Faith Works 9-12-15

Faith Works 9-12-15

Jeff Gill

 

2-1-1 and when things just don't fit

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Depression is a funny thing.

 

Not funny ha-ha. But you can be depressed, deeply depressed, even clinically depressed, and still laugh. It rings hollow inside your own head, but it's not that difficult to keep up the appearances.

 

It's funny, it's odd, it's downright strange how depression can creep up on you, like a slowly developing storm cloud, going from a lovely day to gloom and darkness without your noticing until the rain starts to fall. Depression can come on like distant thunder, or a sudden clap of lightning out of a blue sky. It comes in like the tide, except when it's a tidal wave that barely gives notice that the beach beneath your feet will disappear beneath you, the sky coming down with a roar. We all know a death, a loss, the end of a relationship or job can trigger it, but when your psyche is thrown off balance, you can be pitched into a serious depression by the cancellation of a TV show or the distant assassination of a foreign dictator.

 

Scientists and doctors keep investigating depression. It has a biochemical component, your internal chemistry and flow of hormones pulling you down one way, your sugar and sodium and potassium tugging in another, and somewhere in there are the key compounds that turn a mood into a crisis.

 

Head injuries can cause depression. Stroke. Surgery, even successful surgery. Addiction certainly doesn't help, especially to substances that are themselves "depressants," but any addictive behavior can dance the mournful gavotte of a depressive episode.

 

It's not your fault any more than a broken hip is your fault; yes, you left that bowling ball bag out in the hallway and tripped over it, but who would say to you on the ground, or in the squad, or at the hospital, "Hey, that broken bone is your fault!"

 

Depression, when it becomes serious, when it gets severe, is isolating, disrupting and desolating. Hope that seems obvious to someone sitting right next to you is invisible to you. And solutions get twisted, warped, confused at best and suicidal at worst.

 

Maybe you've called 2-1-1 to get information about a social service, or to find a phone number for a program you or a friend needs. Pathways of Central Ohio has been known as the Crisis Center and the Suicide Hotline and a number of names they may never even have actually had, but they're not only still at 740-345-HELP (4357), they and their Crisis Hotline and Information & Referral Services can be reached simply by calling 2-1-1.

 

If you have someone you're worried about, you can call 2-1-1 for support and guidance. Clergy and professionals, that means you, too. We don't know everything, and the folks at Pathways answering those 2-1-1 calls have access to pretty much everything, plus training that can come in handy when you're feeling overwhelmed by someone's need.

 

When there's a weapon at hand, an active threat or you think someone's taken something to hurt themselves, you still call 9-1-1. That's basic. But if you need to talk, you need to talk to someone about how to talk to someone else, and as anyone is trying to figure out how to get help, 2-1-1 is ready and waiting.

 

In Licking County, this summer has been bracketed by two high-profile, much-discussed suicides. In late May, a pastor, and as August ended, a student leader in college. Both were people who gave help to others, who knew something about where to find help, and had gotten basic training in knowing when sadness was turning into depression, and what to do about it. Knowing that even those sorts of people were vulnerable to the worst depression can do to a person is shocking, even scary to the rest of us.

 

We have to keep saying to each other, over and over: it's okay to need help. It's fine to admit you're at the end of your rope. There are resources that can help you…can I make the call for you? There is no single, lasting solution to this, anymore than we can guarantee an end to broken hips. It takes awareness, understanding, and the ongoing willingness to affirm treatment and celebrate recovery.

 

For Seth, for Wendell, we keep reaching out to put our arms around each other, and to listen, and when necessary, to call for help.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's called 2-1-1 before and will again! Tell him where you think we can help each other in our community at knapsack77@gmail.com

Faith Works 9-5-15

Faith Works 9-5-15

Jeff Gill

 

Soaring in the spirit, and in fact

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Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles...

  ~ Isaiah 40:31 (NIV)

 

A week ago Friday your "Faith Works" columnist was invited to join some community leaders in a paddle down the Licking River, an advance event for the River Round Up on Sept. 12th, where many communities and sponsors come together to clean up trash and junk in our county's primary watercourse, under the guidance of the Licking County Soil & Water Conservation District and program administrator Denise Natoli Brooks.

 

After Mayor Jeff Hall sent us off with some good words (he's done the paddle before but couldn't join us that day), a couple dozen of us got into canoes and kayaks and began the journey from Little Texas to Brownsville Road. Just after the first quarter of the seven miles of river we covered, the giant basket building swung into view around a curve, but that was the only man-made structure we saw other than passing under historic Stadden's Bridge (the location is historically significant for Licking County, if not that particular structure).

 

And then a few curves further on, a black figure in the sky making vast lazy arcs began to come lower, low enough to see the sun filter through the tail feathers of this soaring bird.

 

That's right, we saw not only great blue herons and little green herons and kingfishers and cliff swallows and robins, we saw a pair of bald eagles. There was something magical about the light through those iridescent feathers spread out behind the broad reach of wings, a hint of sparkle and shadow in the midst of the white, and the steadily shifting play of blue gaps in the ragged ends on the black broad reach of the wings.

 

As they spiraled down, you could more clearly see the white head and golden beak of these majestic creatures. They were indeed soaring, barely moving their wings, just slightly turning their outmost feathers to steer along the currents of air rising off of the river valley we paddled down.

 

One did perch on a sycamore branch where we could see the proud profile, but he was spotted behind us, and I was up front in a canoe where my twisting around to get a shot up and reverse from our direction might have led to the wrong sort of rotation, and a subsequent unintentional immersion.

 

But it was the sight of them far overhead that stirred me, and a reminder of what we'd heard at my church on Sunday about the remarkable summer many of our youth had, at camps and conferences, and with our denomination's general meeting held in July at the Columbus Convention Center. The General Assembly had a theme and an ongoing message from Isaiah 40, shared in the programs, through the worship, with the mission work that went on in between everything else, and during the fellowship we shared. "Soar on wings like eagles," says the Lord through Isaiah. "Soar" was the theme, and it had unexpected resonances picked up by all the plenary speakers and at many other program events as well. We all talked about what "Soar" meant in that wonderful Isaiah passage: Don't spend too much time flapping or flailing or struggling to take off all on your own effort. Let the currents and created order carry you sometimes, because that may well be part of the plan. Get the view from above.

 

To "soar" is to be carried, as the old favorite "Footprints" story says. To soar is to fly high above some of our everyday distractions, to see more clearly, and yet to not be stressed or anxious or exerting yourself unnecessarily. Soar, with the eagles, with God, who has promised to give us that wind we need to be lifted up.

 

As Christians, as a church, as a community, let us prayerfully soar.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County. Tell him where you've been inspired by mighty wings overhead at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-29-15

Faith Works 8-29-15

Jeff Gill

 

Telling A Biblical Memoir

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If I were to review my life in the form of scriptural passages that mark each stage, I would have a Biblical memoir of sorts, an autobiography of how the Bible has written the story of my life.

 

My earliest recollection of knowing a verse as being a verse, as having the stature of being part of the Holy Bible in sum, is looking through car windows at a large Christmas display on a Chicago street corner, which said in flowing letters "Peace on earth, good will among men!" (Luke 2:14)

 

I saw that, at five or six, and thought "that's in the Bible, and they're here in this public place, telling everyone good news."

 

It wasn't much later that I was sitting at a table with other kids for a Sunday school lesson, and out of the booklet, we had a story, a picture to color, and a figure on the facing page to cut out, then glue a piece of yarn onto. It was Paul the Apostle in a large basket, and the verse "They were watching the gates day and night, to kill him; but his disciples took him by night and let him down over the wall, lowering him in a basket." (Acts 9:24-25) That story gripped me, about the hazards and risks Paul and his friends faced to be able to share the Gospel with others.

 

When I began actually reading the Bible on my own, there was a carryover from a book of Bible stories I'd been given one Easter that kept me turning back to Genesis, the last few chapters, and the story of Joseph. That dramatic moment the whole story so masterfully builds to, when the steward of Pharaoh reveals "I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt." (Genesis 45:4) What a story, what a lesson of humility and faithfulness.

 

I began to think about bioethics, thanks to a faithful Sunday school teacher in junior high school and a biology teacher in ninth grade who encouraged me to ask questions, and they came together for me in Deuteronomy 30:19, where Moses says "I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live."

 

As a Boy Scout, it was probably the tent reference that most caught my attention in 2 Corinthians 5:1, "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." But the image of who we are and how we are constituted that has stayed with me, the life within the tent being the heart of the experience God is seeking to transform.

 

In college, after some digressions and diversions that are a narrative of their own, but that mostly wandered away from the Bible as sacred text, there was a tug towards ministry, and a book I read that called to mind the mystic celebration at the end of all things that was described as a celebration, a nuptial feast, a party to which Jesus wanted to invite us. At Revelation 19:9, there was something compelling about "And the angel said to me, 'Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.' And he said to me, 'These are true words of God.'"

 

I resisted the idea of ministry for a while, but then I heard Dr. James Forbes preach, and I realized that sermons could be something completely different than what I thought they had to be. He came to Lafayette, Indiana, and preached at "Seeds of Vision" for almost two hours on two verses, and he barely had gotten halfway through the second of the two in Revelation 21:1-2: "Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."

 

It was only in beginning pastoral work as a student minister that I started to understand what those words from the next and final chapter meant, when at 22:17 it is written "The Spirit and the Bride say, 'Come.' And let him who hears say, 'Come.' And let him who is thirsty come, let him who desires take the water of life without price."

 

That only gets me to 1985! But what would your Biblical memoir look like? What verses mark the passages of your life?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your turning point passages at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-22-15

Faith Works 8-22-15

Jeff Gill

 

Sex, violence, and good news
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Perhaps this venue isn't the best place to say this, but there's very little good news in the news these days.

Now, in what era couldn't you say that? There will always be "wars and rumors of wars" in this world, and the problem newspapers and now websites have is that, while we say we want good news, in fact if you put a wreck with blood on the pavement and a hand out the window on the front page, that's going to sell (or click) a three times the rate, or more, than a cover photo of a sweet little girl with a basket of puppies. It's been tested over and over, and the fact is we say we want one thing, but we buy another.

And the news business responds, as all businesses must.

In our more liberated age, you have the added complication of sex. Yes, sex. By the way, if you put the word sex three times in a piece, it gets much more search engine attention. Advocate editors, you're welcome.

But it's true: if you can find a plausible way to put the word sex in a headline it's going to get more attention from readers, more clicks and follows and reposts, so you see a great deal more of it. Even when it's "Experts debate the sex of the next royal baby" or "Insects who change sex between seasons" the attention follows.

Violence, sex, and death . . . the obituaries still get lots of traffic, too. Even if that's just some of us checking each morning to see if our name is listed there, so we know whether to put our shoes on or not.

Is that all we care about? Is bad news, and salacious information, and titillation of the senses the only good we pursue?

Actually, I think there's a silver lining to be found, one that preachers and teachers of good news and the Good News might want to attend to. I thought about this because of some work my wife and I have done over the years with museums and exhibits and cultural & natural resource interpretation.

We all know, in visitor centers and site planning, that the average visitor, whether they went out of their way to see this special spot or just happened to pass by and wanted a way to kill an hour, is primarily interested in two things as they come in the door. One is: where's the bathroom? It's a basic human need, part of Maslow's famous hierarchy at the peak, and some things come first. So you locate and place signage and train staff to meet that need, whether you're a historical park or an archaeological museum or a nature center.

Second is: where's the gift shop? Professionals often sigh and moan over this reality, but the smart scholars and scientists know it's an opportunity. Not just an opportunity to pay the staff and keep the lights on through profits, but you can teach with a gift shop, just as you do with the rest of your displays. And these displays they can choose, by their own actions, to take home: why not use that impulse?

So you stock your shelves with materials that reinforce your message, and encourage the purchase of books and toys and games that keep your theme memorable all the way back to their home. It's an opportunity, not a problem.

Bad news may be on the front page of the paper, but there's news we're interested in, too, that's talking about hopes and dreams and aspirations. It's called the advertising. Do you, as a person of faith, read the ads for what they tell you about the good news your community is hungry for?

Those ads may occasionally make you roll your eyes ("do people really want to buy that?") but it's a very reliable indicator: if an ad isn't reaching people, it's going to disappear. Because someone is paying for it to be there. Read the ads, preachers and teachers and mentors and spiritual directors. There you find the currents that often folks can't quite articulate, but in which they are very conversant.

Oh, and those restrooms in museums and visitor centers? Smart sites teach in there, too; signage and wall space and even the fixtures themselves can reaffirm themes and messages. In our church bathrooms, is there a missed opportunity to share Good News, even in just a few words on the wall?

Because people are seeking good news, all the time. Everywhere.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County. Tell him where you found good news at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes From My Knapsack 8-20-15

Notes From My Knapsack 8-20-15

Jeff Gill

 

A saunter around summer's end

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Birds have been in my field of vision this summer.

 

Carolina chickadees were all over my neighborhood following the spring; they've moved on, but I still see the occasional small black-capped visitor in the back yard.

 

House sparrows are pecking their way through the neighbor's mulch most mornings out the kitchen window. A non-native, the field guides tell me, but they've always been around from my point of view, which makes them native in my mental landscape.

 

I saw an Eastern towhee on my street, up in a curbside maple, hearing it before spotting the distinctive near-orange sides. "Drink your tea, drink your tea" is one of the few birdsongs I can remember from year to year without looking them up; with apps online and on phones, it is much easier to figure them out if you want. Red-winged blackbirds are always easy to recall, and when the meadow I drive through leaving home is let go, they're common not far from the house, so I can hear them from my porch.

 

The towering tree behind my home attracts fewer birds than I might have first thought; sycamores aren't a food source, so they don't have a great deal of attraction other than as a passing perch for starlings and robins and the like. But I did once hear, then saw a peregrine falcon up high, scanning the yards and roadside for something to swoop on for lunch.

 

A few weeks ago I saw a majestic white-headed bald eagle down in Ross County, paddling down Paint Creek in a kayak. He regally disregarded me in passing, giving just a fine profile shot to those with me who had good cameras. Rightly or wrongly I'd decided this trip I'd take no camera at all, but just look, and hopefully see. If you can see that bald eagle, yellow hooked beak curving down to greyish brown feathers across a broad breast, staring out – eagle eyed! – over the flowing water, then you don't need a picture taken, do you?

 

And on my way back from leading Sunday worship up at the Hartford Fair, I saw a bald eagle in flight, just past Chatham, soaring down along Dry Creek. We have at least two nesting pairs here in Licking County, something many of us thought we'd never see in our lifetimes, but now becoming nearly a common sight.

 

On the brick street next to the church I pastor in Newark we've seen an outburst of goldfinches recently, picking at some plant erupting from the spaces between the ruddy pavement, a beautiful contrast to the bright yellow and deep black of the birds.

 

But my favorite sightings are still great blue herons. When you watch one picking their way through the shallows in Raccoon Creek or over by one of the branches of the Licking River, you see immediately the connection to their dinosaur ancestors. The manic glint of the round eye, above a wicked long sharp beak, flare of feathers at the back of the head, stick-like legs swiveling and stepping into and across obstacles, all seeming awkwardness until the swift stab into the water and a wriggling meal skewered and swallowed. A T-Rex of the waterside world, indeed.

 

In flight, though, something the theropods of antiquity didn't master, a heron is a thing of beauty, to me at any rate. Their steady wing beat sets them apart even at a distance from buzzards, let alone eagles, who glide and soar; great blues flap strongly from one watershed to the next, their "beast feet" (the meaning of "theropod") dangling behind.

 

They (and the more humble and widely spread house sparrows) represent what's left of that dinosaur family in our world, diplomatic representatives of a more dangerous era. Oh, and since I like to say that pretty much every subject has a Licking County connection if you look hard enough: O.C. Marsh, the paleontologist who created the name "theropods" for the best-known type of dinosaur, grew up in Zanesville, and perhaps the earliest published piece of professional archaeology relating to Licking County was by him describing an excavation he conducted south of Newark in 1865, of a mound still visible near Rt. 13 and Dorsey Mill Road.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your bird sightings at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.