Faith Works 4-23-16

Faith Works 4-23-16

Jeff Gill

 

Where There's a Will, There's a Way

[ed. note – if you use this, "Will" must be capitalized!]

 

___

 

"The Devil can cite Scripture for his own purpose."

 

That line is found in the Bible where, exactly?

 

Yes, you can look at the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness in Luke's gospel, and Satan does quote the Torah and the prophets, but that pungent phrase: not there.

 

You may look in Paul's letters and beyond, but a quick online search will reveal it's not in the Bible. It's in "The Merchant of Venice," and the line belongs to William Shakespeare.

 

Today is the 400^th anniversary of his death; indications are that he was (poetically) born in this day, as well, in 1564.

 

No one has to be told that Shakespeare dominates our cultural landscape four centuries after his passing, and his words have entered our language, both individual coinages (the words "addiction, "arch-villain," and "assassination" just for starters) and mellifluous phrases ("If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it!").

 

But good old Will of Stratford has also snuck into our religion, and our Bibles.

 

There's a bit of folk etymology and linguistic analysis that makes a case that Shakespeare helped translate the King James Version of the Holy Bible (c. 1611, so it's possible), leaving his "signature" behind in Psalm 46. You can look that iffy claim up for yourself, but don't be bedazzled* by coincidence.

 

(*Bedazzled, also coined by Shakespeare.)

 

I've also heard a claim that Will's fingerprints are on the 23^rd Psalm, but that's an uncomfortable* stretch as well.

 

(*Yep.)

 

What's perhaps due to the resonance of the language of that cultural moment, as Queen Elizabeth's reign ended and King James' began, is that there are many phrases of Shakespeare that are commonly attributed to Holy Writ.

 

"Forget and forgive" – King Lear, not in the Bible.

 

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be" – Hamlet, not the Bible.

 

"This above all: to thine own self be true" – Ditto.

 

Likewise, the twist can turn in the other direction: you can find smart people saying something like "As Shakespeare himself said 'eat, drink and be merry'!" Nope, Jesus used that line in Luke 12 as he told a parable.

 

The Bible is full of poetry. I'm not sure we remember that often enough when reading and studying and sharing God's Word as those words have been passed down. The art and craft of poetic language and meaning, and in the original, occasionally in carefully crafted translation, there is a rhythm and pattern that also evokes meanings beneath meanings, the body in motion beneath the silken robes.

 

And Shakespeare, too, saw himself more as a poet than a playwright. Perhaps because of questions of propriety and status, or maybe it had to do with patronage, but his pride of place was clearly in the poet's role. Iambic pentameter aside, the plays are rich with poetry in how they are constructed, how the characters speak but even in the stage directions. There is a level of nuance and subtlety to Shakespeare that ironically both makes it live beyond the usual span of years for a dramatic work, but also makes his plays hard to study, as any English class student can tell you.

 

But a good teacher will always remind students "say it out loud, speak it in order to understand it." If you just try to pry meaning out of Shakespeare reading one line at a time in a darkened room under a study lamp looking at the dead page, you will indeed struggle. When you start to say it, the pageantry* and swagger*  will show themselves.

 

(*Uh huh.)

 

This is also true of the Bible. If you find yourself in study wrestling with the text, speak it. Say it out loud, and as most of the original audience experienced it, you will hear new meaning. "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue…"

 

Right, that's Hamlet. By Shakespeare! It works for the Bible, too.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County. Tell him how you hear the Bible speaking to you today at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 4-16-16

Faith Works 4-16-16

Jeff Gill

 

How to communicate when it's too easy

___

 

 

Social media, I'd argue, is unavoidable. Not that you can't avoid it, but that you shouldn't. Like typewriters or mimeographs or bulk mail or telephones of previous decades, in the life of faith communities you have to make your peace with devices and technology.

 

(Unless you're Amish. And a few others. Which isn't many of y'all reading this. So.)

 

What you don't have to do is let tech shape and mold and form your social interactions. And it will try to. "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…" as Romans 12:2 puts it.

 

There are humane and even Christian ways to use and NOT use social media. Turning them off or silencing them during worship, at weddings and programs and funerals and such: that's pretty basic. If your Bible is on your phone, fine; you can still shut off the alarm and not check email compulsively. It's a discipline, and it can be even a spiritual discipline. The problem with most misuse of social media is that it's too easy, too fast, too quick for you to have really put some empathy into your interaction before you click "send." We all need ways to remind and even relearn for ourselves how to slow down, and reflect, and be wise in our use of these tools.

 

Especially if you adopt a tech Sabbath, a day of the week you turn off devices and turn away from screens. I think fasting and Sabbaths have room for negotiating: as I noted last week, when it's how we stay in touch with our family and friends, there's got to be some place for it, but to still find a way to not let smartphones and laptops consume us as we're consuming media on them. A complete disconnection is fine for some, but your discipline isn't to be discounted just because you don't disconnect as thoroughly as some.

 

The Granville Public Library has regularly offered "Turn Off Your Screens" week programming, because if you're going to detach, even if only for a short time, from your phones and gadgets, you need something to do that takes your mind and fingers off in another direction. (My son is doing a project with bees during that week this year, which is a great way to force yourself to stay focused on what's at hand!)

 

And my own times of fasting from social media posting have become a great reminder to go deeper in prayer, every time the urge to look up or browse or surf has hit me.

 

In general, to not let social media conform our social interactions, we need to make sure we have healthy ones to start with . . . or the blips and beeps and tweets will quickly become our new normal.

 

Christ Lutheran Church in Heath is inviting the Licking County community to a time of "holy conversation," specifically on the subject of racial justice. On Thursday, April 21 at 6:30 pm in their sanctuary just off of Hebron Rd./Rt. 79, they have the assistance of Denison University professor Jack Shuler in convening a community gathering on "The Struggle to Listen: Race and Reconciliation in Our Time." There is no cost to attend, and it's open to congregations and clergy from any tradition, or those of you who want to hear more about how people of faith are engaging with this issue.

 

Prayer and compassionate listening and dialogue as a community are things that need to happen face to face, and aren't advanced in a comments section or by blog posts alone. Blessings to all those who can attend that evening, and practice the skill of talking, and more importantly, listening. These are the gifts we need to cultivate if we are to also rightly use the gifts of social media as people of faith.

 

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him how you have learned to listen at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Notes From My Knapsack 4-14-16

Notes From My Knapsack 4-14-16

Jeff Gill

 

Trees telling a tale

___

 

This spring has seen the decline and fall of a number of great trees of my acquaintance.  In fact, the last two years have taken quite a few old friends out of circulation, here in Granville and around the county.

 

In the last few weeks, a range of streetside trees have gone away where Mt. Vernon Road comes south to cross Rt. 16 heading into downtown Newark. Buildings are getting renovated on one side, structures are coming down and being abandoned in preparation for demolition as we get closer to a bridge widening project that will make Rt. 13 and Mt. Vernon Road two way traffic through there.

 

Since I work a mile north of downtown Newark, and come back this way down Rt. 13 all the time, it's a familiar stretch of streetscape. And it's startling how completely different the block looks with those trees down.

 

When I'm waiting for the light to turn right onto Rt. 16, the now empty block to my left where the Cunningham house is already an historical memory, there's a lonely magnolia whose spring glory is almost surely its last, the blossoms now falling petal by pink petal.

 

But coming back down Newark-Granville Road into the village, the dread plague of orange dot disease seems to be as hard on our trees as emerald ash borers and gypsy moths have been. Some gnarled old guardians of the bike path, grown in a twist around metal fence posts and utility guy wires, are gone; closer in, some trunks that clearly have little life above are wearing their sad stain, and some gaps in the foliage tunnel will no doubt soon appear.

 

In my own neighborhood, the homeowners association will meet here in another week, and we trustees will talk about the blight that's spread in our area of common responsibility, forcing the removal and ultimately replacement of some large evergreens. You learn in this work that this particular task ain't cheap. And thinking about a tree suddenly down across a corner of a house is a reminder of why it probably shouldn't be.

 

A recent photo on Facebook made the rounds of Granville folk, a view east on Broadway's end at the base of Mount Parnassus, showing the view up branching off the interurban line and the curve of the road heading into Clear Run's valley below.

 

And there's no trees. Virtually none, on the slopes, across the horizon. No trees.

 

A hundred years ago or so, the movement from pioneer settlement to the spread of agriculture had resulted in the cutting of every mature tree across the landscape. The woodsy village we're used to thinking of as timeless is a relatively recent development.

 

And if you go over to the Octagon Earthworks next Sunday (Apr. 17) in the afternoon, and join in one of the tours of the grounds, you will likely hear that, 2,000 years ago, the plateau defined between Raccoon Creek and the South Fork of the Licking River and Ramp Creek was, according to soil studies, a managed prairie. That data, along with the work compiled by science writer Charles Mann in his book "1491" indicates that it's not unreasonable to see the data as telling us much of the lowland areas of Licking County were carefully and thoughtfully managed for centuries even before the Newark Earthworks complex was constructed, a treeless terrace above the river valleys that gave clear views of the horizon. There the sunrises and moonrises and other astronomical appearances would be easily in evidence.

 

Trees are good, but they're like us, players passing across this vast stage that is the Land of Legend.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about trees you have known at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 4-9-16

Faith Works 4-9-16

Jeff Gill

 

Sipping from the firehose

___

 

 

Conversations about sermons recently have made me think about where theologian Karl Barth's most overused line meets the popular catchphrase of Marshall McLuhan's . . . do you know which two quotes I'm talking about? Either way, hold that thought.

 

There are, in this paperless age, still so many books out there. Nearly a 1,000 new titles or reprints every DAY. And that's not counting blogs and posts and various online outbursts of information and opinion. The task of a librarian or a curator is as important as ever, perhaps more so, as people look for tools and particularly people to help them figure out "what counts? What should I read, and how much can I just skip?" Curating, selecting, editing: none of this is answering questions, exactly (even the youngest students now turn to search engines for things like "what is the chief export of Ecuador?"), but the ongoing question of "what's going on in my world, and how should I respond to it?" is crying out to be answered by each of us.

 

Social media tries to aggregate and hashtag to sort and sift, media streams develop a cache of their own (podcasts are big right now, and I just don't get Buzzfeed), and there are developing bodies of knowledge online, growing out of existing data sets like those long managed by the U.S. Census Bureau or the Smithsonian Institution, or from groups like Net.Bible.Org or AmericanBible.Org with online scriptural tools. What was once only accessible by specialists is now available at a click.

 

Yet even for believers with a passion for the Bible, the 66 books of the Protestant canon of scripture can be a daunting mass of chapter headings and footnotes. A good study Bible in your hand can be a rich banquet of tools (no clicking required!) but you need some training to be able to open it up and dive deeply into the text.

 

About those two quotes: In Life magazine in 1963, Barth said he liked to tell seminarians (those in training for ministry leadership) "to take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible." Or as it often is shortened, "take the Bible in one hand the newspaper in the other." And it was the next year, in 1964 that communications professor McLuhan coined the phrase "the medium is the message."

 

Or it might make more sense to you if you think about what McLuhan is saying as being about the "Medium AS message" – that the method and format of delivery of information shapes how you receive and process information.

 

It used to seem to be a simple and reliable matter for anyone, with whatever background or training, to distinguish between a published volume (and out of the minister's library, no less) and a grimy handful of blue-tinted mimeo pages someone runs in and throws on the table. One is reliable, the other less so, right? Printed books, delivered publications, mimeographed sheets, then perhaps a look at someone's scribbled notes – they're a sort of hierarchy of what once was.

 

I'll add to Barth and McLuhan the caption from a cartoon in "The New Yorker" from 1993: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." It was a laugh with two canines looking at a computer, but in reality today, there are dogs and wolves and some mischievous and even malicious coyotes out there presenting their take on the Bible, faith, church life, and much more, as definitive. They might never have gotten their views between hardback covers in the past, but a webpage can look very legit, but have content not worth wrapping fish guts in (after you'd printed it out, of course).

 

This is the new challenge in ministry and in Christian education, but it's also the old challenge in a new form. Believers have long wondered "who can I trust?" It has always been the task of pastors to shepherd the flock past hazards, getting them to still water and peaceful, fruitful meadows safely.

 

That means we have to learn new things, and be ready to share our knowledge in different ways with a congregation who have gotten used to taking in information through some very different devices than the First Century technological innovation of – a book! Yes, that's right, the first "Bibles" or "biblia" were a technology in their own right. It does no violence to the sacred sense of the contents to spend some time looking at how we use that external tool.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him how you prefer to take in information by sending it to knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.