Faith Works 10-23

Faith Works 10-23-10

Jeff Gill

 

Saved, a Wretch Like Me

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You might be saved.

 

For almost two months, you've been trapped in a place that left you few options, minimal choices.

 

Early on, you were in complete darkness and near panic, but now you can see and hear and understand your plight even more clearly, making darkness and uncertainty seem not so bad.

 

Signs of hope mix with indications of new danger, and you know just enough to be able to imagine additional challenges, while having no concept of how you can be pulled out of the hole you are in.

 

It does sound like the Chilean miners, doesn't it? And they are a spur to reflection, not only because of the happy ending we all shared with a watching world, but because they were a more dramatic, starkly outlined sketch of how many people feel every day, walking around here in the autumn sunlight.

 

You don't have to be stuck in a mine to feel trapped, and you don't have to be in jail to sense the bars and locked doors that keep you where you do not want to be.

 

Addiction is the easy and obvious category, but there are compulsions and habits and circumstances that defy a clinical diagnosis, but from inside . . .

 

The Apostle Paul said "For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing." (Romans 7:18-19, NIV)

 

That may or may not sound like being in a stony chamber half a mile underground, but how is it all that different?

 

Then in verse 24, having reflected on his plight a bit more, Paul cries out "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"

 

During the final stages of the attempt to reach and save the 33 miners in Chile, I wondered about the problems of even success: if they can drill down to them, and come up with a way to get them safely to the surface, who has to be left down there as the last man out? Who turns out the lights, so to speak?

 

Then I literally sat up straight in my chair, with a shock of startled recognition, when a TV commentator explained how that part of saving the trapped miners would work.

 

In order to get them out, the rescuers up above would have to send someone down; to explain how the procedure would work, to help them into the unprecedented escape vehicle, and to guide them one by one to their salvation, that one would stay behind until all were safe.

 

OK, to be fair, it ended up being six rescuers going down to manage the medical and technical process, but you get what I mean.

 

In order to save them, someone had to go down there from the surface, to freely choose to take on their hazards, in order to ensure that they all might be saved.

 

The man who took the first ride down in the rescue capsule (and huzzah for NASA's assistance in crafting that elegant solution) was also the last man to leave the mine. His name is Manuel Gonzalez, and may his name be long remembered along with those he helped save.

 

It would have been a bit much, I guess, if that mine rescuer who had gone down was named Jesus Gonzalez.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; contact him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 10-16-10 -- Newark Advocate

Jeff Gill

 

Life Is Like a Box of Chocolates

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Forrest Gump had a number of interesting fundamental beliefs, one of which was that "life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get."

 

His momma told him that, and who am I to argue with a mother?

 

The next month for churches and people of faith in the Licking County area has a distinct resemblance to a box of chocolates, Gump-style, or so it looks to me.

 

Tomorrow afternoon, from Noon to 4 pm a number of us will be leading tours around the Octagon Earthworks, this Sunday being one of the four "open house" days at this magnificent piece of 2,000 year old ritual architecture. Enter at 33^rd St. and Parkview where the signs say both Octagon State Memorial and Moundbuilders Country Club (and happy 100^th anniversary to those tenants of the site, as well).

 

It's likely to be a beautiful fall day to enjoy creation in general, and to wonder at how the first people who lived on this landscape reflected on their place in the world under the sun, moon, and stars. Often a few Native American folk will have a singing and prayer ceremony of their own on Observatory Mound at the southwestern corner of the site, as well as next to the public access area near the entrance.

 

Political season means that many churches put on Election Day dinners, a tradition going back to when taverns and pubs were legally required to close for the day (so as not to facilitate the easy bribery of "I'll buy you a round if you . . ."). Fast food and more stay open on Tuesday, Nov. 2, but some of those Election Day dinners not only offer good home cooking for very reasonable prices, many offer a public good by delivering meals to hard working pollwatchers in precincts around their area.

 

You can vote early downtown at the County Administration Building, which more and more people do these days; you don't have to make up an excuse anymore, you can just come in and say you need to vote early. If there's any doubt in your mind about getting to a polling place between 6:30 am and 7:30 pm on Nov. 2, why not get 'r done?

 

Tickets are also available early for the Coalition of Care Gospel Celebration, scheduled on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 7, at 3:30 pm. Once again, the kindly board members of that church based co-operative organization have chosen to allow me to frolic and play on the vast stage of the Midland Theater, which is no small treat (for me). Along with leading everyone in singing "Tell Me Why," I get to introduce acts like the Licking Valley High School Concert Choir, The Calvaliers Quartet, Karrie Miller, Bound for Glory, Frosty Morning, and The Gospelife

Choir.

 

If that doesn't sound worth $20 for a ticket, I can't imagine how you'd get better use out of President Jackson's face. Reserving your ticket for the Gospel Celebration might just make the crusty old duck smile. Call 670-9700 for more info, or www.coalitionofcare.net.

 

Then the following week, beginning at Noon on  Tues., Nov. 9, the Licking County Coalition for Housing will invite us to see the invisible plague of homelessness with their "Shoes on the Square" observance. As the old Indian prayer suggests, we always benefit personally, spiritually, and in our community when we try to walk a mile in someone else's moccasins, even if it's only imaginatively. Learn more at www.lcchousing.org.

 

Faith is a matter of the heart, mind, hands, and feet. Plus, it ought to make you sing!

 

Or leave you as content as someone with a brand new box of chocolates, so full and complete and overflowing you can't help but want to share.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; contact him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 10-9-10 -- Newark Advocate

Jeff Gill

 

Environmental Hot Water Is Easy To Get Into

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Last week was "Walk To School" Day in Granville, and I was invited to MC again.

 

This was the fifth (we think) time a lovely fall day was picked to organize a group walk from the main downtown intersection to the elementary school, and like most lovely autumn mornings, rain threatened, but held off just long enough to let us ring the old village bell, thank a few supporters, and stroll down the sidewalk a few hundred strong.

 

We're unusual in Granville in that the school and a large number of elementary age children are located where walking is even feasible. When the school is out on the edge of things, and often there aren't even sidewalks leading to it, walking or bicycling just isn't a option anymore.

 

And to be fair, the action is largely symbolic.  Some of us drove to downtown, walked to the school, and then walked back to our cars where we drove off to work. Many of the kids who walked will possibly never walk to the building again all year, but get dropped off or ride the bus the other 179 days.

 

Yet some will take away from this community mini-rally a realization that walking to school (or cycling) is more feasible some days, at least, than they realized, and the kids who participate at least get a sense of walking as an option – if not always to school, at least sometimes to some places.

 

Faith communities know that symbolic actions are deeply meaningful, and can impact behavior and choices far beyond the immediate contact of a gesture, ritual, or presentation. Baptism for cleansing, weddings for marriages, communion as a core element of Christianity – you can see them as "just a symbol," but as Paul Tillich said, "Never say 'just' a symbol." Symbols have power, as a conduit from the everyday to a wider context, even the eternal.

 

I was thinking about all this as I've been part of an adult study at a church near where the "Walk To School" journey began. Sunday evenings, a few of us have been meeting to talk about Christian faith and "Creation Care," and what environmental issues say to us as we talk about our core beliefs.

 

One thing that struck us is that, in this short series for adults and kids, we begin the evening with a meal. Being good 2010 Americans, we all eat it off of disposable plates, using disposable utensils, drink from disposable cups, and wipe off our fingers with disposable napkins . . . then we go off into our four adult classes to talk about "that which endures forever."

 

Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

 

Meanwhile, there are cabinets in the kitchen full of ceramic plates with a fine blue etching under the glaze, in a classic font saying "Centenary UM." As a traveling preacher who occasionally ends up looking for a cup or spoon, I know that such dinnerware is not hard to find in most churches around the Midwest, but I also know it gets rarely used.

 

Am I volunteering to wash dishes, I can hear some older (women) folk ask, who remember quite well having to stay long past the end of every food-based gathering, hand washing and drying the cutlery and putting it all up in the cupboards?

 

I can claim truthfully that I have, and I would, but it's not as simple as that.  Hygiene issues, impaired immune systems, all kinds of factors drive us towards disposability. Even bringing our own "pitch-in plates" from home, the kind that let you take a really big pile of potato casserole and broccoli salad, is a complication that people simply look at differently.

 

But what would it take to make a point of, once in a while, using that which is not disposable for a church dinner? You won't change the climate or save a koala bear with it, but how many ways might our thinking, even our hearts, be changed by getting those blue edged plates out, or carrying home our dirty dishes that can be reused?

 

Which would probably be in a plastic bag that you can't recycle after getting food goo all over it. So you'd have to hot rinse everything, which takes energy, too  . . .

 

Many angles to this question, but for believers, and particularly Christians, I wonder how often we think about the symbolic meaning of our common meals and our stewardship of the earth, right down to the stuff we're eating there and where it comes from.

 

Tell me about how your church talks about this, would you?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; contact him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Notes From My Knapsack -- Granville Sentinel

Jeff Gill

 

Twelve Years Old In Granville – 1850

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The fortress was impregnable, of that they were all certain.

 

Perched on a spur of Prospect Hill, glowering over towards Mount Parnassus, the walls had steadily risen, lunch hour by lunch hour, during this last week of nightly snow and bright sunny (if frigid) days.

 

The boys of the upper form in the village school house said to each other that they were no colder out on the hillside, looking over Granville, than they were inside the gloomy brick chambers of the aged structure that peered south down the Lancaster Road.

 

Even the face of the sun, they said, the one carved into the keystone over the central arch of the lower market level, looked pinched with cold. They were happy to hoot past his stony, warmthless gaze, running outside after flying down the stairs from the third floor (the youngest scholars being on the second), and clambering along the hillside, working up behind the row of homes they now looked down the chimneys of.

 

Their mothers had called out "Dinner is ready!" over and over, echoing across the snowdrifts and backyards, finally giving up and eating their own luncheons in peace and quiet. Their boys would rather play than eat, and it wasn't as if they had anywhere else to get a bite before supper and bed.

 

Today, though, would be different. The week was ending, and while all the town could see their commanding location, that included the sworn foes of the public school lads: their counterparts enrolled at the Academy. Each considered the other faction beneath their notice, and either could not stop noticing the others' antics.

 

All week, the young men of the Academy on Elm Street looked up at Prospect Hill during their all too short (as they saw it) dinner break, and they had been planning.

 

No sooner had the dinner hour been declared than the Academy boys trotted quietly, but in a body, along Elm over to Pearl, then up the road until they were even with the heights the public school lads had fortified.

 

They worked their way along the slope on the east, just as the builders had side-stepped from the west to begin their redoubt. A fusillade of snowballs announced the public opening of hostilities, with the winner being the final resident of the fortress.

 

Flocks of flying snowballs all at once pelted the interior of the icy enclosure, and sharpshooters kept up a more targeted spatter of individual shots.

 

A rush of bodies from below, and the Academy crew suddenly filled the embrasures and opening, vaulting into the sacred precincts themselves. Those who built this stronghold were soon cruelly forced to retreat, under fire, uphill.

 

This state of affairs did not last long. The public boys plotted behind a handy hickory close to the brow of Prospect Hill, and shortly they charged down in two files, attacking with pockets filled by pre-made snow (or ice) balls.

 

Their pincer assault was not only successful, but continued on down the hill. Volley by volley the public school lads pressed their social so-called betters back, step by step, until they made their final stand on the public square itself.

 

One o'clock, then two o'clock passed, with even the teachers as well as the parents watching with smiles that almost seemed to indicate approval.

 

By three o'clock, the lack of lunch, the presence of ice fragments within the snowy spheres, and general weariness began to slow down everyone. Suddenly, as if by a prearranged plan, a number of parents and pastors emerged from behind the broader tree trunks nearby, and declared "a truce." The occasional bloody cheek or brow bore witness to the prudence of this enforced diplomacy.

 

Four hours of snowball warfare may have seemed too short to some, but it was as long as such an epic could unfurl, for a crowd of twelve year olds who really needed to get home and help get ready for supper.

 

(This is the fifth of a series of stories, each called "Twelve Years Old in Granville." Some will be based in fact, as with this tale of the greatest snowball fight the village had ever seen, from Bushnell's "History"; others will require a bit more creative guesswork and imagining. I hope you find them all informative and intriguing.)

 

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

Knapsack 11-4

Notes From My Knapsack 11-4-10

Jeff Gill

 

Twelve Years Old In Granville – 1839

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When the three of them had decided to head home after a long morning of fishing in Raccoon Creek, two went up to the town spring on the back side of Sugar Loaf, and one took off across the lower slope to cut up through the Burying Ground.

 

There was a creek that looped behind the tombstones, and he hoped to mess around a bit there rather than end up stuck inside churning butter until his arms ached. His older sister was spinning yarn off their neighbor's sheep, and Uncle Frank was sure to have brought by a crock or two of rich fresh cream and a jug of milk as he passed through town from grandfather's farm on Loudon Street down towards the woolen mill at the end of Clouse's lane. Any pair of hands that passed the kitchen door were likely to end up wrapped around a churn handle, and he didn't want those to be his.

 

So he swung around the wall and up angling through the cemetery, until he saw someone sitting at the base of a young, but fast growing oak tree just at the crest of the slope.

 

"Good day, sir," the boy said, touching the brim of his straw hat.

 

"Good day to you, young sir," answered the man, who was anything but young himself.

 

"Are you well, sir?" asked the youth.

 

"It is kind of you to ask. My soul is well, my heart is heavy, and the years weigh me down, but it is all to the good."

 

At twelve, he didn't quite know how to answer that, but a thought did occur to him.

 

"Are you Mister Benjamin? They say you are a hundred years old."

 

"That I am, all of that and a year more. How old are you?"

 

"I am just twelve years old, myself."

 

"Do you know, when I was not much older than you, I was fighting alongside the British in the French and Indian War?"

 

"That I had heard, sir, and that you were in the Continental Army during the Revolution?"

 

"As a sergeant, indeed I was. And then a pioneer, and now an old man sitting under a tree."

 

His new friend considered this, and felt secure enough in the confidence shown him to say "Most people say you keep to yourself out at your place on Ramp Creek and talk to no one."

 

The weathered face creased with a small but distinct smile, and he replied "But I am speaking to you, am I not?"

 

"Yes, sir."

 

"I speak when something needs to be said. There is much said in this world that could easily be done without. And I come here to talk to my wife, Margaret," he said gesturing to a stone rising out of the grass just beyond the old man's feet, "and my daughters," pointing both up and down the hill in turn.

 

"I didn't mean to interrupt you, sir," nodded the young man. "Not at all," was the ancient's reply; "you may sit down and join me." As he did so, Benjamin added, "You're sitting on my grave."

 

Since his own elderly relatives often spoke this way, he merely nodded, and went on to ask if Mr. Benjamin had ever seen George Washington. They sat and talked until long after the last of the butter had been drawn from the churn.

 

(This is the third of a series of stories, each called "Twelve Years Old in Granville." Some will be based in fact, as with Jonathan Benjamin, who died at 103 on Aug. 26, 1841, and others will require a bit more creative guesswork and imagining. I hope you find them all informative and intriguing.)

 

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

Notes From My Knapsack -- Granville Sentinel

Jeff Gill

 

Twelve Years Old In Granville – 1841

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Jane knew that her mother didn't want her near any crowds, not after the last year.

 

Even adults here in Granville had been pulling pranks and doing tricks on each other, since the huge rallies for Tippecanoe and Old Kinderhook, Harrison and Van Buren, had so riled up all the Whigs and Democrats.

 

Horses lost their tails, and well-aged eggs flew when crowds pushed close, protecting the names of people who would never want to be seen clearly doing such mischief. It had gotten so bad, when the Whigs announced their nomination of the Hero of Tippecanoe for the presidency, that young women had to fear for getting jostled and bumped on the street, even if only by accident.

 

But last fall Jane had climbed out onto the roof of the buttery that extended from the house below her bedroom window, and swung down the branches of the maple tree out back, so she could walk up Bowery and down to a vantage point where she could see the Grand Illumination: all of Broadway and most of the streets adjoining were lit with candles in every window. Trundling along, pulled by cheering young men of the Literary and Theological Institution, were carts with broad sheets of parchment nailed to staves along the outer edges, and a row of oil lamps inside projecting profiles and puppets in sharp black outline onto the warm brown panels.

 

Every window was lit, except in a few houses known to support the Sage of Kinderhook, president for the last four years. Some of those houses lost panes to thrown hickory nuts, to the general disapproval of all but the most political in the village.

 

Now Mr. Harrison had been elected, had died after a month, and Mr. Tyler was sworn in, of whom it was now realized: he came from Virginia. The slavery question flared all the brighter, as both sides suspected the other of ill-dealing, and no one asked the slaves what they thought.

 

The Atwell house had never seen a slave, but people from the South would occasionally pass through with their African servants, exciting no little discussion. What had Jane sneaking out the back fence and down Pearl to Elm Street and over was a loud discussion in the Academy building, one you could hear blocks away.

 

Crossing the Lancaster Road, she saw the crowd of men in profile, like the illumination, inside against the windows, and a larger crowd outside, the boys clambering up on the sides of a sea of wagons nearby, trying to see in.

 

Then suddenly, there was a stir throughout the crowd, a silence within that spread without, and then dimly, from inside, a loud voice calling "There'll be no shackles here! Make way for Liberty."

 

In silhouette she saw a man being lifted up and passed over the heads of the crowd inside, a few hands reaching for him and being beaten back. Then the actual person, a black man, came feet first out the top of the door, and was gently set on the ground.

 

Mr. Hillyer she knew, and he pushed through the crowd at the door leading two horses; he leapt on one after helping the African fellow onto the other, and together they galloped up to the Broadway crossing, disappearing to the west beyond Sugar Loaf.

 

She was glad she had snuck out again, but marveled at what she had seen; heading home, it occurred to her that she couldn't, this time, ask her mother to explain it all.

 

 

(This is the fourth of a series of stories, each called "Twelve Years Old in Granville." Some will be based in fact, as with the slave John, who escaped after a habeas corpus hearing in the Old Academy Building in 1841; others will require a bit more creative guesswork and imagining. I hope you find them all informative and intriguing.)

 

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

Knapsack 10-21

Notes From My Knapsack 10-21-10

Jeff Gill

 

Twelve Years Old In Granville – 1833

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She felt, rather than heard the rumble of feet through the frame of the house itself. Her sister slept, just six years old, in the bed across the loft from her, and their three month old brother was gurgling downstairs in the corner of their parents' room, closer to the hearth and the last glowing embers of the evening fire.

 

Living in a fairly new frame house, you could tell without even opening your eyes if someone had on their boots, or was padding about in their wool stockings. The vibrations traveled across the floor planking, into the wall joists and up to the loft, along the puncheon floor, up the lathe-turned legs and through the cords that wound under the ticksack mattress.

 

It was full dark outside this November night, but there was a glow, coming and going oddly through the heavy, rippled glass of the one window at the gable end. Late as it was, to feel booted feet walking about downstairs was unusual, so she slipped on her shift and moved over to the head of the steep ladder down.

 

There was a creak of the door hinges, and a chill draft blowing up from below, then a distant sound of muttering voices, punctuated by the baby's muted cries. She turned, and slid down the ladder, catching the last wide rung with her bare feet and stepping down gently to the floor.

 

Her mother was not in bed, either, but standing near the front window, which had a set of city glass panes which were thinner and more transparent.

 

"What's going on, Mother?" the girl asked.

 

Mother jumped, then strode over to where her daughter stood and wrapped an arm around her tightly.

 

"The world is ending, dear; we must be brave."

 

Even for a twelve year old, accustomed to the oddity of adult conversation, this was strange, but not as terrifying as it might seem. She had been worrying that the strange lights outside were a neighboring house with a chimney fire, as so often happened, endangering their own snug home. Somehow, the world ending didn't sound quite as bad.

 

"How do you mean?" Before the older woman could form an answer, the door swung open again, and Father stood there, shaking his head.

 

"That fool Humphrey boy is just laying out there in the Broadway watching the show; he's going to get himself run over by a farmer coming home late." As he spoke, the church bell downtown began to ring steadily.

 

"Is it the . . ." the girl began to ask.

 

"No, darling," he answered, his glance taking in both wife and daughter with the endearment. "The Good Lord Almighty seems to be having us on a bit, for his own purposes."

 

The three of them walked out on the front step, and before looking up, saw that lamps were flickering into life through windows all along Elm Street, and people, mostly barefoot, stood outside as they did.

 

Above, the skies were filled with streaks of fire, bursts of golden-orange light shooting from a common point overhead, burning to the horizon in all directions. They were mostly all the same, and each one different.

 

Except to go in and pull on stockings, and check the baby, they sat there all night, until dawn overwhelmed the still flaring falling stars. "We may never know what that was, but it was surely glorious," said Father as the sun rose, and Mother went back inside to make them all a hot breakfast.

 

(This is the second of a series of stories, each called "Twelve Years Old in Granville." Some will be based in fact, as in the "Night the Stars Fell" on Nov. 12, 1833, and others will require a bit more creative guesswork and imagining. I hope you find them all informative and intriguing.)

 

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

Notes From My Knapsack 10-7-10

Jeff Gill

 

Twelve Years Old In Granville – 1809

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His father's funeral was a solemn affair, with mother and two sisters weeping nearby. The Rose brothers offered to dig the grave for the Averys, which was a blessing, but the nine year old son insisted on helping.

 

He was a strong boy, big for his age, and he'd have to be mature beyond his years to figure out how to support the four of them now.

 

That all began in 1806, and now at twelve he and his father's axe had been contracted to clear a parcel of land out on the edge of the village, one tree at a time.

 

Mother feared that he had gotten the job out of pity, and Alfred wryly asked what difference that made if he could do the work and got the pay from it?

 

The landowner had stopped him on Broadway and asked if he would do it, "could he" not really being the question after two winters' worth of firewood chopping since father's death. The pay would see them through another winter, and a bit more besides which could go towards buying some goods from the East, to sell here in the wilds of the Northwest as it still was, statehood or no.

 

They'd met out east of town to organize this area as a county last year, holding the first court sessions under a tree. It still stood, but many trees had fallen to build Licking County in the last year, and Alfred was ready to do his part.

 

He'd been ready to do his part to help father, as well as mother and his sisters, when he was just eight and they'd all left Granville, Massachusetts to come here alongside Raccoon Creek. They were more from the Connecticut side of the border, with many well-to-do family members still in that state, but father felt that his chances for success were greater out on the frontier, than in the more crowded bucket full of frogs back in New England. Father felt that out here, a man might stand out, without being overshadowed by any other man standing nearby.

 

Father had fought bravely in the Revolution under General Wayne, helping carry the day during the night attack on Stony Point, the battle that saved West Point (no thanks to Benedict Arnold). He had survived much, but his sudden death not a year after they came to Ohio left all his dreams of security and wealth in the hands of his son, along with an axe.

 

Walking out beyond the edge of the village, Alfred came to where two rough-cut stakes were placed along the road, a ragged bit of calico fluttering on the ends. Between these stakes, and a hundred and fifty paces straight back from the road, he was to cut down, segment, split, and quarter every tree, piling the cords where the owner's wagon could trundle by and pick them up on the way back into town from Newark.

 

Could he do it? Alfred Avery thought so. He spat on his hands, took up a firm grip on his axe (his father's axe), and walked up to the first tree. Then he swung.

 

(This is the first of a series of stories, each called "Twelve Years Old in Granville." Some will be based in fact, as in the earliest days of Alfred Avery, builder of the Avery-Downer House in 1842, and others will require a bit more creative guesswork and imagining. I hope you find them all informative and intriguing.)

 

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

Faith Works 10-2

Faith Works 10-2-10

Jeff Gill

 

Do You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth?

___

 

 

It humanizes them.

 

That's the publicist answer, usually, if someone actually has the nerve to ask about a celebrity and cursing. When you're in a setting that is surrounded by cameras and microphones, with a sense that there's little said that isn't scripted (as in written in a script by writers on staff), it's hard to think a curse word is entirely an accidental phenomenon.

 

I exempt Joe Biden in this category, a very unscripted politician.

 

Last week Brandy and Maks on "Dancing With The Stars" were getting interviewed after their routine. Brandy has been a sweet young innocent for about fifteen years now, and apparently is trying to transition to hot new rap star, so she gets regularly "bleeped" in the taped segment. 8:00 pm hour, opening of the show, and the Lovely Wife and I look at each other with a mix of irritation and frustration.

 

Then the Lad says "Why is she doing that?"

 

Why, indeed?

 

We have tried to raise our son not in a bubble, but with a clear sense that obscenity is bad, rude, and a sign of sloppy thinking mixed with careless behavior, akin to running across traffic without even looking. The idea that it's a moral failure is more (to us, at least) an index of the problem, not the source of it. Clean up your act, and your language will follow.

 

But he's also learned that it's a more serious matter to casually flop a mention of God into your speech. Back when "Trading Spaces" was a Saturday night regular in our house, the "reveal" moment could on one level be neatly divided into two categories. There were the "Oh, my gosh!" reactions, and another that phonologically was very closely related.

 

Usually, you could tell who would say which, but sometimes you'd get surprised, either way. I'd say "Oh, my gosh" was maybe one in three or four at best. The Lad started learning that referring to God in that way was not the end of the world, or an occasion for cringing horror, just a raised eyebrow of "was that really necessary?" He figured out almost on his own that if you're going to talk about God, you really shouldn't do it casually, but respectfully, as you should in talking about any person.

 

The Old Testament includes in the Ten Commandments the idea that "taking the Lord's name in vain" is wrong, and we teach that in our house. Swearing may or may not include that proscription (I recall a bumper sticker years ago that said "That's not Jesus' middle name" and almost driving off the road I laughed so hard), but they relate.

 

On the other hand, there's a fair amount of class and culture caught up in what makes for polite language versus curse words. When the French Normans invaded and conquered the Anglo-Saxon English, we began a social stratification that is still evident in our speech: you may urinate and defecate and even copulate while consigning someone to perdition, and still be accepted in polite (Norman) society. Use the Anglo-Saxon versions of any of those, and you will . . .

 

Well, there's the problem. Are we actually better off for having smashed those social boundaries? I'm sure it will help Brandy in her career re-invention as a not-so-young, not-so-innocent women in hip hop. In general, not so much. The F-bomb has become conversational punctuation among both genders and down to lower grades of school, to the point where it's the odd sidewalk where you don't hear it.

 

What I think is worth teaching, alongside a decent respect for those names that are held dear by some, of us is what my former junior high English and Latin teacher said early in 7^th grade to all us young, um, creatures. "It's not so much that swearing is wrong, ladies and gentlemen, it's that curse words are a sign that you just couldn't think of anything else to say. Put some effort and thought into it if you want to let someone know you're unhappy with them."

 

I thought of her when that commercial ran with old Marine sergeant Lee Ermey as a not-so-good therapist: not a swear word in it, but the impact was all the clearer.

 

Not to mention more precise!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; cuss him out at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

http://knapsack.blogspot.com/2010/01/links-for-newark-earthworks-tours.html

Faith Works 9-25

Faith Works 9-25-10

Jeff Gill

Or We Could Talk About Money . . .

___

In churches around our area, fall is usually the time for a swing
through Stewardship Land.

You remember Candy Land, right? With the Gumdrop Mountains and the
Molasses Swamp and the Crooked Old Peanut Brittle House?

Stewardship Land is more of a hazard filled board with Mission
Statement Mountains and a Deficit Swamp and a Optimistically
Projected House of Pledge Cards. Everyone knows the rules, everyone
has played the game, and everyone looks forward to reaching Home
Sweet Home, which is moving on to November and preparing for Advent.
There aren't really winners or losers, it's just the act of everyone
getting together and playing the game.

Sometimes there are congregational leaders who step up and say "let's
play a different game!" They get out "The Game of Tithe" or "Monopoly
on Decision-Making" or "Stratego Vision Planning."

And there are a number of outside "manufacturers" who create new game
boards with different pieces and counters and layouts, which can make
for a brief buzz of excitement . . . and after a few years it's
become a sort of "Candy Land" repetition itself.

Then there's the fellow who said "What good is it if you pass Go,
collect $200, and win the game, but lose your soul?" (GSV translation*)

In Christian churches we've usually made sure to say at least once,
with much head nodding, that it's not about our giving, but about our
everything. Plucking the first fruits off the Gingerbread Plum Tree
is all well and good, but only if it is, itself, a reminder to us
that the entire game board is a gift, and this span of time where we
get to draw cards and move around together has a beginning and an
end, but there's a wider reality out beyond the kitchen table which
our time here is part of.

We all know that Cousin Ernie always tries to palm the "Get Out of
Jail Free" card, and we recall guiltily that we've nudged a top hat a
square ahead when everyone was looking at the cat; likewise we're all
quietly calculating what the minimal amount is that we can give and
still feel like we're good people, while speculating on what others,
especially "others like us" are giving as a measure of our basic
obligation – and then working up quickly, but at length, our
justifications for not giving more.

Here's the easiest way out of all: we're not good people, and there's
no amount that can be fit into an offering plate or wedged into a
pledge envelope that will change that. It's all gift, everything we
have, and the truth of it is in how much of what we "possess" comes
from someone and somewhere else (check the tags on your clothes, for
instance), and how much we will take with us when we die.

Yeah, I had to go there.

So if we can't look at what we make as what we deserve – and c'mon, I
know I just heard you say you deserve much more than you get, right?
– and our assets are ultimately going to be used by others someday
anyhow, can we skip the game and get real about what Stewardship
really is?

This is a useful season in the life of any faith community to look at
our own income and outgo, consider where our values and priorities
lie, and ask if our spending and supporting accurately reflects who
we aspire to be, how we want to be seen in that large, wider, even
eternal sense; by the One who sees things in that way.

"Where your debit card statement itemizes, there your heart will be
also." (GSV*)

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around
central Ohio; occasionally he looks at the Hebrew & Greek of the
Bible and does the *Gill Standard Version, which is, to be fair, a
paraphrase. Sort of. Contact him for translation assistance at
knapsack77@gmail.com.

Knapsack 9-23

Notes From My Knapsack 9-23-10

Jeff Gill

 

A Season For Orange, Or Something Like It

___

 

Autumn arrives today, in an official sense, with all its astronomical papers in order.

 

We've already been suspecting the presence of a new season, quietly waiting just around the next corner.

 

Browned off grass and singed leaf edges confirm this suspicion, and then there's the appearance of orange on the landscape.

 

Now, in this age of industrial chemical coloration, the word orange itself starts to take on an unearthly hue in our minds. Orange barrels, construction worker vests, overhead alert sleeves on power cables – that's an orange of a sort.

 

But I'm seeing an older orange, the one that is the true harbinger of autumn

 

You could call this color pumpkin, since that's the broadest, most obvious place to pick it out. Big ripe garden gourds waiting for a knife and a candle to reach their jack-o'-lantern apotheosis, pumpkins are obviously orange, but with a lighter touch and an inner vibrancy.

 

Up in the canopy, where most leaves are holding on for a last few days equal to the nights, there are glimpses of russet and reddish-brown and orange.

 

Even out in the lawns, where much of the turf has given up the ghost, there's a faint hint of orange-ish-ness out in the middle of the dormant patches, made all the more distinctive by the green corners that flare up after fall rains renew the shady patches.

 

Then when you roll out through the countryside, there's a dry, dimmer orange underlying the corn and soybeans, past their growth, withdrawing into aridity, waiting for the harvesters to roam the fields by night under the September moon.

 

"Shine on, shine on harvest moon . . ." which itself can be seen, on first arising, as an orange orb in the east.

 

From now through the end of December, nights will be longer than days, having just passed the equinox. For a little while longer, though, there's still a bit of an evening where a walk around the neighborhood or down the side of the road can still stretch the legs and clear the mind.

 

Henry Thoreau wrote a beautiful essay titled "Walking" which is worth reading as a spur to doing some sauntering yourself, easy enough to find online. It closes with a poem which talks about a road in the neighborhood of Concord, MA which once went to Marlborough but is now a farm lane, still displaying milestones much as Licking County's own National Road does.

 

Henry closes with a thought that applies just as well to Newark-Granville Road or Pearl Street, Main St. or Cherry turning into Broad:

 

If with fancy unfurled

You leave your abode,

You may go round the world

By the Old Marlborough Road.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your favorite road at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 9-18

Faith Works 9-18-10
Jeff Gill

Whatever You Might Choose To Call Him
___

Not infrequently the question will come up, in regards to Jesus.

It gets asked courteously, sometimes confrontatively, occasionally combatively, always very curiously: "So you, as a Christian, think he was God?"

To which, of course, my answer is no.

We Christians believe he *is* God, then and now, before and after.

Jesus?

Yep. That's the deal.

If there is further conversation on the point, it's usually along the lines of "So how does that work?"

The short answer is "the Trinity." Yes, the doctrine of the Trinity doesn't get much play these days, in our marvelously rationalistic era, since it's (at its best) an extended philosophical argument for the Three-in-One-ness of God. This was much more common a point of clarification, oddly enough, in a more so-called primitive era, like the early medieval period of Ireland, where Patrick, late of England, stolen slave by the Celts and now returned Christian missionary, plucked up a shamrock to help answer the question all the cool Druid priests were asking.

A three-leaf clover actually doesn't work as a shamrock, since it really is three separate leaves off the central stem. A shamrock, if you look verrry closely, is a single leaf, with deeply incised lobes which from a bit of a distance looks like three separate leaves. On closer examination, it's really one. There's God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, said Patrick, soon to be bishop and saint, and patron of a springtime festival with the wrong plant stuck up on the barroom windows.

Most folks aren't that much more concerned than a Druid, and leave the Trinity as well enough alone at that point. But the whole idea of Jesus as . . . what did you say he was?

God.

Right – seriously, you believe that?

Muslim folk of good will let me know that they are puzzled by Christian claims to be monotheists, believers in one God, but that we think we can say that Jesus is God. As I mentioned last week, there's some surprisingly positive stuff said about Jesus in the Qur'an, but there are also some unmistakable assertions that you simply can't, shouldn't call Jesus either God or the Son of God. It's a mistake, one we should correct forthwith.

And some Christian folk will downplay that kind of formulation, and aver that Jesus represents, or embodies God to us in a very compelling way; he's a metaphor, or a window . . . but they may be very hesitant to emphasize that Jesus is in any way God himself. A door to God, a metaphor which Jesus himself uses.

On behalf of orthodox Christian teaching, let me try to get into my inner St. Patrick and describe what many of us mean when we say "Jesus is Lord." If you look at the sun – first, you really barely even can and truly shouldn't look directly at the sun. You'll put your eyes out, kid.

As powerful and visible and effectual as the sun is, when you glance up in its general direction, you can "see the sun." It occupies a particular place, and that place appears from our point of view to move.

In fact, the sun is what we orbit around ourselves, and even when the sun goes down, the light of the moon is reflected sunlight, and the warmth of the earth is radiating from the day's store of illumination; the gravity and mass of the sun hauled together and formed the planets of the solar system, millennia ago and spinning still.

You can calculate the movements and position of the sun's appearance in the heavens, but that doesn't even begin to encompass the physics and reality of nuclear fusion that is the heart of what makes the sun sunny. It looks round and reassuring on an autumn blue sky day, but what the hydrogen atoms are up to for that to be there beggars the imagination, hinted at when we glance too long, and look away with an afterimage burned into our eye from 93 million miles away.

When we look to Jesus, we see enough. We Christians believe that pointing to Jesus directs people to as much of God as we can handle, and then some; no matter how Trinitarian we're feeling, we know that there's even more to God than what we see in him.

And it's the "sent-ness" of Jesus that makes us stop and take notice, because everything about him and the time he walked among us points to how he was a specific, intentional, intended message of God to us. To their then, and our now.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story that shed light into your life at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 9-11

Faith Works 9-11-10

Jeff Gill

 

People of the Book

___

 

Are you one of the "people of the book"?

 

In Islam, there are a number of verses in three different chapters of the Qur'an that spell out how Jews and Christians are also "People of the Book," and should be treated with respect and fellowship alongside of Islam.

 

That's not to say Islam doesn't still hold firmly to their central teaching that God's communication with humanity was not completed until Mohammed received the Qur'an and fulfilled what the Hebrew Scriptures and Christian Testaments (Old & New Testaments of the Bible to most of you) also said.

 

Not too dissimilarly from what members of the Latter-Day Saints would share with you about their Book of  Mormon, that it completes and concludes what the Holy Bible teaches.

 

So for an Islamic worshiper, the Qur'an (from the Arabic for "The Teaching" or "The Recitation" as it was first spoken from God to Muhammad and is still most often shared verbally, in Friday worship in mosques) is the final revelation of God. As a Christian would say about the Old Testament, the New Testament does not invalidate the Old Testament books, but fulfills them through the person of Jesus Christ; so a Moslem would say that the Hebrew & Christian scriptures are not invalidated by the Qur'an, just completed by them.

 

Nine years ago today, a group of 19 men committed a vast and horrible crime, claiming that they did so in the service of Islam; their directors and minders, who made statements after the death of their students and the thousands they killed along with themselves, also have maintained that the "jihad" or "struggle" they carry on against the Christian west is a true expression of their faith.

 

Islam in Arabic means "submission," which is specifically "submission to God." The jihad all faithful Moslems are called to in the Qur'an is the struggle to overcome one's own desires and fleeting wishes and submit to God's will for your life, expressed in unity with fellow worshipers, charity to those in need, and a life lived out with care and consideration for decency and order in the larger community.

 

Are their disturbing verses that, read alone, undermine that general outlook? Yes, as does the Bible (see Psalm 137:8-9), and if you tried to define Christianity by such a passage, I'd be offended. Have their been teachers who preach angry and destructive doctrines in Islam? Sure, and please don't make me defend Fred Phelps, but I don't feel like I have to apologize for him anytime I'm talking about my faith.

 

I've heard plenty of Islamic religious teachers explain how suicide bombings and unprovoked attacks are themselves Islamic. The Arab world has political and economic issues which weave in and out of Islamic concerns; the Industrial West has consumerism and environmental problems that weave in and out of modern Christian teaching, but should not be taken to define each other, either.

 

Dozens of Moslems were among the nearly 3,000 killed when the Twin Towers were attacked and ultimately collapsed (estimates range from 19 to 28 as best as I can find). Those who were trapped and seeking safety no doubt prayed as they sought escape, as they faced death alongside of Jews and Christians and Jains and Zoroastrians and Buddhists and doubtless a few praying agnostics.

 

Yet the towers fell.

 

Those prayers, however you understand them, were real, and I believe aimed in the same direction. Each of us in our own faith tradition wrestles with the question of what an unanswered prayer (as we see it) means.  But it troubles me deeply when people feel the need to specify whose prayers are real, whose are heard; my faith is in one God.

 

What I would also want to say, respectfully, about my faith, is that I believe one's ability to focus and live by prayer, and to hear or discern what response comes from such prayer, is best found in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, definitively revealed to us in the Gospels of the Christian New Testament. I don't see how that belief is in any way undermined by also affirming that prayers of other faiths seek the same God that I find clearly shown to me in Christ.

 

All the Moslems I've ever known would agree that my prayers are to the same Allah (simply Arabic for God), but would, with a twinkle, ask me to hear and read what the Qur'an says about my Jesus. To which I'd say, I've read it, and let me tell you about how I read the 22^nd chapter of Revelation . . .

 

And the discussion continues!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your faith at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 9-9

Notes from My Knapsack 9-9-10

Jeff Gill

 

Notes From an Unrepentant Optimist

___

 

Glasses that are half full and half empty, spectacles with roseate hues, buttered toast falling to the carpeting – plenty of metaphors out there for the spectrum of optimism to pessimism.

 

What do you call it if you believe, and generally feel that everything will turn out all right, but only after a fair amount of misery? If you assess the nature of most people as lazy, but well intended, while suffering from a surplus of rationalization, still always trying to do the right thing: does that make one a misanthrope? A Timon of Athens?

 

If you watch too much cable news, or its vast extrusions across the internet, you generally hear about fear, terror, crisis, collapse, epidemic, outbreak, disaster, anger, bitterness, resentment, anxiety, and oh yeah, fear.

 

All of which gets you to read down past the jump, click to page two, or stay for the second half hour.

 

That being their main point and purpose.

 

In general, the picture they paint of reality is done in primary colors, mostly blood red and coward yellow and depressive blue. As any of you know who have to work much with computer printers, it's amazing what you can do with those three tints, but it takes some subtle mixing and attention to detail. Lose either of those qualities, and you get ghostly shadowing or muddy outlines that aren't even recognizable.

 

We're up against the tenth anniversary of a horrible act, a crime against this nation and against the very idea of peace and justice. It still beggars my not inconsiderable imagination that anyone, no matter what their motivation, could shoulder their way past families with small children to butcher flight attendants and pilots to fly planes into office towers.

 

There is, afoot in the world, the ability to choose an evil beyond imagining, and I do imagine that this is part of what our presidents have to try to vividly imagine every morning, so that Bush now looks ten years younger and Obama ten years older, only two years after their change of responsibilities.

 

So sure, we have to be able to think the unthinkable from time to time, and it's deeply unsettling to learn that some who wanted to walk in the footsteps of the 9-11 assassins met to plan in an Upper Arlington coffee shop that I've been in myself. It makes you think.

 

What it shouldn't make you think is that this is the norm for humanity, that most people are readily able to turn that corner into darkness. We have it in us, and some do, but for the most part, most bad decisions are no more than the result of looking for a corner to cut, wanting to knock off early, to get a task done faster so as to move on to . . . well, to do what we want to do.

 

There's an old saying "Never attribute to malice or hostility what can more easily be explained by ignorance and laziness." Most so-called conspiracies and crimes, whether of omission or commission, are more a convergence of corner-cutting characters than they are shrouded figures plotting our harm, or their gain, in private.

 

I promise to say a bit more about the Newark Holy Stones next column, but that needed to be said first, for the season we're in, and actually, to help set up what really is at work with those puzzling artifacts found 150 years ago.

 

Meanwhile, be of good cheer: most of the opposition we face in this world means well, but is looking for the easy way out. I remember that every time I look at my greatest enemy, which is most mornings while brushing my teeth.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him what makes you hopeful or fearful at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter. 

Faith Works 9-4

Faith Works 9-4-10

Jeff Gill

 

Willisburg, Kentucky

___

 

 

It had been just a few days past a hundred years since the coffin preceded me into Willisburg, Kentucky.

 

Actually, Carl Etherington's body had probably gone by train to Springfield from Lexington, and then been driven, almost certainly by an undertaker's horsedrawn hearse, up to Willisburg.

 

Today, in 2010, I was driving my car along a road whose curves betrayed its wagon-worn roots, dropping down from the divided highway of the Bluegrass Parkway, ten miles and more into the Kentucky hills.

 

In 1910, the week after July 8, the small town of Willisburg saw a child of their community now returned, never grown to full manhood but having seen more than most men did in twice his years, ending with the horrifying sight of a mob calling for his life, which they claimed and took.

 

We know very little for sure about Carl, but his gravestone clearly shows his age as seventeen. His parents surely got that part correct, and there was no question about the date of death.

 

Many articles were written in the weeks and months after the Newark riots and infamous lynching, and what seems certain is that Carl Etherington lied about his age. It may not have been the first time, since there are mentions of a career at sea, or perhaps with the Marines. He was apparently a tall, strongly built young man, and no one realized at the time, with him or against him, that he was so terribly young – they thought 22, or possibly 20, which was surely young enough.

 

He was hired at a time when jobs were scarce, and to work as what we would call today "private security" or more caustically a "rent a cop." He was part of an effort to "clean up" Newark when the county had voted dry a very damp town. Officials outside of the city's own power structure, including the mayor of Granville, had pressed to have the new liquor laws enforced, by force, and young Mr. Etherington was caught up, in Cleveland or Columbus or Worthington (again, accounts vary), and sent by interurban to another day's wages in downtown Newark, a city he would not leave alive.

 

Those events have long been part of the lore of downtown, perhaps even part of its burden, and the 100^th anniversary has moved a number of us to seek commemoration if not resolution. That story is not done, and some Christian leaders have invited us to join them tomorrow, Sunday afternoon, at the Courthouse Square gazebo for a 4 pm remembrance.

 

On the evening when, just south of the courthouse, Etherington was lynched in 1910, a few of us gathered, walked the path he was dragged from the old jail's north door to the deadly corner, and briefly set a wreath on the spot where he died. We prayed, quietly and solemnly, for peace.

 

Then I told those there July 8 that I was going south in a few days, and would take the wreath away, to place it on Carl Etherington's grave. We agreed that this would be right, and so I did.

 

A week later, I parked at the Willisburg Christian Church, which hosted a century before what is probably still the largest gathering the county had ever seen, some 3 to 4,000 who turned out for Carl's funeral. His marker was easy to spot, near the road, and with a bronze plaque inset with a letter engraved from the Ohio Methodists meeting at Lakeside that summer. Their offering for the family also paid for this gravestone.

 

I set the wreath, offered my own prayers, and went back across the street. Near a basketball hoop in the parking lot were half a dozen youth of Willisburg today. I explained my visit, and asked if they knew the story of the stone with the plaque. Most didn't, one thought she'd heard the story before, her friend nodding.

 

"But I thought he was . . . how old was he?" Seventeen, I replied. They all looked at each other, and their realization was apparent. "Why did you come down here?" she asked. I answered that a few of us thought it was never too late to admit that a wrong had been done, even if we couldn't right it.

 

I was asked much the same thing by e-mail the following week, by a name that startled me when it popped up in my in-box. The last name was "Etherington." I explained as I did in Willisburg, where this man's father had been a cousin of Carl's family in his youth. They now live far away, but had been back to take pictures and wonder at long ago stories. We had seen each other's photos searching online, and I'd left a message. Even so, to see that name in my e-mail . . . I answered right away.

 

His reply to my description of the ceremony, and the wreath, and my visit was "Let me say, on behalf of the family, that we are very grateful for your remembrance and your efforts."

 

Somehow, I believe that statement has an echo that spans centuries.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your family stories that bridge centuries at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 8-28

Faith Works 8-28-10

Jeff Gill

 

Every Conversation Starts With Some Assumptions

___

 

This year, completely aside from the New York City controversy over an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, the celebration that normally concludes the month of Ramadan for Moslems called "Eid al-Fitr," falls on September 11.

 

Since the ritual observances for Islam are based on a lunar calendar, Ramadan moves "backwards" a bit each year, so this won't happen again for decades. But what to do this year?

 

In some communities, the Islamic organizations sponsor a large street fair or public extravaganza (like Blessed Sacrament is doing today in Newark, check it out!) for their Eid celebration, but that was being rethought even before the Cordoba Center/Park51 flap took off.

 

So in many settings, Moslems are either quietly downplaying their festivities, or rescheduling them. This is both unfortunate, and perfectly reasonable. Can it be both? I'd say yes.

 

Not many years after 9-11, that date fell on a Saturday. A couple met with me to plan a wedding. They were somewhat anxious about the convergence, but that was the only week their families and friends could get together on a Saturday.

 

My counsel to them was that they could make a good decision either way; if they liked the idea of having a happier memory to go with those numbers on the calendar, and didn't mind the other news that would come along with it, there was no reason to avoid the date. If they decided between the two of them that the commemorations and remembrances would be a distraction from celebrating their marriage, let's figure out another day.

 

They went with Sept. 11, and I believe they did the right thing. The point was getting the people they loved together to mark their day, and if others thought it odd, that was their concern.

 

If we were in northern New Jersey, I suspect our conversation would be different. It might or might not be doable.

 

In the same way, I think the fact that you can find folks spouting vile stuff about mosques and Moslems has nothing to do with whether or not it's reasonable for people to ask questions about the New York controversy. The sources of the money alone...

 

The primary possibilities seem to be either Saudi Arabia or Iran for funding this, and I completely sympathize with those who say they'd feel much better about this project the moment one 900 square foot Baptist prayer room is allowed anywhere in the entire country of Saudi Arabia.

 

Tell me a new synagogue gets approval in Iran or they stop jailing and executing Baha'is, and I'm fine with them paying the bills for a study center anywhere in this country.

 

Mind you, I still think Park51 should be built. They got the permits, they're legally moving forward, and that should be that. But don't call it Islamophobia, unless I get to call it Christianophobia every time I hear about a new church project getting triple scrutiny and pressure to sign a document promising not to open a day care or feed the homeless. Which happens just about every day in this country. Churches don't get free passes, they get extra scrutiny, so the Islamic center isn't getting much different treatment than the rest of us religious folks.

 

But then there's Glenn Beck. Yes, I know, today he's doing a very honorable and patriotic thing in Washington, and I wish him and his hundreds of thousands well, and safe travels back home with happy memories.

 

Right now, it's hard for me to find him trustworthy even if he were to announce that the sun was rising today in the east, or that my mother loves me.

 

Last Wednesday, I got a number of calls and e-mails that evening and into the next day. "Did you know Glenn Beck talked about the Newark Earthworks on his show?" Indeed he did. He also argued for Egyptian influences and Hebrew involvement in their construction, pointing at the diameter of the Observatory Circle and the geometry of the attached Octagon, saying it was "exactly, EXACTLY!!!" the same as an Egyptian "stade," 606 feet.

 

The problem being that this dimension is 1054 feet.

 

He went on to talk about the Newark Holy Stones, and how they've been hidden, or erased, or willfully misinterpreted by those who study them. By which he means, those who don't agree with his take on them.

 

Well, Brad Lepper and yours truly are the primary writers and presenters on those unusual and interesting objects, and it's hard to look at our individual and joint speaking schedule over the last ten years and say we've been hiding much – our wives would agree.

 

As for willful misinterpretation? Mr. Beck, if you can't even get the basic measurements right, why would anyone trust your interpretation over anyone else's? I'll let you all check out my interpretation on the Holy Stones more fully next week.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's had the pleasure of writing, speaking, and publishing on the Newark Holy Stones for years. Tell him about a mystery everyone knows about at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 8-26

Notes From My Knapsack 8-26-10

Jeff Gill

"Why don't we know about these stories?" – Glenn Beck

___

This week was going to be a clever essay about how the idea of an
Islamic community center with a prayer room on Broadway might go over
better than a Chinese restaurant. Seriously, I don't know how some
people have so much spare time that they can worry about there being
excessive scents of ginger and soy sauce in the air along Granville's
main drag.

Yes, I've actually heard someone say "I don't know if I want a
Chinese restaurant downtown."

Would you rather smell more Aqua Velva and chicken gravy scent? Is a
Sharper Image store more in keeping with our cultural traditions? (Is
there still a Sharper Image? Nope.)

But then Glenn Beck started picking on me.

OK, not me, but on anyone who studies and interprets the Newark
Earthworks, and particularly the so-called "Holy Stones." Apparently,
according to Mr. Beck, we've been hiding stuff by explaining it all
wrong, which is to say not showing how the mounds in this area are
clearly influenced by Egyptian and Hebrew writing, ideas, and design.

Of course, one of his key "blackboard" points is that a particular
recurring dimension is exactly (EXACTLY!!!) 606 feet, which is the
side of the Giza pyramid, aka an Egyptian "stade," which is a cool
looking word. He used it a great deal.

Mind you, having walked the Octagon and Observatory Circle as much as
many golfers out there, I can tell you foot by foot, as well as from
multiple surveys and as any child with a mapping program from Google
or Bing could show, the dimension he's saying is exactly (EXACTLY!!!)
the same as an Egyptian stade is 1052 feet.

That's not very exact, if you ask me. Which Glenn Beck did not.

Glenn Beck has his own sources, but when he says his purpose is to
reveal history that "the Smithsonian, science, government, and
commerce colluded to erase," I will admit he's striking close to
home. When he's talking about the Newark Holy Stones, Dr. Brad Lepper
of the Ohio Historical Society and yours truly are the main writers
and presenters on the subject. Stephen Williams of Harvard and Ken
Feder of Connecticut State have published books that address the Holy
Stones, but they largely cite . . . well, me and Brad.

So if anyone is erasing history relating to the Holy Stones, that'd
be us.

Beck continues, "The history that has been erased in our nation and,
in particular, with the Native Americans, happened because it didn't
fit the story they created – manifest destiny. It only works if the
Indians were savages. And they had to have savages for commerce and
government to expand. The ancient artifacts prove otherwise. Why
aren't we looking into those?" (Wed., Aug. 18, 2010 broadcast)

We've been looking into them, and we have a story to tell – and have
been telling it to anyone who will listen. OHS's own magazine, Brad
did a talk at the Granville Library a few months ago, we teamed up to
present to the Denison faculty a few years ago, and were both
mentioned in a story in "Der Spiegel" about the same time.

I could go on.

Brad and I are happy to say it all again, and I'll offer an outline
in my next column. For now, I have to say, having been personally in
the vortex of the spin cycle, the grain of salt I'll take with
anything Mr. Beck says now is about the size of one of those blocks
people set out for the deer.

And for what it's worth, I think the mosque absolutely should be
built, just as soon as the Port Authority quits jerking around the
Greek Orthodox church crushed on 9-11, whose land was taken and who's
being "encouraged" to accept a site around the corner and away from
where they'd been the last 91 years.

If the church and the new tower and the memorial were done and
dedicated, I doubt we'd hear much about the Islamic center. That's
the contrast that has plenty of people of good will not feeling good
about this development. It's not the fault of the Moslem group, and
it's a shame they're taking heat more accurately aimed at the public
officials who have so poorly handled the last ten years around the site.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around
central Ohio; tell him about what Glenn Beck has said about you at
knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 8-21

Faith Works 8-21-10

Jeff Gill

 

The Church Is Not a Building (Nor Is a Mosque)

___

 

The Lad and I just got back from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where we and our Scout troop got to hike all over, and I do mean all over, the historic battlefield.

 

This was my sixth or seventh time to Gettysburg, the first time in 1973 on a family vacation, in the back of a Country Squire wagon with the flip seats in the rear and my grandmother among the seven of us in that car. It was that kind of trip. We stayed in two motel rooms, and walked down the street to the old brick visitor center, centrally located, where I pushed Grandma Gill around in a helpfully provided wheelchair.

 

Now, the visitor center has moved to a new facility, set back away from the Copse of Trees and The Angle, the heart of Union lines where the vast Confederate charge on the third day of the battle surged and broke, leaving only the memory of Pickett's Charge as a high water mark for Lee's rebel army. The wide mile those Virginians and North Carolinians marched across under steady fire are still very much as they looked in July of 1863, with only a few marble and granite monuments to signal where certain units stood and fought and died.

 

And just to one side, a brightly colored sign for Pickett's Buffet, where they serve all you can eat style meals of an evening.

 

For years, people have bemoaned the presence, right up on the edge of the NPS managed battlefield, of this more than mildly tacky attraction, and the three fast food chain outlets that march in their own way back into town. "That shouldn't be here" is often said.

 

There's a solution to this, of course, and that's for someone to buy it and tear it down. The story around Gettysburg is that the owner would sell in a heartbeat, but for a price far beyond what the federal government or the historic foundation wants to pay. He's making good money serving up fried chicken, ham, and prime rib on Fridays, alongside pans full of mashed potatoes and overcooked carrots, so there it sits, right next to the site of its namesake event.

 

Eminent domain would apply, but no governmental entity has wanted to take that step, which would require a calculation of what all those meals and tips are worth along with the land, and compensation be paid to the landowner, while the tax revenue for those wings and legs and make your own sundaes would go away as well.

 

Is it really "an offense," as I've heard a number of folks say, to have this restaurant, or a set of golden arches, or any other frivolity, food-wise, that close to the center of the battlefield? If it were in the path of Pickett's Charge, surely; if directly adjoining, perhaps; nearby…? Well, what is that, anyhow?  And another block along is a shop where you can get a Confederate flag tattooed on your arm, or elsewhere. I'm mildly put off by that, myself.

 

So of course I'm thinking about the "mosque" debate in Manhattan. Within the now "official" two block radius of Ground Zero for recalling 9-11, there are peep shows and strip clubs. And a Sufi Moslem group wants to build a community center and prayer room there, which meets the general description of mosque.

 

Should they be able to? Of course they should. Should Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, the only place of worship destroyed on 9-11 in the collapse of Tower 2, be allowed to rebuild near their original site, and should the city and Port Authority quit trying to nudge them off Manhattan and onto an obscure location rather than facilitate their restoration next to the site? Absolutely.

 

Are politicians and fundraisers for polemical ground demagoguing this issue shamelessly, with little attention to the facts? Beyond a doubt. Do most Americans think it's the right of a religious group to build any worship facility wherever they want?

 

Now THIS is the point where the debate won't go away. Anyone who's tried to build a church in a zoned municipality knows that neither Christian nor Moslem or anything else isn't getting you a short cut, and in fact may create roadblocks as neighbors ask "are there bells? Will you feed the homeless? There won't be a daycare in the building, will there?"

 

What has gotten folks worked up is the idea that a) this Islamic group may have gotten special consideration to fast-track their project, and b) the mosque or whatever it is will be finished before the WTC memorial will be done, let alone the new tower that will stand in its place. It feels wrong, and that's not racism or hate or unconstitutional concern.

 

If the Orthodox church had been cleared for construction and the Freedom Tower was done and the dedication for a memorial was scheduled for 9-11-2010, we'd not hardly hear a peep about these plans for 2011. I hope the mosque gets built, but those who wish it were somewhere else have my sympathy and understanding.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your travels at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 8-14

Faith Works 8-14-10

Jeff Gill

 

Summer's End and New Year Beginnings

___

  

This isn't always popular news, but school does in fact begin for some this week, most the week following.

 

From a parent and family – and church! – point of view, this is New Year's, with a resetting of all kinds of interior and exterior clocks whether you have kids in school or not.

 

And while summer has heat and calendar aplenty for us through September, for most of us, this makes for a technical end to vacation season and most summer activities, with so many amusement parks and pools closing down with Labor Day.

 

In the life of most faith communities, this also marks the end to the "summer slump." Sure, some folks will quickly say "if there was a summer slump, why am I so tired!" VBS and church camp to say the very least can call for extra bursts of energy that punctuate most churches' summers.

 

What the slump really refers to is a characteristic drop in attendance and offering income. That's extremely common, and in itself not a bad sign or indicator of poor congregational health.

 

This is a good time, though, for church leadership to reflect back on the summer and ask how schedules and programs and approaches worked, didn't work, and might change for next summer. I know I've been through more than a few discussions of this subject during the spring, when recollections of the previous summer blur into previous summers (and decades), and then there's a hurried scramble through minutes and reports from years past to figure out "what was the case last July?"

 

So I heartily commend to anyone who can in their church life: look at the summer of 2010 right now, and ask yourself "what served the mission and ministry of this fellowship best, and what could do with some adjustment?"

 

When attendance drops and offering doesn't, that tends to say a pretty good thing: folks are tending to their church commitment, even as their travels and vacations went on. If attendance doesn't budge much, or within historic norms, but offering drops significantly, that's a whole 'nother creature.

 

In my work with congregations of multiple denominations around the eastern and southern US, I can attest that the latter situation is all too common this year. There's some reassurance with the stable attendance, but declines in giving are probably the result of continued anxiety about the economy, about household employment and the future, and in too many cases, outright unemployment or income decreases that simply must rebound into the offering plate.

 

For many churches, the state of the budget as to income vs. expenses at August's end is going to be determinative for the 2011 budget. That can push program choices for next year's planning in its own way.

 

When you have the double whammy of declining attendance and offering, that should be plenty of reason for considering some changes. If you have the kind of worship space where you can adapt the seating, reconfiguring so folks don't look at empty seating during worship actually helps; even in traditional sanctuaries, roping off back pews or shifting to one side will work. A sense that no one's coming to worship makes people . . . well, not want to come to worship! Pulling people together when you know the numbers will be a bit smaller regardless maintains community and the kinds of connections that reaffirm worship attendance as a summer value.

 

Changing worship times is something that the summer can offer as a unique and uniquely safe opportunity. For those without air conditioning, an earlier service while the sun is already up early often is a help, and even when A/C is on tap, earlier means a cooler trip to and from the service, less energy use to keep the worship space cool, and an earlier service means more of the day – which may be the only day for some families to get out and around – for leisure activities. Promoting activity and exercise is not antithetical to faith, but can be a healthy partner.

 

And summertime can be a chance to experiment with a smaller, earlier, or different day worship time. Summer schedules are flipped about for everyone, and folks are used to having to check times and schedules for the fair and parks and venues, so a special service fits into the spirit of the season very well. Have you ever thought about adding a Wednesday evening or Saturday evening service? A summer "experiment" is a great chance to try it, and if it takes off, keep it up; if not, it was just another crazy summer experiment.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him what your church did differently this summer at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.