Faith Works 7-7

Faith Works 7-7-12

Jeff Gill

 

Notes from the apocalpyse, junior version

___

 

One of the aspects of the pastoral role is that of "ritual specialist."

 

That's a kind of anthropological look at being in charge of ceremonial occasions, and in ecclesiastical terms it means you've had the training for and the theological background to know what service parts go where when, and how you are allowed to change and rearrange depending on various circumstances.

 

In some religious traditions, the acts and words around the observance of communion are set and inviolable, and in others you have a great deal of latitude, while some would prefer to avoid communion as a ceremonial event altogether, keeping it to certain occasions . . . and so on.

 

Weddings are one time where, whatever your own ordination or certification, you are called on to be a "ritual specialist" for sure, even if no one would ever throw that odd title around.

 

"Can we do this? Is this appropriate? Can we change this and add that?" The questions are myriad, and if I get specific I know there are lovely married couples in central Ohio who will think I'm talking about them, so I'll just let you use your imagination. But things happen at weddings that you just never used to have to consider, let alone have a plan for response to, and they sure didn't talk about this in seminary in the 80's.

 

So I understand clergy who retreat in a sort of formalism, and say "if I'm presiding at a wedding and signing the license, then the service takes place in a church, in my church, and the outline is *this* and no, I don't allow substitutions, this isn't a Chinese buffet." There's a certain calm and clarity to that approach.

 

If you say, as many do and I'm one of many, "Sure, happy to preside at an outdoor wedding," then you do, in fact, lose a certain amount of standing to object or require. You still can, but the negotiation is now no longer with you in the driver's seat.

 

And then there are wedding planners, who often are on a whole 'nother playbook.

 

What I say is "Do you have a Plan B?" Because if this is outdoor as in "I'm sure the weather will be fine in Ohio in [name month here]" and without a nearby option confirmed and reserved, I will say "No." Not often, but under those circumstances, I will and do.

 

Which is how I ended up driving on the bike path getting back to the Bryn Du Mansion just after the storm, where I just had been before it hit, looking at all the lovely decorations hanging around the plaza by the fieldhouse, which was both Plan B and the site for the reception dinner after.

 

Storm Night was the rehearsal (& rehearsal dinner) and the next Day of Chaos was the scheduled wedding day, and let this ritual specialist tell you: it was beautiful, and no doubt memorable, and an awesome example to a newly married couple of how a wedding, like a marriage, requires the co-operation and involvement of a whole bunch more than two people.

 

The respective families of the bride and groom jumped in with everything from generators and chain saws to hauling gear and toasting without notes by candlelight. The teams at Cherry Valley Lodge, where they let us run an ad hoc rehearsal in their lobby by lantern light, and fed everyone as if this happened most weekends; Bruce Cramer and the Bryn Du staff who steered and sorted and flexed to make this work out; Susan Kaiser at Faire-la-cuisine and her crew who somehow managed to feed 250 people in a pretty dark and rapidly heating room with food that I'm sure would have looked as good as it tasted if we could have seen it; and most of all the bride & groom, Natalie & Josh, who handled themselves with all the grace under pressure you could ask of a couple.

 

They did, however, immediately leave the scene of devastation for an area with more advanced technology and infrastructure: Mexico.

 

Meanwhile, I'm sitting in a respite of air conditioning five days later, typing this courtesy of MickeyD's wifi, thinking how you simply can't, and probably shouldn't plan for something like *this*, but there's an element of flexibility and adaptability that you can practice, and that allows the Spirit of God to jump on board and be part of the plan.

 

We've all gotten some serious practice time in this week, I think!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him about your serendipity and Spirit-filled moments in the midst of the maelstrom last week at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-30

Faith Works 6-30-12

Jeff Gill

 

A motivation from within or without

___

 

Incentives are a funny thing. The Lad is in a summer reading program where reading items gets you tickets, and the tickets get you in a drawing for a Kindle Fire, so suddenly reading is a major theme.

 

Plus he's reading without being asked, told, or hinted at, entirely at his own initiative.

 

That, and the prospect of a Kindle Fire.

 

Mind you, he's grown up in a houseful of books, with a good education where reading is affirmed, and plenty of other "educational supports." But it's the hope of entering a drawing, one that he's very unlikely to win, which has spun his attitude on reading around.

 

This same approach has shown some interesting results with school attendance and graduation in various locations around the country, but also provokes no little controversy. Should a student be rewarded for doing what they're already supposed to do? Is it right to provide cash or goods in return for behavior that is already legally mandated?

 

Yet what you find is that the argument of future reward is remarkably unsuccessful in most circumstances, and not just for the young. Telling people that a new practice or behavior change now will result in good things much later, even very (very) good things, has a pretty poor success rate generally speaking.

 

But asking for a different personal choice in return for a relatively modest immediate reward – a gift card from a retailer, even a handful of small hard candies – garners a much higher rate of return. Even an intrinsically worthless paper ticket (albeit that in turn qualifies you for something more valuable) that is handed over in response has a leverage all out of proportion to a logical understanding of outcomes.

 

Traditional Christianity has an incentive program in place. One aspect of it is, we hope, far in the future, and that has to do with the end of the world. A little closer, but we also hope not so much, is the end of the world from our own subjective point of view. In either case, there's a reward offered for changed behavior.

 

Theologically, that's not how you're supposed to describe it (or look at it), but it gets talked about that way pretty often. Along with the DIS-incentive of punishment, lasting and significant, for continuing poor choices and bad behavior, there's a future reward in store for those who make right choices, or so it's said.

 

Not to make light of the objective or doctrinal status of heaven or hell, but the practical problem is that it's very hard to find anyone who says their decision to adopt a belief system stems from their desire to secure long-term future benefits. Don't write to tell me about someone who did, I'm saying that in general, that's not what gets people to worship services.

 

As you dig in to the actual substance of your faith community, I think it's likely that you'll find having a secure, calm sense of what eternity means for you actually does change you in the here and now, for the better. It's just that you probably didn't come through the door looking for that when you first came to church. In a similar way, my hope is that my son will come to a better understanding of why free-choice reading expands and illumines his world as he delves into it, but that's not why he dove in to start with.

 

So why did you start attending worship services? What got you in the door to start with, and what brought you back the second time? An open, honest conversation about this for church leaders can be very informative.

 

Should churches pay people to come to church? Well, no . . . but we do offer dinners and music and programs and potential friendship and fellowship. That's not the same, you might answer, which I wouldn't argue too much, except: they are incentives.

 

What incentives would help your church move to the next step in evangelism and mission? It can be a revelatory conversation.

 

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

 

Knapsack 6-28

Notes From My Knapsack 6-28-12

Jeff Gill

 

Not just a matter of opinion

___

 

Have you ever been yelled at?

 

Probably so; most people would say so. Less well known is that most of us, who think we've been yelled at, would find upon asking the yeller that they don't think they were yelling at the yellee.

 

Yelling is a matter of opinion, in most cases. There's no federal standard for decibels in committing the act of "yelling," nor is the tone or word choice well established.

 

In fact, for most of us, "getting yelled at" is a phrase we use for people we know, about when they amp up their usual volume and inflection to make a point.

 

And yelling is what we call it when someone's telling us something we don't want to hear.

 

I'm not saying there's no such thing as yelling as an objective reality: Mom on the back porch yells my name out across the neighborhood, a Scout troop on a hike overlooking a valley yells into it to hear an echo, and so on.

 

But the whole "so-and-so yelled at me" is a tricky concept. Truly, I've found that most people accused of yelling at someone else sincerely don't believe they raised their voice (much) or took on a tone (maybe a little). They know things got heated, but they'd probably pass a polygraph if the question was "did you yell at so-and-so?"

 

I've got a phrase I created more to remind myself than anything: Anger is fear in a poorly fitting costume. In my weekday work I talk to lots of angry people. They're angry because they're afraid they're going to be out money, or are going to lose financial security; they're angry because of a past they can't change and a future that they fear will be more of the same; they're angry because they fear no one cares about them, and deep down they fear that no one should, either.

 

For most angry people, if you can find out what they fear, and address it (not even necessarily solve it), then often the angry overtones will disappear as fast as a passing cloud. You'll see faces relax if not lighten up, and the slant of shoulders and volume control of the voice will all shift into a more placid register.

 

The dilemma is usually that folks who are stuck in anger have spackled a large pile of fury over the top of their fears, and even they don't always know, let alone are ready to talk about, what it is they fear. It's not so much about childhood trauma as it is the built-up certainty that their fears are unanswerable, unresolvable, and so must be covered with all the angry insulation you can pile up in a hurry.

 

Anger is fear in an ill-fitting costume. I'll stand by this phrase, knowing there must be exceptions out there, but I haven't run into them yet. Relieve the fear, and the anger melts away.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him your adventure in anger at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 6-23

Faith Works 6-23-12

Jeff Gill

 

Repetition, again and again

___

 

 

Last weekend I ended up, by an odd and delightful chain of coincidences, standing and talking for a while with Matt Romney.

 

He's got a father who's been in the news and in the Newark area recently, and is a father himself.

 

You might or might not be surprised to know he wasn't entirely thrilled about the idea of dad running for public office again, because at 39 he's been through this before, and knows the hard work that is a modern political campaign, air conditioned buses or not.

 

"So how do you end up enjoying this?" I asked, not telling him I wrote a weekly column on faith and life, but not really thinking about the column, truly.

 

His answer, which I can't quote precisely, so I won't pretend to put it in quotes, was that in each place, he looks around and tries to find what's unique, what's particularly characteristic, of the place and the people, and reflect on what that special quality has to teach him.

 

This may not sound like much, and it beats doing dishes or raking dross off a blast furnace ladle in the mill, but it's a skill, a practice (I would argue) that few have mastered. For most of us, riding a bus from stop to stop, scanning a script that doesn't change much, stepping out into a space between barricades lined with sunglassed dark suited men talking into their sleeves, and shaking a few hundred hands before getting on the bus and . . . yes, doing it again, and again, and again: it gets old. You get pro forma and ritual and mechanical, and your face starts to get stiff and the answers canned, tasting of tin when they come out.

 

To look out at a crowd, look around a courthouse square (which often looks remarkably similar from town to town, let's be honest), and scan the faces and the platform, and find what's new, what's worth absorbing and reflecting upon: it's an almost spiritual act. Matt said that the more he did this – looked for the particular and the special – the more he found it, and enjoyed it. And I think that enjoyment showed.

 

My own son, on that Father's Day, got up to do something he'd done many times before, leading a group in the Pledge of Allegiance. It's a familiar act, but one that can be dangerous in how familiar it is until something unusual happens, and then you suddenly can't even think of the words.

 

The Lad hit his cue and his mark, ready to speak clearly and directly into the microphone, an object which also holds no terrors for him, but there was a glitch. The plan was that the color guard would be to one side, and he was ready to turn as the crowd joined in, but due to a quirk of the staging, the flags ended up directly behind him.

 

He handled the awkward pivot like a pro, starting to the front, spinning right around as it went on, and at the close shook hands with the mayor like he'd been doing this all his life, and calmly strode off stage.

 

This is the same young man who, earlier in the week, had said to me with horror after the first day at Cub Scout Day Camp as part of the Scout staff: "I have to do the same thing every hour, exactly the same, over and over!"

 

"Yes, and . . .?" Dad responded unsympathetically. But we talked about this, and the fact that much of life is repetitive, and there's just not much you can do to change that. Doing dishes, taking out the trash, shopping at the grocery, folding the laundry, filing papers, clearing the supply shelves, sweeping the shop floor . . .

 

What you CAN change is . . . you. Your approach, your understanding, your awareness. Why are you reacting negatively to a new chance to do something worthwhile for or with a different group of people? "But it's the same thing!"

 

Actually, it isn't. And every courthouse square across America is uniquely itself, and even two identical buses apparently (so I'm told) have switches in different places, and when I really think about it, each time I pray the Lord's Prayer, it's different. A different day, different circumstances, changed inflections, new people standing nearby saying it with a slightly different emphasis.

 

Could repetition, as much as variety, be the spice of life? Do our beliefs about the world and what it means help us see value and specialness where the world-as-it-is sees sameness and monotony?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him a story, even a twice-told tale, at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

My note to FCC-Valpo for this weekend

First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) 175th Anniversary
Valparaiso, Indiana

"Good to be done more abundantly"

To look at our history as a congregation, I'd like to start somewhere about in the middle, just to keep us thinking about history as something more than just a series of dates and an orderly sequence of events. Life rarely feels like an orderly sequence of events when you live it, and it's the life of this congregation I'd like to help celebrate this summer more than our history. 

In "The Life of A.B. Maston," published just two years after his death at 54 in the year 1907, there is the following note about 1878:

"Valparaiso has, besides the City College, a flourishing Normal School, said to be the largest in the United States. Has about 1,200 pupils. The school is under the superintendence of Prof. H. B. Brown, a member of the Christian Church. While in Valparaiso, we visited the Normal School during chapel service, where we met over 600 pupils, who observed the most marked order during the services . . . We met Bro. A. B. Maston, a young man of fine natural abilities and good attainments, who will finish his course in the Normal School this year. Bro. Maston expects to enter upon the work of the ministry in full. A congregation wishing the services of a young man would do well to call him."

In fact, he ended up called not so much to a congregation as to a continent, and became one of Australia and New Zealand's foremost evangelists. You can read more about him at: http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/people/amaston.html

"People's minds in this county are taken up with the truth, and are searching the Scriptures to see if the things of which we speak are so." So said the article in Alexander Campbell's "Millenial Harbinger" about what was going on in Porter County, Indiana, at the county seat of Valparaiso, on June 22, 1837.

The August 1837 issue went on to state "there is great prospect for good to be done more abundantly."

Campbell himself never came to Valparaiso, but he did dedicate the Christian Church in Wooster, Ohio, from which came Elias & Phoebe Axe. The Axe family name is still remembered with honor at First Christian Church in Wooster, and Elias & Phoebe of that clan came to northern Indiana not long after, with "the principles of Restoration" still fresh in their hearts. Those were central to the establishment of this new congregation, and the Axes carried into this body of believers the outlines of what they had learned from Campbell and the early Disciples' preachers.

What they began shifted about in a variety of locations close to downtown Valparaiso, and most recently has found a home on Glendale Boulevard, but is centered now as then on the communion table. A table to which all are invited, but away from which some carry a calling, a commission to go out and tell others about this open banquet of God's grace. Or as Sri Lankan theologian D.T. Niles said, "Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread."

Bread has been found, and good has been done abundantly, at First Christian Valpo. My own memories of this congregation don't go back 175 years, they go two thousand, and more. When I think of First Christian, I think of home baked bread, bing cherry jello salad and deviled eggs on the long pitch-in tables just inside the kitchen doors off of Fellowship Hall, and we kids playing (during programs for adults) up in the coat room, where the brick foundations of the high tower above sloped inwards, brick by brick, like an Egyptian temple. It felt ancient and mysterious and downright Biblical.

We ran haunted houses through that mysterious room, hid from junior choir directors in there, tied knots during Troop 7 meetings around the heavy pipe racks, and even occasionally hung coats from hangers in there.

Our history, at least by way of the Bible, goes back at least to Exodus and watching "The Ten Commandments" in a Sunday school classroom, and as a small child I thought of Rev. Percy Thomas as a patriarch from the prophetic books; Rev. Tom Alston talked about working in the pickle factory when he was young like the Hebrews spoke of making bricks without straw. The historic and the contemporary were casually entwined for me in growing up as part of a church family.

I think of Christmas baskets delivered, with bread and more, to home bound members, and others whose names had come to the attention of the elders, and then a pageant in the sanctuary when the brightly colored windows were dark; it was the crowns of the wise men, looking *exactly* like those worn at the stable in Bethlehem, that cast flashes of light and hue across the polished wooden pews with the glitter of their marvelous fake jewels and carefully wrapped foil. Their brocaded robes and gently cradled gifts were messages directly to me from across the ages and the pages of the gospels, promises of God having even more to say when I learned how to hear.

Nowhere did God's voice seem clearer than at communion, if only with the words across the front of the table: "This Do In Remembrance of Me." There is a promise of bread in the grain framing the grapes in the Benham Room windows under the balcony at the back of the church, those elements of communion being the only actual images shown in the geometry of the stained glass, other than the Holy Bible perched atop the south wall. Communion was real, and nothing made it more real than the Sundays when you knew, looking at the nested tower of communion ware, that the elements were there because you and your family had put them there, either that morning or the evening before. Bread, in the form of small rectangles of inedible off-white something, was always carefully poured out into the smaller plates as we filled the larger cup holders with small glasses of grape juice right out to the edges.

Sharon Watkins, our current Disciples' General Minister and President, and former neighbor minister down the road at Boone Grove, likes to tell a story about something she learned from a neuroscientist. "Where is the edge of your brain?" she asks. It turns out that it isn't a horizon in your skull, but your brain extends through your nervous system, and in fact the edges of it extend to your outstretched fingertips.

"Where is the edge of the church?" Dr. Watkins continues. For First Christian Valpo, it turns out that our fingertips, our extensions of contact and touch and feeling reach as far as Australia & New Zealand; to Bethany, West Virginia by way of Wooster, Ohio; and an odd assortment of other places we've gotten our fingers into. Our Timothys and Eunices are in congregations around the United States, and our influence extends even into other denominations . . . but if you grew up at First Christian, you still look to the Table for your focus, for your center, for a place where you can count on being welcome.

And we carry forth our welcome, our invitation to God's table, into homeless shelters and jail ministries, through regional & general assemblies to our fellow Disciples, as part of food pantries and Mother's Days Out; at World Jamborees of the Scouting Movement, with retirees to the Rio Grande Valley and the Smoky Mountains, among Civil War re-enactors and pilots and police officers and nurses and college professors and steelworkers.

As one of First Christian's Timothys, I have an ordination certificate on my office wall with signatures on it like Irene Roeder, C.D. Clover, William Eckert, and Ronald Gill. My service of ordination was almost but not quite at 7 Chicago Street, since by August of 1989 the building had been condemned, but not yet brought down . . . so our worship was in a large tent in the west yard across the alley. We had more Scout uniforms than robes, and folding chairs instead of pews, and canvas in place of stained glass, but it was still First Christian Valpo in worship: because the Good News was proclaimed, and the Table was shared. Everyone was invited, and we ate and drank and gave thanks. Then, we left.

To share the bread, we have to break the loaf, and distribute the pieces. You can't have your cake and eat it, too; you also can't just set a lovely loaf up on a shelf and expect it to just sit there. It's meant to be broken, and eaten. And then it finds new life in we who partake. When we worship, it continues in a new way after the benediction, as the body that has been gathered, and formed, is dispersed. Are we still a church then? Yes. Just as a loaf of bread has meaning even after – maybe especially after – every scrap of it has been eagerly eaten by hungry people.

Then, that loaf of bread is at work in and through those who ate it, who are thereby empowered to go out and do what needs to be done. Maybe even doing some good more abundantly. That's what our history at First Christian Valpo is about: we know where bread, the Bread of Life, can be found, and we want to share it, and we want to make use of what that Bread does in us, "for good to be done more abundantly."

In grace and peace,
Rev. Jeff Gill
Granville, OH

Newark Central 6-27-12

Newark Central – Notes From My Knapsack 6-27-12

Travel and vacation time is all around us, and we see seats around us on Sunday fill and empty from week to week, with it hard to tell sometimes who's home and who's away.

 

It's an interesting pastoral challenge, because the elders don't want to assume someone's on vacation when they may be ill, and we can't imagine that every summertime absence is due to health or other problems because usually they aren't: so we have to keep our ears so close to the ground grass grows out the other side!

 

And then some of us are gone; your friendly neighborhood preaching & teaching elder (that's me) is off to Zion National Park for some canyon rambles and scrambles with my wife and son, and other elders have already been to Florida and even further abroad. Add in some family weddings and reunions and such, and you really do need a program for the Sunday service, even if we don't have big numbers on our backs . . . speaking of a summer trip we need to take to go see the Clippers . . .

 

Next week begins our alternating week schedule for the newsletter. Since Wednesday is July the Fourth, that's an obvious week to leave "blank." The following week, our office "elder," Lisa, needs to be with family and a sister-in-law who just had brain surgery, so we will be working ahead, she and I, to have the newsletter ready, but the office staffing will be a friendly assortment of fellow parishioners from July 9^th to the 13^th, with hours trimmed to 8:00 am to Noon.

 

And as you can tell from the rolling "Month of Sundays" preview article in our newsletter, we will have old friends Bob Boyte on July 8^th preaching, and Ken Coy July 15^th, with Mark Katrick at St. John's UCC here in town available for pastoral emergencies. God and the airlines willing, I'll be back July 16^th as will Lisa!

 

Then we have the summer special treat of an outdoor service at the Cedar St. Lodge for the 10:30 worship on July 22^nd, with our Vacation Bible School picking up that evening and rolling through Thursday night (see elsewhere in this newsletter).

 

So keep in touch, and come back with stories of how you saw Jesus out on the road, because he likes to show up out there in unexpected encounters!

 

In grace & peace, Pastor Jeff

 

 

p.s. – Route 66, our Wednesday Bible study at 6:00 pm, is on break for the month of July; we're on the road again in August!

 

Newark Central 6-20-12

Newark Central – Notes From My Knapsack 6-20-12

 

Wednesday nights we're having a great trip at 6:00 pm down "Route 66," a long summer ramble through the Bible without a particular plan or itinerary, just the road before us, and plenty of places and markers to stop and see along the red line across the map.

 

We've begun at Acts, chapter one, and we're not making time because Route 66 is no interstate freeway express: three weeks in and we haven't finished the third verse. Truth be told, we'll probably take a July vacation from this journey, what with the Fourth of July coming on a Wednesday, and conflicts two of the next three. But August, we'll put down the top and cruise back out onto the road, and maybe even make it into chapter two!

 

There've been a few small changes this summer, like moving the study from 6:30 to 6:00 pm, or switching the hymn and prayer at the opening of the Sunday service. A few people have asked, and not in a negative way "do you have other changes in mind for the Sunday morning service?"

 

Actually, for an answer, I want to reach back, waaay back. Back to about 160 AD, and the earliest description of Christian worship we have for the early church. Justin Martyr's writings were also referred to by Alexander Campbell in the founding years of our fellowship, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), when people asked him how worship services should go.

 

"And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succors the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead."

 

Sounds to me that we're on the right track!

 

In grace & peace, Pastor Jeff

Faith Works 6-16

Faith Works 6-16-12

Jeff Gill

 

Walking, standing, sitting, kneeling…

___

 

 

How do you pray?

 

Some prefer to sit and close their eyes; others are more likely to spend their prayer time looking straight ahead since their devotional period is most often while they're commuting to work behind the wheel of their car.

 

And for the record, I think that counts. If Francis of Assisi could pray while riding a mule, then why not while driving a pickup truck? The potential distractions are not dissimilar.

 

In his book "Long Wandering Prayer," David Hansen reminds us of J.R.R. Tolkien's words: "Not all who wander are lost." His book has been a guide for me in a form of prayer not often remembered in the western Christian tradition, of prayer walking.

 

These last few years my spirituality has been enriched by time spent with Native American spiritual traditions, including those of community gatherings known as "powwows." At a powwow, there's a circuit that is "danced," or rhythmically walked, if you like, while the drum's beat and the singers' songs carry you around. It can be a powerful time of reflection, and renewal, and restoration.

 

The Fort Ancient Celebration last weekend, down near Cincinnati, has used the slogan "We dance our prayers." In contact with many Native people of a variety of tribes, whether out of a traditional spiritual practice, a Christian belief system, or a mix of the two, I can say that the idea of "we dance our prayers" is a reality.

 

Two weeks ago, as a "Sacred Walk 5K" on Sunday morning with a local powwow at the Great Circle, we set out from the opening of that portion of the Newark Earthworks, if located itself in Heath, and crossed back into Newark itself and visited a number of portions of our 2,000 year old earthwork complex while promoting both physical health, and spiritual wholeness.

 

This afternoon, at 1:00 pm today, we will walk that same route, some 3.2 miles, or 5 kilometers, starting at the Great Circle Museum off of the Rt. 79 parking lot. We will see places that even many life-long residents of the area aren't aware are still visible, of this once four-and-a-half square mile complex of geometric earthworks. Our walk is largely on sidewalks and along modern city streets, but is designed to try to help us envision two millennia old alignments and passageways.

 

There's so much we don't know for sure about the original plans and purposes of the Newark Earthworks, but one thing is clear to a casual viewer of maps depicting this landscape. People who built this, walked this. There are lanes and defined passages for walking from one element to another, a mile at a time.

 

Hansen's book on "Long Wandering Prayer" is much more explicitly Christian, but it gets at an element of how we are made as creatures in this world. We are designed, in so many ways, to move; we are oriented to motion and understandings that blossom out of transition and travel. Prayer may be effective seated, or even standing but still; none of which overwhelms the idea that prayer, a communion with the Creator of the world that unrolls before us in the powwow arena's circle, or down the streetscape of modern day Newark, is a rhythmic pattern of life that starts to help our hearts to beat in tune with the drummer behind the Great Dance itself.

 

Please consider joining us then, this afternoon, whatever your spiritual disciplines or practice, if you would like to work with prayer in motion, if you would like to learn more about walking, and meditation.

 

If you just would like to learn a little more than you do right now about the Newark Earthworks, you're invited as well . . . but who knows what some thankful walking might do within you?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him your story of prayer in a different sort of format at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Newark Central Knapsack 6-13

Newark Central -- Notes From My Knapsack

June 13, 2012

 

With the approach of Father's Day, I think about a book that's now over 25 years old, but has a message that's as relevant now as it was then, if not more so.

 

It's called "The Blessing" by John Trent & Gary Smalley, and it talks about something that we see young men looking for in so many wrong and tragic ways, then and now. It's summed up neatly in the title itself: "The Blessing." A blessing, from father to son.

 

The book looks at Biblical models for the imparting of a blessing from a father, or father figure, to a child, but particularly to a son. There's an element of touch, whether hands on a head or just a gentle grasp of a shoulder. There are words spoken that are clear and unambiguous, and there is a reminder of a tradition, of hopes, and of the assurance that one way or another, the one being blessed will always have you in their corner.

 

It's a rough summary, but it gets the point across. Young men over the last few decades have been left unsure and uncertain about what it means to be a man, about how they can become better men. And they need to hear this guidance, even if in brief, and awkwardly put, from an elder they respect and value. Ideally, this is their own biological father, but if such a blessing comes from another person they respect and value, whether an uncle, a friend of the family, even an older female, it can have much the same effect.

 

As it is, many young men have distant, cloudy relationships with the mentors and father figures in their lives, and they've never had a moment when they clearly were given a . . . blessing, a passing of the torch, an affirmation from one who has walked this lonesome valley that the youthful one will find their path, and walk it to a brighter day.

 

We see this process go astray with Isaac and his sons, but we understand how important a blessing can be, for both Esau and Jacob; Elijah blesses his student Elisha; Elizabeth blesses Mary. Blessings between generations are all through scripture.

 

How might we, in the life of the church, help to reawaken the practice of "blessing," from fathers to sons, and beyond, so that no one reaches adulthood without knowing their journey to maturity as being blessed?

 

In grace & peace, Pastor Jeff