minimums to each, especially for those who really can’t “labor” in the wage and salary sense.
Faithful people of most denominations are wrestling right now with immediate concerns of aiding the less fortunate right down the block, and often within the sanctuary sitting next to them.
But we have to ask ourselves what kind of preaching we need to offer to our society, or which policy recommendations we support, and where our beliefs should lead us to work for the greater good, as major national and even global debates are going on about these questions of labor and value.
Do we believe of our fellow citizens that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”? And to what degree does our faith lead us to propose that we should add things like food, and shelter, and health care to that list?
A believer can make a case that the state (or The State) actually does more harm than good when it goes too far, even in good deeds – maybe especially in good deeds. What no faithful person can do is say that there is no obligation on their part to work “caring for orphans and widows in their distress.”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; make a policy recommendation to him at knapsack77@gmail.com
Friday, February 27, 2009
Faith Works 2-28-09
Jeff Gill
Listening For a Distant Train Rolling Down the Tracks
“Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central Monday morning rail;
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.”
Steve Goodman wrote these words in 1972, the beginning of a song that was made famous by Woody Guthrie’s son Arlo, and is now a folk classic in its own right.
We still have Arlo Guthrie on the concert circuit, though Steve was claimed by leukemia in 1984 (not before writing the marvelous "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request"). “City of New Orleans” has been called the greatest railroad song ever, which sadly, may be quite true.
Towards the end of the song either Arlo or Steve sing “This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.” This train, which for decades had brought the Great Migration of southern African Americans north to Chicago, was now fading into an industrial twilight, where on infrequent runs northern tourists would be the main ticket buyers.
Ironically, it was the popularity of the song that saved the Amtrak version of the “City of New Orleans,” which still leaves Union Station in Chicago most days and heads down through Memphis for the Crescent City. Enough folks kept asking about it that Amtrak knew they needed to keep some kind of rail line that was called “City of New Orleans,” even if many of the distinctive qualities of the historic line were no more.
The mythic quality of the route was rooted in the myriad personal narratives that went from rural delta Mississippi to urban south side Chicago, leaving behind economic collapse and seasonal floods, especially after 1927, to risk finding your way in the new industrial economy.
“And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel.”
Railroads are certainly our fathers’, really our grandfathers’ magic carpet. The sound of a train whistle just before the Depression of the 1930s meant change and transformation and hope, hope for economic transformation.
In general, passenger inter-city rail is fading; a certain amount of mass transit is always “on the verge of growth,” and perhaps their day will return with higher oil prices and the need to economize on the part of all workers. But outside of some specific urban commuter niches, railroading is a leisure choice more than an economic engine.
Ironically, once upon a time church groups considered trains and train culture as worrisome as cities and urban life – my older relatives had on their shelves a book unironically passed along to them copyrighted 19-0-something called “The Sins of the City.” In that book, and other early 20th century faith oriented novels like those of Harold Bell Wright, the train was as likely to bring trouble to a town as a pool hall.
Nowadays a train trip is a very homey, throwbacky, appropriate trip for church based senior groups to take, hearkening to what now is considered a simpler, more moral day. Is that hypocritical? No, times have changed, and what was once a troublesome harbinger of amoral progress is now a benchmark for lost certainties.
“Good night, America, how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.”
What will we think of the internet phenomena that trouble us today, when a century has passed? Will we long for the more straightforward days of Twitter? Will the name Facebook make some distant observer smile with nostalgia, hazed over with delight at the simple gift of connection?
If you aren’t Amish, you need to ask of your faith and its worldview – how should technology be seen in the light of your religion? Is it a problem, a possibility, or . . . it might just be a little of both, and yet one more way a heart can find its way to healing.
That, or today’s technology might be something else that might best be given up for Lent, just to make sure that you know you can. Even if it is likely to become a quaint piece of history by the time we’re old(er), replaced by devices we can’t even imagine today, as a jet plane would have been to a freight train.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; pull the train whistle cord as you approach knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Listening For a Distant Train Rolling Down the Tracks
“Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central Monday morning rail;
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.”
Steve Goodman wrote these words in 1972, the beginning of a song that was made famous by Woody Guthrie’s son Arlo, and is now a folk classic in its own right.
We still have Arlo Guthrie on the concert circuit, though Steve was claimed by leukemia in 1984 (not before writing the marvelous "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request"). “City of New Orleans” has been called the greatest railroad song ever, which sadly, may be quite true.
Towards the end of the song either Arlo or Steve sing “This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.” This train, which for decades had brought the Great Migration of southern African Americans north to Chicago, was now fading into an industrial twilight, where on infrequent runs northern tourists would be the main ticket buyers.
Ironically, it was the popularity of the song that saved the Amtrak version of the “City of New Orleans,” which still leaves Union Station in Chicago most days and heads down through Memphis for the Crescent City. Enough folks kept asking about it that Amtrak knew they needed to keep some kind of rail line that was called “City of New Orleans,” even if many of the distinctive qualities of the historic line were no more.
The mythic quality of the route was rooted in the myriad personal narratives that went from rural delta Mississippi to urban south side Chicago, leaving behind economic collapse and seasonal floods, especially after 1927, to risk finding your way in the new industrial economy.
“And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel.”
Railroads are certainly our fathers’, really our grandfathers’ magic carpet. The sound of a train whistle just before the Depression of the 1930s meant change and transformation and hope, hope for economic transformation.
In general, passenger inter-city rail is fading; a certain amount of mass transit is always “on the verge of growth,” and perhaps their day will return with higher oil prices and the need to economize on the part of all workers. But outside of some specific urban commuter niches, railroading is a leisure choice more than an economic engine.
Ironically, once upon a time church groups considered trains and train culture as worrisome as cities and urban life – my older relatives had on their shelves a book unironically passed along to them copyrighted 19-0-something called “The Sins of the City.” In that book, and other early 20th century faith oriented novels like those of Harold Bell Wright, the train was as likely to bring trouble to a town as a pool hall.
Nowadays a train trip is a very homey, throwbacky, appropriate trip for church based senior groups to take, hearkening to what now is considered a simpler, more moral day. Is that hypocritical? No, times have changed, and what was once a troublesome harbinger of amoral progress is now a benchmark for lost certainties.
“Good night, America, how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.”
What will we think of the internet phenomena that trouble us today, when a century has passed? Will we long for the more straightforward days of Twitter? Will the name Facebook make some distant observer smile with nostalgia, hazed over with delight at the simple gift of connection?
If you aren’t Amish, you need to ask of your faith and its worldview – how should technology be seen in the light of your religion? Is it a problem, a possibility, or . . . it might just be a little of both, and yet one more way a heart can find its way to healing.
That, or today’s technology might be something else that might best be given up for Lent, just to make sure that you know you can. Even if it is likely to become a quaint piece of history by the time we’re old(er), replaced by devices we can’t even imagine today, as a jet plane would have been to a freight train.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; pull the train whistle cord as you approach knapsack77@gmail.com.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Notes From My Knapsack 2-26-09
Jeff Gill
Food Matters, Now More Than Ever
___
This Saturday, Feb. 28, many of you in the 43023 zip code will find a brown paper grocery bag with a yellow flyer stapled to it, tucked in your front door or under the mat.
Your friends with Granville’s Cub Scout Pack 3, 150 young men from 1st to 5th grades, will be driven about by parents and den leaders to deliver, each den to a particular neighborhood, these bags and the instructions for our annual community food drive for the Licking County Food Pantry Network.
The idea is that you can, if you would, put canned and other non-perishable goods into this bag, put it back out before 9 am on Saturday, March 7, and we will go out again that morning and pick up any bags we see outside on doorsteps with that bright yellow flyer fluttering proudly.
In truth, we will deliver about 3,000 bags wherever we can, but the odds are we won’t get to everyone (sorry about that!). And there’s some chance, albeit small, that we might miss a bag or two on pick-up day, March 7, but we’ll try hard to cruise and re-check where we can.
What is very kind of Greg Ross down at Granville Market is that they will also have on sale that week bags of canned goods, and you can just pay a few bucks and then leave that bag (blue flyer!) down there. On March 7, the truck for the Licking County Food Pantry Network will be in the Granville Market parking lot, where our dens will shuttle back and forth to drop off what you put out. If you want to bring your bag on by, the truck will be there and staffed from about 9 am to 1 pm.
In previous years we’ve had the truck up by Opera House Park, which is great for visibility, but awkward for traffic flow. Scary near-misses had us thinking about a safer, easier plan, and again thanks to the Ross’ and Granville Market for helping make this work out.
Obviously, this is a critical time for food pantries all over, let alone here in Licking County. Suppliers have reduced donated goods and tightened warehouse overstocks, and purchases have gone up even in bulk.
Add in a huge impact to food pantries from the recent peanut product scare and recall, and you have a spring beginning with way too much vacant shelf space in area food pantries.
For those of us fortunate enough to not need the services of a food pantry, the subject of food is a vital one, and I hope we who have a bit to share can pile the bags high this year for those who don’t. My next column is going to come at food from a different angle, as I’ve been working through Mark Bittman’s new book “Food Matters” and thinking about gardening and local food supplies and the lessons of salmonella and energy costs and our only growth area in the US these days being our waistlines.
So watch this space, where I hope to share some good news with the outcomes and totals of our community food drive, and some good suggestions out of “Food Matters,” because it surely does.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; you can get more info on the Pack 3 Food Drive at their blog, http://granvillepack3.blogspot.com.
Jeff Gill
Food Matters, Now More Than Ever
___
This Saturday, Feb. 28, many of you in the 43023 zip code will find a brown paper grocery bag with a yellow flyer stapled to it, tucked in your front door or under the mat.
Your friends with Granville’s Cub Scout Pack 3, 150 young men from 1st to 5th grades, will be driven about by parents and den leaders to deliver, each den to a particular neighborhood, these bags and the instructions for our annual community food drive for the Licking County Food Pantry Network.
The idea is that you can, if you would, put canned and other non-perishable goods into this bag, put it back out before 9 am on Saturday, March 7, and we will go out again that morning and pick up any bags we see outside on doorsteps with that bright yellow flyer fluttering proudly.
In truth, we will deliver about 3,000 bags wherever we can, but the odds are we won’t get to everyone (sorry about that!). And there’s some chance, albeit small, that we might miss a bag or two on pick-up day, March 7, but we’ll try hard to cruise and re-check where we can.
What is very kind of Greg Ross down at Granville Market is that they will also have on sale that week bags of canned goods, and you can just pay a few bucks and then leave that bag (blue flyer!) down there. On March 7, the truck for the Licking County Food Pantry Network will be in the Granville Market parking lot, where our dens will shuttle back and forth to drop off what you put out. If you want to bring your bag on by, the truck will be there and staffed from about 9 am to 1 pm.
In previous years we’ve had the truck up by Opera House Park, which is great for visibility, but awkward for traffic flow. Scary near-misses had us thinking about a safer, easier plan, and again thanks to the Ross’ and Granville Market for helping make this work out.
Obviously, this is a critical time for food pantries all over, let alone here in Licking County. Suppliers have reduced donated goods and tightened warehouse overstocks, and purchases have gone up even in bulk.
Add in a huge impact to food pantries from the recent peanut product scare and recall, and you have a spring beginning with way too much vacant shelf space in area food pantries.
For those of us fortunate enough to not need the services of a food pantry, the subject of food is a vital one, and I hope we who have a bit to share can pile the bags high this year for those who don’t. My next column is going to come at food from a different angle, as I’ve been working through Mark Bittman’s new book “Food Matters” and thinking about gardening and local food supplies and the lessons of salmonella and energy costs and our only growth area in the US these days being our waistlines.
So watch this space, where I hope to share some good news with the outcomes and totals of our community food drive, and some good suggestions out of “Food Matters,” because it surely does.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; you can get more info on the Pack 3 Food Drive at their blog, http://granvillepack3.blogspot.com.
Faith Works 2-21-09
Jeff Gill
Taxing Times For Religious Groups
So, why don’t churches pay property taxes?
Not that long ago, you wouldn’t have heard that question asked, because it would hardly have made sense to anyone. In the last year, even last few weeks, I’ve run into the question in various forms not only on the internet, but face to face.
I’ve even been told “well, if churches paid their fair share, we wouldn’t have [insert favorite funding problem here].”
Uh-huh.
Skipping over my own cynicism on this subject (ok, let me just say this – lotteries were going to go for education? then education got cut, oh, about the same amount from other funding sources, so did the lottery really go to education support? Right.), let me try to answer the question straightforwardly.
Historically, churches, schools, and other non-profits have not paid property or sales taxes because they are voluntary associations made up of local citizens who come together for a common purpose. These members pay property taxes for their homes and real estate, and the sales tax on their own purchased goods, to cover the cost of schools, roads, police and fire service, et cetera.
To have voluntary bodies like churches pay property tax has been seen as a double tax on the very citizens who are already at work in their communities for the common good, running the food pantries and after school programs and tutoring and such, which is utterly counterproductive.
You see, taxes are paid by people. You and me, we work, we get paid, and a portion of that is taken by the federal, state, and local governmental bodies to pay for the common good, balanced – we hope – by our elected representatives’ oversight, which we as voters monitor and reward with re-election or punish with replacement. But taxes are paid by people.
So the idea that churches “aren’t paying their fair share” is a little suspect at it’s root, but if you see governments and large entities as “having money” that we as voters are shoving around on the civic table like croupiers do the chips at a Vegas roulette table, then this seems to make sense. Who has chips, and how can we move them about “more fairly.”
But people pay taxes. And churches are made up of people. Tax them, and you tax those people twice.
One response to that is the idea that churches have a vast pool of unearned wealth sitting in vaults that should be out on the roulette table of redistribution. The Catholic Church gets this one all the time. I’ve worked with Catholic Social Services and a couple of dioceses enough to say “Ha” to that one; aside from real estate, you’d be surprised to find out how little is actually liquid assets in their holdings.
Never mind that what endowments and funds church bodies have in reserve are usually legacies and bequests that went through probate, got taxed there, and are left by persons for particular purposes, often bound by legal agreements to start with. Anyhow.
Which brings us to the “Special Assessments” we’ve all gotten recently. I’m not a political columnist, but to write about faith communities and belief at work in people’s lives, a little political rain must fall. My own guiding political philosophy is the “Law of Unintended Consequences.” Most times, on the broader social level, stuff we do doesn’t do what we think it will – think welfare, welfare reform, de-institutionalization just for starters (look up “groundnut scheme” online for a global example that will peel your eyelids back).
The Muskingum Watershed Conservation District is staffed by good, decent, hardworking folk, and their public affairs person has been active and responsive with gracious good cheer since I started blogging on this issue a few weeks ago. This situation isn’t their fault, and we all agree that dams and levees and bridges should be maintained.
Having said that, this assessment is a scam and an affront to Ohio citizens, and even those not of a believing or church-going bent should be outraged. School districts are being assessed, as are churches and service groups and other property owners who have never heard boo-to-a-goose from any taxing entity, for thousands of dollars in some cases, hundreds at least to most, that was unanticipated and unplanned for and comes at a time of unprecedented economic challenge for such bodies.
Schools pay? Guess what – you’re paying twice, then. For work that – pardon me! – I thought we’d been paying taxes for to the Great State of Ohio to have done these last thirty years, only to learn it’s been so neglected and unfunded that we have to collect millions, right now, from churches and schools and campgrounds, and it could go up EVERY YEAR (they say “we hope we won’t have to increase it, but it will be reviewed annually,” striking a chill in my tiny little heart).
The main response to my astonishment at that is “it’s legal under provisions of the Ohio Revised Code.” Yep, it is.
But something can be legal and still be wrong.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s a little upset on behalf of little country churches right now. Calm him down with a note to knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Taxing Times For Religious Groups
So, why don’t churches pay property taxes?
Not that long ago, you wouldn’t have heard that question asked, because it would hardly have made sense to anyone. In the last year, even last few weeks, I’ve run into the question in various forms not only on the internet, but face to face.
I’ve even been told “well, if churches paid their fair share, we wouldn’t have [insert favorite funding problem here].”
Uh-huh.
Skipping over my own cynicism on this subject (ok, let me just say this – lotteries were going to go for education? then education got cut, oh, about the same amount from other funding sources, so did the lottery really go to education support? Right.), let me try to answer the question straightforwardly.
Historically, churches, schools, and other non-profits have not paid property or sales taxes because they are voluntary associations made up of local citizens who come together for a common purpose. These members pay property taxes for their homes and real estate, and the sales tax on their own purchased goods, to cover the cost of schools, roads, police and fire service, et cetera.
To have voluntary bodies like churches pay property tax has been seen as a double tax on the very citizens who are already at work in their communities for the common good, running the food pantries and after school programs and tutoring and such, which is utterly counterproductive.
You see, taxes are paid by people. You and me, we work, we get paid, and a portion of that is taken by the federal, state, and local governmental bodies to pay for the common good, balanced – we hope – by our elected representatives’ oversight, which we as voters monitor and reward with re-election or punish with replacement. But taxes are paid by people.
So the idea that churches “aren’t paying their fair share” is a little suspect at it’s root, but if you see governments and large entities as “having money” that we as voters are shoving around on the civic table like croupiers do the chips at a Vegas roulette table, then this seems to make sense. Who has chips, and how can we move them about “more fairly.”
But people pay taxes. And churches are made up of people. Tax them, and you tax those people twice.
One response to that is the idea that churches have a vast pool of unearned wealth sitting in vaults that should be out on the roulette table of redistribution. The Catholic Church gets this one all the time. I’ve worked with Catholic Social Services and a couple of dioceses enough to say “Ha” to that one; aside from real estate, you’d be surprised to find out how little is actually liquid assets in their holdings.
Never mind that what endowments and funds church bodies have in reserve are usually legacies and bequests that went through probate, got taxed there, and are left by persons for particular purposes, often bound by legal agreements to start with. Anyhow.
Which brings us to the “Special Assessments” we’ve all gotten recently. I’m not a political columnist, but to write about faith communities and belief at work in people’s lives, a little political rain must fall. My own guiding political philosophy is the “Law of Unintended Consequences.” Most times, on the broader social level, stuff we do doesn’t do what we think it will – think welfare, welfare reform, de-institutionalization just for starters (look up “groundnut scheme” online for a global example that will peel your eyelids back).
The Muskingum Watershed Conservation District is staffed by good, decent, hardworking folk, and their public affairs person has been active and responsive with gracious good cheer since I started blogging on this issue a few weeks ago. This situation isn’t their fault, and we all agree that dams and levees and bridges should be maintained.
Having said that, this assessment is a scam and an affront to Ohio citizens, and even those not of a believing or church-going bent should be outraged. School districts are being assessed, as are churches and service groups and other property owners who have never heard boo-to-a-goose from any taxing entity, for thousands of dollars in some cases, hundreds at least to most, that was unanticipated and unplanned for and comes at a time of unprecedented economic challenge for such bodies.
Schools pay? Guess what – you’re paying twice, then. For work that – pardon me! – I thought we’d been paying taxes for to the Great State of Ohio to have done these last thirty years, only to learn it’s been so neglected and unfunded that we have to collect millions, right now, from churches and schools and campgrounds, and it could go up EVERY YEAR (they say “we hope we won’t have to increase it, but it will be reviewed annually,” striking a chill in my tiny little heart).
The main response to my astonishment at that is “it’s legal under provisions of the Ohio Revised Code.” Yep, it is.
But something can be legal and still be wrong.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s a little upset on behalf of little country churches right now. Calm him down with a note to knapsack77@gmail.com.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
The Housing Plan Isn't (and Isn't Gonna)
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/02/comments-on-housing-plan.html
Key excerpt --
For homeowners there are two key paragraphs: first the lender is responsible for bringing the mortgage payment (sounds like P&I) down to 38% of the borrowers monthly gross income. Then the lender and the government will share the burden of bringing the payment down to 31% of the monthly income. Also the homeowner will receive a $1,000 principal reduction each year for five years if they make their payments on time.
This is not so good. The Obama administration doesn't understand that there were two types of speculators during the housing bubble: flippers (they are excluded), and buyers who used excessive leverage hoping for further price appreciation. Back in April 2005 I wrote: Housing: Speculation is the Key
[S]omething akin to speculation is more widespread – homeowners using substantial leverage with escalating financing such as ARMs or interest only loans.
This plan rewards those homebuyers who speculated with excessive leverage. I think this is a mistake.
Another problem with Part 2 is that this lowers the interest rate for borrowers far underwater, but other than the $1,000 per year principal reduction and normal amortization, there is no reduction in the principal. This probably leaves the homeowner far underwater (owing more than their home is worth). When these homeowners eventually try to sell, they will probably still face foreclosure - prolonging the housing slump. These are really not homeowners, they are debtowners / renters.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/02/comments-on-housing-plan.html
Key excerpt --
For homeowners there are two key paragraphs: first the lender is responsible for bringing the mortgage payment (sounds like P&I) down to 38% of the borrowers monthly gross income. Then the lender and the government will share the burden of bringing the payment down to 31% of the monthly income. Also the homeowner will receive a $1,000 principal reduction each year for five years if they make their payments on time.
This is not so good. The Obama administration doesn't understand that there were two types of speculators during the housing bubble: flippers (they are excluded), and buyers who used excessive leverage hoping for further price appreciation. Back in April 2005 I wrote: Housing: Speculation is the Key
[S]omething akin to speculation is more widespread – homeowners using substantial leverage with escalating financing such as ARMs or interest only loans.
This plan rewards those homebuyers who speculated with excessive leverage. I think this is a mistake.
Another problem with Part 2 is that this lowers the interest rate for borrowers far underwater, but other than the $1,000 per year principal reduction and normal amortization, there is no reduction in the principal. This probably leaves the homeowner far underwater (owing more than their home is worth). When these homeowners eventually try to sell, they will probably still face foreclosure - prolonging the housing slump. These are really not homeowners, they are debtowners / renters.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Giants In Our Land
Thanks to a person in Iowa who loves geneaology, i got this transcript of an obituary from Goshen, New York, reprinted in the Newark Gazette, one of many bygone competitors to the Advocate.
Jonathan Benjamin's son and daughters and sons-in-law were many of the very earliest European settlers in Licking County; his daughter Lilly married a John Jones related to my beloved Chaplain David Jones, who built the first cabin in Granville Township, had the first European descent child in this area, and on October 22, 1802, the first of that era to die a few weeks after her baby's birth.
Nonetheless, Jonathan and Margaret Benjamin came and homesteaded what is now the area around Union Station and Infirmary Mound Park, already married some 43 years, and celebrating their 76th wedding anniversary before her death. But Jonathan's story was not quite over, and it went back into a vast expanse of early American history, before he was buried next to Margaret near Granville's Main Street, just visible over the stone wall of the Old Colony Burying Ground.
I've told that version of their story before, but this is a glimpse of the regard in which he was held at his death at 103 -- i'll simply reprint this as transcribed from the original news story:
OBITUARY- Jonathan Benjamin
The Independent-Republican
Goshen, New York
Vol. 5, No. 17
November 26, 1841
[May have originated with the Newark (Licking Co., OH) Gazette.]
DIED
Revolutionary Soldier, -Died in Union Township,
Locking [actually Licking] Co., Ohio, August 26, 1841, Jonathan Benjamin,
in the 103rd year of his age. Father Benjamin was
born in Goshen, N.Y., October 14, 1738. At the age of
16 he enlisted in the army and served his time as a
soldier true to his country. Was married March 10,
1759 to Margaret Brown; moved to Pennsylvania in 1774
or 75. In May, 1777, the Indians broke in upon his
family and family connections, and killed and took
prisoner three entire families, his only son escaping
to the fort. Among the prisoners taken by the Indians,
was his brother-in-law, Ezekiel Brown, late of
Delaware co., Ohio. After being driven from place to
place by those savage tribes, and enduring extreme
suffering for some 5 months, he removed to Maryland in
the fall of 1779, thence to Pennsylvania in 1782,
thence to Maryland in 1897 [should be 1797], thence to
Western Virginia in 1799, thence to Licking, then to
Fairfield co., Ohio in 1804, where he resided until
his death. [Error- Fairfield Co. first, then moved to Licking Co.] In
1810 he joined the M.E. Church, and
remained an acceptable member ever since. In 1835 he
lost his amiable wife, with whom he had lived through
all the sufferings and privations of a piety [pious?] life, for
the almost unpresedented period of 70 years. He was
the father of ten children, and is known to have 77
grandchildren. He lived to see and embrace a child of
the fifth generation, and that a decendent of his
seventh daughter. For the last 30 years, Father
Benjamin has sustained a good religious character, and
in his last years took much pleasure in telling his
bright prospect of happiness beyond the grave. After
an illness of five days, he departed this life without
a struggle or a groan. - Newark Gazette
Thanks to a person in Iowa who loves geneaology, i got this transcript of an obituary from Goshen, New York, reprinted in the Newark Gazette, one of many bygone competitors to the Advocate.
Jonathan Benjamin's son and daughters and sons-in-law were many of the very earliest European settlers in Licking County; his daughter Lilly married a John Jones related to my beloved Chaplain David Jones, who built the first cabin in Granville Township, had the first European descent child in this area, and on October 22, 1802, the first of that era to die a few weeks after her baby's birth.
Nonetheless, Jonathan and Margaret Benjamin came and homesteaded what is now the area around Union Station and Infirmary Mound Park, already married some 43 years, and celebrating their 76th wedding anniversary before her death. But Jonathan's story was not quite over, and it went back into a vast expanse of early American history, before he was buried next to Margaret near Granville's Main Street, just visible over the stone wall of the Old Colony Burying Ground.
I've told that version of their story before, but this is a glimpse of the regard in which he was held at his death at 103 -- i'll simply reprint this as transcribed from the original news story:
OBITUARY- Jonathan Benjamin
The Independent-Republican
Goshen, New York
Vol. 5, No. 17
November 26, 1841
[May have originated with the Newark (Licking Co., OH) Gazette.]
DIED
Revolutionary Soldier, -Died in Union Township,
Locking [actually Licking] Co., Ohio, August 26, 1841, Jonathan Benjamin,
in the 103rd year of his age. Father Benjamin was
born in Goshen, N.Y., October 14, 1738. At the age of
16 he enlisted in the army and served his time as a
soldier true to his country. Was married March 10,
1759 to Margaret Brown; moved to Pennsylvania in 1774
or 75. In May, 1777, the Indians broke in upon his
family and family connections, and killed and took
prisoner three entire families, his only son escaping
to the fort. Among the prisoners taken by the Indians,
was his brother-in-law, Ezekiel Brown, late of
Delaware co., Ohio. After being driven from place to
place by those savage tribes, and enduring extreme
suffering for some 5 months, he removed to Maryland in
the fall of 1779, thence to Pennsylvania in 1782,
thence to Maryland in 1897 [should be 1797], thence to
Western Virginia in 1799, thence to Licking, then to
Fairfield co., Ohio in 1804, where he resided until
his death. [Error- Fairfield Co. first, then moved to Licking Co.] In
1810 he joined the M.E. Church, and
remained an acceptable member ever since. In 1835 he
lost his amiable wife, with whom he had lived through
all the sufferings and privations of a piety [pious?] life, for
the almost unpresedented period of 70 years. He was
the father of ten children, and is known to have 77
grandchildren. He lived to see and embrace a child of
the fifth generation, and that a decendent of his
seventh daughter. For the last 30 years, Father
Benjamin has sustained a good religious character, and
in his last years took much pleasure in telling his
bright prospect of happiness beyond the grave. After
an illness of five days, he departed this life without
a struggle or a groan. - Newark Gazette
Friday, February 13, 2009
Faith Works 2-14-09
Jeff Gill
Faith and Finance Aren’t Cashing In, But Show a Profit
In theory, I should be talking today about Valentinus of Rome and love and the Roman Lupercalia, but a) I’ve done it before, b) others are doing it, and c) I can do it all from a new angle with a unique twist next year.
Right now, people are talking about money.
How much Washington will give Ohio to spend (Gov. Ted sez: Not Enough), how much our companies and businesses have (ditto), how much we have in the bank right now (savings rate for the US was negative before this all hit the fan, so do the math), and how much in taxes our kids will pay in twenty years (too much).
So I’m looking at some of my money, where it says “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” It’s a small inscription, right above the signature of the Treasurer of the United States, who puts “the full faith and credit of the United States Government” behind what that piece of paper represents.
Thinking back to the opening salvos of this devastating barrage of bad economic bombshells, I remembered Bernie Madoff, whose customers are still absorbing the news that not only their gains were illusory, but their original deposits are lost, possibly forever.
Year after year, people got statements, long detailed breakdowns of what stock was bought or sold when, how the profit was rolled over into additional purchases, and the shining, glittering news of how much more your “investment” was worth now than when you initially put it in.
It was, we now find, all lies. It was a “Ponzi scheme,” which is a label for a rolling scam where everyone is told they’re making out like bandits (yes, the victims must have at least a touch of avarice in their souls), but new depositors were being used to pay off withdrawn funds, which Madoff’s crew apparently worked overtime to keep from happening.
Once more is pulled out than you can bring in, or even modest requests for funds intersect with a vanishing demand, and the whole frilly illusion shreds and blows away in a moment.
Faith. “Full faith and credit.” The fact is, the economic system would not work without faith. Any economic system beyond village barter requires the use of symbols to make trades and move goods (“This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private”), and the growing size of a process that operates beyond the next range of hills, let alone across oceans, requires that a certain amount of buying and selling and investing be done in pure symbols . . . like those account statements Madoff’s customers got and smiled over every quarter for years and years.
When faith, any faith is betrayed, the very idea of trust and belief is called into question. Aside from challenges for giving and supporting and tithing for faith communities, there is a very real, practical challenge facing congregations in this financial crisis. We are going through a time when people are going to be very unwilling to take anything on faith, whether of a spiritual or a practical nature.
Before any hard core rationalists get all happy and pleased, here’s the problem – we have to get faith back. We will never achieve full transparency or complete assured confirmation for every economic transaction (unless we all go back to trading my hen’s eggs for your son the cobbler’s new shoes). Faith is, in fact, a vital and necessary part of everyday life.
As the Wall Street traders and Washington insiders seem bizarrely intent on teaching us, we really should require more specifics and more verification in public life (no, seriously, what do you get paid, and why is it mostly called a “bonus” if it’s your base pay?). Church leaders should expect, and even welcome the fact that people will want a bit more explanation than “that’s the way it’s always been,” or “I really don’t know why, it’s just what we’ve always believed.”
Folks are in a mood to say, “Tell me more.” There’s nothing wrong with that.
But we also have to recover a healthy sense of everyday faith, the trust and “credit” in a “giving credit” sense, which is the lubrication system if not the very fuel of our economy. In large part the movers and shakers of society and business need to earn some faith, while we out here figure out where we can bestow it without risking the last of our hope, if not our faith.
And through all of these shocks to our assumptions, the trials and tribulations of job hunting and budget making and priority arranging, one thing becomes abundantly clear: we never should have put our full faith and credit in stuff, in a lifestyle, in our jobs. They never can quite live up to those kind of deeper beliefs.
Which turns us to asking, where should we put our faith? Maybe not in a blind trust, and a mutual fund can’t manage our futures for us, let alone our eternal hopes.
Maybe faith in a God who is present and active among us looks like a pretty solid investment these days.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s heavily invested in Kingdom securities and credits to be redeemed by the bearer. Give him your investment counsel at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Faith and Finance Aren’t Cashing In, But Show a Profit
In theory, I should be talking today about Valentinus of Rome and love and the Roman Lupercalia, but a) I’ve done it before, b) others are doing it, and c) I can do it all from a new angle with a unique twist next year.
Right now, people are talking about money.
How much Washington will give Ohio to spend (Gov. Ted sez: Not Enough), how much our companies and businesses have (ditto), how much we have in the bank right now (savings rate for the US was negative before this all hit the fan, so do the math), and how much in taxes our kids will pay in twenty years (too much).
So I’m looking at some of my money, where it says “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” It’s a small inscription, right above the signature of the Treasurer of the United States, who puts “the full faith and credit of the United States Government” behind what that piece of paper represents.
Thinking back to the opening salvos of this devastating barrage of bad economic bombshells, I remembered Bernie Madoff, whose customers are still absorbing the news that not only their gains were illusory, but their original deposits are lost, possibly forever.
Year after year, people got statements, long detailed breakdowns of what stock was bought or sold when, how the profit was rolled over into additional purchases, and the shining, glittering news of how much more your “investment” was worth now than when you initially put it in.
It was, we now find, all lies. It was a “Ponzi scheme,” which is a label for a rolling scam where everyone is told they’re making out like bandits (yes, the victims must have at least a touch of avarice in their souls), but new depositors were being used to pay off withdrawn funds, which Madoff’s crew apparently worked overtime to keep from happening.
Once more is pulled out than you can bring in, or even modest requests for funds intersect with a vanishing demand, and the whole frilly illusion shreds and blows away in a moment.
Faith. “Full faith and credit.” The fact is, the economic system would not work without faith. Any economic system beyond village barter requires the use of symbols to make trades and move goods (“This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private”), and the growing size of a process that operates beyond the next range of hills, let alone across oceans, requires that a certain amount of buying and selling and investing be done in pure symbols . . . like those account statements Madoff’s customers got and smiled over every quarter for years and years.
When faith, any faith is betrayed, the very idea of trust and belief is called into question. Aside from challenges for giving and supporting and tithing for faith communities, there is a very real, practical challenge facing congregations in this financial crisis. We are going through a time when people are going to be very unwilling to take anything on faith, whether of a spiritual or a practical nature.
Before any hard core rationalists get all happy and pleased, here’s the problem – we have to get faith back. We will never achieve full transparency or complete assured confirmation for every economic transaction (unless we all go back to trading my hen’s eggs for your son the cobbler’s new shoes). Faith is, in fact, a vital and necessary part of everyday life.
As the Wall Street traders and Washington insiders seem bizarrely intent on teaching us, we really should require more specifics and more verification in public life (no, seriously, what do you get paid, and why is it mostly called a “bonus” if it’s your base pay?). Church leaders should expect, and even welcome the fact that people will want a bit more explanation than “that’s the way it’s always been,” or “I really don’t know why, it’s just what we’ve always believed.”
Folks are in a mood to say, “Tell me more.” There’s nothing wrong with that.
But we also have to recover a healthy sense of everyday faith, the trust and “credit” in a “giving credit” sense, which is the lubrication system if not the very fuel of our economy. In large part the movers and shakers of society and business need to earn some faith, while we out here figure out where we can bestow it without risking the last of our hope, if not our faith.
And through all of these shocks to our assumptions, the trials and tribulations of job hunting and budget making and priority arranging, one thing becomes abundantly clear: we never should have put our full faith and credit in stuff, in a lifestyle, in our jobs. They never can quite live up to those kind of deeper beliefs.
Which turns us to asking, where should we put our faith? Maybe not in a blind trust, and a mutual fund can’t manage our futures for us, let alone our eternal hopes.
Maybe faith in a God who is present and active among us looks like a pretty solid investment these days.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s heavily invested in Kingdom securities and credits to be redeemed by the bearer. Give him your investment counsel at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Notes From My Knapsack 2-12-09
Jeff Gill
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (sugg. Title)
Too little known about Charles Darwin’s seminal work, published 150 years ago this coming November, is that it is a fascinating and even enjoyable read.
“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” or later republished as simply “The Origin of Species,” was written in the 1840s and 50s, and is in many ways a High Victorian literary masterpiece.
But I’m uncomfortably aware that describing the book that way sends many of you running in the opposite direction, as if I’d said “Brussels sprouts” (which, if you roast them first, are actually quite tasty as well, but that’s a different column).
“David Copperfield” and “A Christmas Carol” were written by Charles Dickens just a few miles away at about the same time; the other literary Charles was finishing “A Tale of Two Cities” just as “On the Origin” was hitting the bookstalls in London. No one finds it too odd to hear that reading any of those Dickens novels is an enjoyable read for pleasure today, but if you said you were reading (or re-reading) Darwin’s “On the Origin” most would assume you had an assignment for school, and a pretty nasty one at that.
The truth is that Darwin’s book is fun to read, and offers discussions of scientific things in language anyone can follow, whether to agree or disagree – and the author clearly welcomes disagreement and debate, an approach that brings out fine writing and reasoning, I think, from those who engage him thoroughly.
A few weeks ago I recommended “Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent” by Lyanda Haupt for those trying to understand just what motivated and inspired Darwin as a young scholar, and I’m delighted by how many have e-mailed me to say what a pleasure and marvel this book has been. She delves deep into Darwin’s own letters and handwritten notebooks, and follows his growth in observational sensitivity, and passionate interest in the vital processes of creation.
Haupt touches lightly, but distinctly, on Darwin’s spiritual journey, a seminarian headed for ministry who becomes condemned as “a great infidel.” Her chapter “God and the Nightingales” is a great corrective to this misunderstanding.
“Annie’s Box” by Darwin’s great-great-grandson Randal Keynes (and father of the Narnia movie’s Edmund) tells the story of the life and death of Darwin’s ten year old daughter, and traces an outline of Darwin’s struggles with a faith community around him, more interested in social status than comforting the afflicted.
Yet reading Darwin’s own letters, which you can do for yourself at www.darwinproject.ac.uk, you find that while he tussles with official clergy (type “Ffinden” into the search box), he writes with warmth and welcome to invite evangelists like James Fegan to come use his property for a revival, greets Lady Hope with Bible quotations (if not a “deathbed conversion” as has been mythologized out of her later “reminiscences”), and reminds Asa Gray, Harvard geologist and committed Christian, that a theistic faith can be held close while digging deeply into natural selection and deep time.
Darwin avoided using the term “deist” in his letters, which intrigues me greatly. Deism was a very respectable stance, even within the Church of England, arguing that God created “in the beginning,” then stepped back, letting processes and plans wind out without any direct involvement. He argued strongly that his theory of evolution did not, itself, prove or disprove the existence of God, or a faith in Jesus Christ, nor did it intend to undermine or support such beliefs.
The question of what about faith could be explained or proven by scientific means intrigued Darwin, and he often talked about this; sometimes folks use these quotes to say that Darwin thought religion was purely a product of evolution.
To them I would say, read the man’s work for yourself, not selective quotations.
And I’d add the words of an Orthodox saint of the Fourth Century, Ephrem the Syrian, whose hymns are still sung in the Christian churches Eastern and Western, and whose thought inspired John Wesley – “In every place, if you look his symbol is there,” Ephrem sang,
“Nature and the Scriptures
together carry
the symbols of his humanity
and of his divinity.”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he promises to stop talking about Darwin and Lincoln for at least a while after Feb. 12! Tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or to “Knapsack” on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (sugg. Title)
Too little known about Charles Darwin’s seminal work, published 150 years ago this coming November, is that it is a fascinating and even enjoyable read.
“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” or later republished as simply “The Origin of Species,” was written in the 1840s and 50s, and is in many ways a High Victorian literary masterpiece.
But I’m uncomfortably aware that describing the book that way sends many of you running in the opposite direction, as if I’d said “Brussels sprouts” (which, if you roast them first, are actually quite tasty as well, but that’s a different column).
“David Copperfield” and “A Christmas Carol” were written by Charles Dickens just a few miles away at about the same time; the other literary Charles was finishing “A Tale of Two Cities” just as “On the Origin” was hitting the bookstalls in London. No one finds it too odd to hear that reading any of those Dickens novels is an enjoyable read for pleasure today, but if you said you were reading (or re-reading) Darwin’s “On the Origin” most would assume you had an assignment for school, and a pretty nasty one at that.
The truth is that Darwin’s book is fun to read, and offers discussions of scientific things in language anyone can follow, whether to agree or disagree – and the author clearly welcomes disagreement and debate, an approach that brings out fine writing and reasoning, I think, from those who engage him thoroughly.
A few weeks ago I recommended “Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent” by Lyanda Haupt for those trying to understand just what motivated and inspired Darwin as a young scholar, and I’m delighted by how many have e-mailed me to say what a pleasure and marvel this book has been. She delves deep into Darwin’s own letters and handwritten notebooks, and follows his growth in observational sensitivity, and passionate interest in the vital processes of creation.
Haupt touches lightly, but distinctly, on Darwin’s spiritual journey, a seminarian headed for ministry who becomes condemned as “a great infidel.” Her chapter “God and the Nightingales” is a great corrective to this misunderstanding.
“Annie’s Box” by Darwin’s great-great-grandson Randal Keynes (and father of the Narnia movie’s Edmund) tells the story of the life and death of Darwin’s ten year old daughter, and traces an outline of Darwin’s struggles with a faith community around him, more interested in social status than comforting the afflicted.
Yet reading Darwin’s own letters, which you can do for yourself at www.darwinproject.ac.uk, you find that while he tussles with official clergy (type “Ffinden” into the search box), he writes with warmth and welcome to invite evangelists like James Fegan to come use his property for a revival, greets Lady Hope with Bible quotations (if not a “deathbed conversion” as has been mythologized out of her later “reminiscences”), and reminds Asa Gray, Harvard geologist and committed Christian, that a theistic faith can be held close while digging deeply into natural selection and deep time.
Darwin avoided using the term “deist” in his letters, which intrigues me greatly. Deism was a very respectable stance, even within the Church of England, arguing that God created “in the beginning,” then stepped back, letting processes and plans wind out without any direct involvement. He argued strongly that his theory of evolution did not, itself, prove or disprove the existence of God, or a faith in Jesus Christ, nor did it intend to undermine or support such beliefs.
The question of what about faith could be explained or proven by scientific means intrigued Darwin, and he often talked about this; sometimes folks use these quotes to say that Darwin thought religion was purely a product of evolution.
To them I would say, read the man’s work for yourself, not selective quotations.
And I’d add the words of an Orthodox saint of the Fourth Century, Ephrem the Syrian, whose hymns are still sung in the Christian churches Eastern and Western, and whose thought inspired John Wesley – “In every place, if you look his symbol is there,” Ephrem sang,
“Nature and the Scriptures
together carry
the symbols of his humanity
and of his divinity.”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he promises to stop talking about Darwin and Lincoln for at least a while after Feb. 12! Tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or to “Knapsack” on Twitter.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Faith Works 2-7-09
Jeff Gill
Death, Life, Creation, and the Cosmos
To be perfectly candid, if I were to design a world, it seems to me that it wouldn’t have 50 year old fathers die, leaving behind a couple of small children and a grieving wife. Earlier this week, just that happened among my wider circle of internet acquaintance, but was no less awful to hear for not having met them in person. It’s the kind of thing you think (especially at 47) “that just shouldn’t happen.”
Which most wouldn’t disagree with, until you started actually thinking it through: so who would die? If not this one, that one?
So then you say “ok, I wouldn’t design in death at all.” Which means that all organisms go on and on, or just humans? Yeah, I hear you in the back, “dogs, too!” To which I reply “well, and cats.”
Parakeets?
Anyhow, it’s one thing to say that it seems as if “even in the midst of life, we are in death,” and call that a flaw, a brokenness, even a “sin” running through the heart of creation. It’s quite another to say “so why not take out this sorrow, or this tragedy?” When you start to tinker with the cosmos, let alone (say) global climate change, everything seems to be linked to everything, and you can’t take out the bad without hopelessly compromising the good.
If you stand back from life and say “then it may be just as well that we never lived at all rather than die, or experience the death of others,” you’ve captured the nihilism that is the empty heart of much modern philosophy. I’d recommend you go watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” and not try to argue with you, since it would just depress us both.
The harder challenge is finding what to say to someone who sees death and tragedy as a clear and distinct argument that there is no cause, no God, no design at all, no ultimate meaning hidden in eternity or revealed in glimpses through the narrow door of Scripture.
My own answer as a Christian starts with Jesus Christ himself, “and him crucified.” The One on the cross is a sign and a revelation that God is aware of this brokenness at the heart of life, and rather than erasing the board and starting over, has entered history to show the way.
So I grieve with my friend who lost her husband, a woman I’ve never met and many hundreds of miles away, and trust in her faith (and his) that the cross has bridged the gap for him already, and we to him in the fullness of time.
And I think it right that I grieve for a father who lost a ten year old daughter, albeit in 1851; or one who lost sons at four and eleven, in 1850 and 1862. Those fathers were told to find comfort that their children died because “it was their time,” “they were called home,” that “God needed them in heaven.”
I wish there had been more who had said to those fathers that Jesus Christ came to heal the brokenness of all of creation (for God so loved the “cosmos” is what John 3:16 says in Greek, “all of creation”). I wish there had been pastoral voices to tell them that God wept with them, and shared their sorrow. Instead, they were condemned in their day for questioning the Divine Order of every death, every species, and even the necessity of slavery. To question the social order was questioning the authority of the Church and the Bible, and so Darwin and Lincoln
A Biblical worldview can and must understand that the world has a crack in it, and yet it is through that crack that Jesus entered. God could make the world so that nothing bad ever happened and no evil was in it, but that would put most of us down the memory hole.
I can’t call Charles Darwin or Abraham Lincoln Christians, any more than a fair reading of their own writings could call either an atheist. Did God’s mercy extend to them, on their passing to join their lost children? That would be up to God, but what is up to us is to learn from their experience as we try to comfort the grieving today.
Death is part of creation, but not an ultimate part of it; the passing of death is the final victory promised to the community of faith. We can and must grieve with each other, not forcing sense out of senselessness, but from a promised hope that sense and meaning and God will prevail in the end.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he promises to stop talking about Darwin and Lincoln for at least a while after Feb. 12! Tell him your ideas of something else to talk about at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Death, Life, Creation, and the Cosmos
To be perfectly candid, if I were to design a world, it seems to me that it wouldn’t have 50 year old fathers die, leaving behind a couple of small children and a grieving wife. Earlier this week, just that happened among my wider circle of internet acquaintance, but was no less awful to hear for not having met them in person. It’s the kind of thing you think (especially at 47) “that just shouldn’t happen.”
Which most wouldn’t disagree with, until you started actually thinking it through: so who would die? If not this one, that one?
So then you say “ok, I wouldn’t design in death at all.” Which means that all organisms go on and on, or just humans? Yeah, I hear you in the back, “dogs, too!” To which I reply “well, and cats.”
Parakeets?
Anyhow, it’s one thing to say that it seems as if “even in the midst of life, we are in death,” and call that a flaw, a brokenness, even a “sin” running through the heart of creation. It’s quite another to say “so why not take out this sorrow, or this tragedy?” When you start to tinker with the cosmos, let alone (say) global climate change, everything seems to be linked to everything, and you can’t take out the bad without hopelessly compromising the good.
If you stand back from life and say “then it may be just as well that we never lived at all rather than die, or experience the death of others,” you’ve captured the nihilism that is the empty heart of much modern philosophy. I’d recommend you go watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” and not try to argue with you, since it would just depress us both.
The harder challenge is finding what to say to someone who sees death and tragedy as a clear and distinct argument that there is no cause, no God, no design at all, no ultimate meaning hidden in eternity or revealed in glimpses through the narrow door of Scripture.
My own answer as a Christian starts with Jesus Christ himself, “and him crucified.” The One on the cross is a sign and a revelation that God is aware of this brokenness at the heart of life, and rather than erasing the board and starting over, has entered history to show the way.
So I grieve with my friend who lost her husband, a woman I’ve never met and many hundreds of miles away, and trust in her faith (and his) that the cross has bridged the gap for him already, and we to him in the fullness of time.
And I think it right that I grieve for a father who lost a ten year old daughter, albeit in 1851; or one who lost sons at four and eleven, in 1850 and 1862. Those fathers were told to find comfort that their children died because “it was their time,” “they were called home,” that “God needed them in heaven.”
I wish there had been more who had said to those fathers that Jesus Christ came to heal the brokenness of all of creation (for God so loved the “cosmos” is what John 3:16 says in Greek, “all of creation”). I wish there had been pastoral voices to tell them that God wept with them, and shared their sorrow. Instead, they were condemned in their day for questioning the Divine Order of every death, every species, and even the necessity of slavery. To question the social order was questioning the authority of the Church and the Bible, and so Darwin and Lincoln
A Biblical worldview can and must understand that the world has a crack in it, and yet it is through that crack that Jesus entered. God could make the world so that nothing bad ever happened and no evil was in it, but that would put most of us down the memory hole.
I can’t call Charles Darwin or Abraham Lincoln Christians, any more than a fair reading of their own writings could call either an atheist. Did God’s mercy extend to them, on their passing to join their lost children? That would be up to God, but what is up to us is to learn from their experience as we try to comfort the grieving today.
Death is part of creation, but not an ultimate part of it; the passing of death is the final victory promised to the community of faith. We can and must grieve with each other, not forcing sense out of senselessness, but from a promised hope that sense and meaning and God will prevail in the end.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he promises to stop talking about Darwin and Lincoln for at least a while after Feb. 12! Tell him your ideas of something else to talk about at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Faith Works 1-31-09
Jeff Gill
From Soup to Nuts (and I’m the one that’s nuts)
So much going on in the world that impacts and influences the life of faith – where to start?
Most folks are ending this weekend with the Super Bowl, and the youth groups of many area churches are taking this chance to lift up the “Souper Bowl of Caring” with a special offering for local food pantries.
When you’re picking up your game day munchies, buy a can of soup for every snack package, and take those cans to church Sunday morning; some congregations also take up a monetary offering for food pantry efforts as well.
Presbyterians in the south got this tradition going, but you can read about the nownational and ecumenical reach of their work at www.souperbowl.org.
If you haven’t read about the marvelous personal story of Kurt and Brenda Warner, you can check the blog page at www.newarkadvocate.com (look for me under Knapsack), or Google their names. I’m a Steelers fan from youth, and admire the Rooney family, but the Warners can make me cheer a bit for the Cardinals.
(Still, is the curse of the Pottsville Maroons still reaching down from 1925, through their Pennsylvania brethren, to blight the storied Cardinals in 2009? More to the point, should a religious person believe in sports curses in the first place?)
Tuesday is the anniversary of the heroic sacrifice of the Four Chaplains aboard the USAT Dorchester, in 1943. Jewish rabbi, Catholic priest, two Protestant clergymen, all standing together in prayer as the torpedoed ship sank into the North Atlantic night, having handed out all the lifebelts including the ones they wore – Alexander Goode, the rabbi, gave a soldier his gloves as the young man clambered onto a lifeboat.
There were not enough lifeboats, rafts, or flotation devices to go around, and just over 200 of the 900 aboard survived, but all remembered the calm and collective effort of the Four in the twenty-five minutes they had from midnight shock to the final plunge. Together, forever.
And I don’t have Jim Whitaker to call me every year to remind me anymore, but I won’t forget.
Three of the Four Chaplains were Scout leaders, and Feb. 8 begins a momentous year for the Boy Scouts of America – it was on Feb. 8, 1910 that Scouting crossed the pond, after two and a half years of growth under founder Robert Baden-Powell in England. So Dorchester Day often comes right up against Scout Sunday or Sabbath, when Scouting units often attend worship in a group, especially if their “chartering organization” is a church.
For some churches, holding the charter just means they provide a meeting space, and among others, being a chartering organization means that their Cub Scout, Boy Scout, and Venturing crew units are a key part of their own youth programming. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as Mormons, have adopted Scouting nationally as their young men’s youth group structure. Many other churches acknowledge a tie to “their” Scout troop while having a separate youth group.
Finally, I’ve gotten a number of questions about Ted Haggard, all around “what do you think?” All I can think of to say is that Ted Haggard and Rod Blagojevich both need to ask themselves “what purposes do your strenuous efforts to stay in the public eye serve?” (If you feel the need to add Bill Clinton to that list, be my guest.)
And to close this particularly bloggy column out, for a counter-example to Haggard and Blagojevich, click on Wikipedia and enter “John Profumo.” There’s a different way, but as Someone once said, it is often a harder way, a narrower way, a way that leads away from the bright lights, but can take you towards a brighter dawn.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or to “Knapsack” on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
From Soup to Nuts (and I’m the one that’s nuts)
So much going on in the world that impacts and influences the life of faith – where to start?
Most folks are ending this weekend with the Super Bowl, and the youth groups of many area churches are taking this chance to lift up the “Souper Bowl of Caring” with a special offering for local food pantries.
When you’re picking up your game day munchies, buy a can of soup for every snack package, and take those cans to church Sunday morning; some congregations also take up a monetary offering for food pantry efforts as well.
Presbyterians in the south got this tradition going, but you can read about the nownational and ecumenical reach of their work at www.souperbowl.org.
If you haven’t read about the marvelous personal story of Kurt and Brenda Warner, you can check the blog page at www.newarkadvocate.com (look for me under Knapsack), or Google their names. I’m a Steelers fan from youth, and admire the Rooney family, but the Warners can make me cheer a bit for the Cardinals.
(Still, is the curse of the Pottsville Maroons still reaching down from 1925, through their Pennsylvania brethren, to blight the storied Cardinals in 2009? More to the point, should a religious person believe in sports curses in the first place?)
Tuesday is the anniversary of the heroic sacrifice of the Four Chaplains aboard the USAT Dorchester, in 1943. Jewish rabbi, Catholic priest, two Protestant clergymen, all standing together in prayer as the torpedoed ship sank into the North Atlantic night, having handed out all the lifebelts including the ones they wore – Alexander Goode, the rabbi, gave a soldier his gloves as the young man clambered onto a lifeboat.
There were not enough lifeboats, rafts, or flotation devices to go around, and just over 200 of the 900 aboard survived, but all remembered the calm and collective effort of the Four in the twenty-five minutes they had from midnight shock to the final plunge. Together, forever.
And I don’t have Jim Whitaker to call me every year to remind me anymore, but I won’t forget.
Three of the Four Chaplains were Scout leaders, and Feb. 8 begins a momentous year for the Boy Scouts of America – it was on Feb. 8, 1910 that Scouting crossed the pond, after two and a half years of growth under founder Robert Baden-Powell in England. So Dorchester Day often comes right up against Scout Sunday or Sabbath, when Scouting units often attend worship in a group, especially if their “chartering organization” is a church.
For some churches, holding the charter just means they provide a meeting space, and among others, being a chartering organization means that their Cub Scout, Boy Scout, and Venturing crew units are a key part of their own youth programming. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as Mormons, have adopted Scouting nationally as their young men’s youth group structure. Many other churches acknowledge a tie to “their” Scout troop while having a separate youth group.
Finally, I’ve gotten a number of questions about Ted Haggard, all around “what do you think?” All I can think of to say is that Ted Haggard and Rod Blagojevich both need to ask themselves “what purposes do your strenuous efforts to stay in the public eye serve?” (If you feel the need to add Bill Clinton to that list, be my guest.)
And to close this particularly bloggy column out, for a counter-example to Haggard and Blagojevich, click on Wikipedia and enter “John Profumo.” There’s a different way, but as Someone once said, it is often a harder way, a narrower way, a way that leads away from the bright lights, but can take you towards a brighter dawn.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or to “Knapsack” on Twitter.
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