Faith Works 5-21-16

Faith Works 5-21-16

Jeff Gill

 

We Can Disagree Without Being Disagreeable

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There are two passages of Scripture much abused these days by partisans of the right and of the left alike.

 

They're found in Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians, in a passage about midway through, and I'll stick with the 1611 classic English translation for now; in 6:14 (KJV): Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And Paul adds at 6:17: Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.

 

This counsel to the early Christian community in the worldly & cosmopolitan city of Corinth (think Vegas mixed with Manhattan), has been turned into a justification for congregational and denominational splintering, and I have to be honest: it's starting to tick me off.

 

Today, because of relatively sudden and startling changes in our cultural assumptions about sexuality and gender, faith communities (especially of a Protestant orientation) are going through major tensions over what traditional morality has to say about leadership roles in church life, how to teach our children and congregations about the right use of our sexuality in our personal and spiritual lives, and what provision and arrangements for differences and choices can be made in our organizational structures, let alone our buildings.

 

For a large chunk of the country and a great many churches, this is baffling stuff that has little to do with our own every day life. A good case can be made that almost every one of the subjects now in dispute about sex, marriage, and personal freedoms has an impact in any congregation, no matter how small or isolated (we think), if only we would open our eyes and see more clearly who our neighbors really are.

 

But it's also the case that there are many who would argue that some of these subjects are settled, with great weight of history and precedent and tradition behind them, and they should not be moved . . . and they cite Bible verses to support that.

 

Even as others speak of some traditions as standing on "the wrong side of history," greater acceptance of others being a value well supported by Jesus, and our need to affirm the personal rights and integrity of all . . . and they cite Bible verses to support that.

 

I won't resolve any of those issues in a few hundred words here. But I do want to address what I strongly believe is an unseemly hurry on the part of some to see to it that local congregations and national or global church bodies divide themselves up over such issues, with (again) both partisans of the left and of the right using one translation or another of "come out from among them, and be separate."

 

There's a purist perspective at work here, and I fear the church has caught a cold from the raging influenza of today's politics, sniffling about how we can only work with people who already completely agree with us. It began in political matters, was magnified by the "culture wars" of the Seventies and Eighties, and has now bled over into the doctrinal battles most evident in Protestant Christian bodies over the last two decades or so.

 

Paul was speaking in Second Corinthians directly to marriage, and how it can be dangerous to the believer to marry an unbeliever, and the logic of that he works out in the chapter in full. "Unequally yoked" can also be seen as any sort of formal obligation where your relationship, contractual or matrimonial, forces you to act against your faith, and avoiding that simply seems prudent.

 

But when that idea gets wound up in the phrase "separate yourselves from the unrighteous" (which, read it carefully in any translation, is not what it says), it turns into a belief that faithful living requires that you have no churchly relationship with anyone or any group with which you have disagreement, substantial or slight.

 

Which is, to use a theological term, hooey. In my own congregation, I am a Cubs fan, while almost all of the rest of us are Indians or Reds fans. Ah, but that's not about unrighteousness, I can hear some ask. Well, my retort would be that when you turn this into a need to keep your distance from any disagreement that has to do with the nature of truth, we have all sorts of points of departure, from sports to sexuality to the nature of authority. There are some church folk who think I should be able to just tell people what they must do, and would you believe it, but I disagree with them?

 

How can we continue as faith communities worthy of the name, even as our members have differences of opinion? I plan to return to this subject from a number of angles this summer. Please feel free to share with me any particular aspects you'd like to hear addressed.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; you can email him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-14-16

Faith Works 5-14-16

Jeff Gill

 

We Make the Road By Walking

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What Deb Dingus is doing right now is incredibly brave, and terribly important, and worth a little of your time in prayer, if in no other way.

 

In case you've missed the social media fuss around the hashtag #GiveWalkDo50, the stories in this paper and others around the state and indeed around the country, our executive director of the United Way of Licking County, Deb Dingus, is walking a meandering but very purposeful path around this Land of Legend, camping out each night and walking step by step the whole way, some 420 miles and more through all 25 townships and just about every municipality.

 

Yes, she's trying to raise, in events and gatherings along the way these 50 days, about $50,000 for the work of the United Way in our county, but that's not the half of it. Not from where I stand, or walk. She's trying to help weave our county together. To encourage us to be, well, united.

 

Recent years have seen our county, unlike many in Ohio and most in the Midwest, grow in numbers. People are moving in more than moving away, and that's a good thing. But it also means that some of the traditions and connections and community we take for granted are not present, and like any good present, those gifts need to be given.

 

Add in that we have many people moving into the county who come from places like Franklin and Delaware and Fairfield Counties, and who still watch or listen to mostly Columbus media, and we have a bit of a disconnect. A lack of community, a reality that is un-united in Licking County.

 

So Deb is walking, taking it step-by-step, journeying at a slower pace, with a more intentional rate of passage, from place to place and bringing together person after person in conversation, collaboration, and community.

 

Pilgrimage is a solid tradition in many faith practices; Christianity has the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem and the Stations of the Cross that grew out of that walking practice. Ancient Native Americans whose mark is left on our terrain in earthworks and enclosures appear to have made walks of sixty miles and more to connect their world and their peoples across Ohio, maybe even beyond.

 

Not long ago, a very moving film was made by Martin Sheen and his son Emilio Estevez, "The Way" about the "Camino de Santiago," a pilgrim's journey across the north of Spain to Compostela, and a story about a father and son finding a new connection even beyond this life, simply through the discipline of walking. Driving or flying don't make these connections for us, but walking can take us to a place of peace that endures.

 

Dick Shiels and the staff of the Newark Earthworks Center have led walks from Chillicothe to Licking County, that have inspired both today's Native American peoples and local students and citizens who see their lives now connected in ways they had not previously imagined, all by simply walking together from place to place.

 

So here we are with our own United Way team, board members and staff and all of us who have been supporting our executive director in setting a new pace, a striking example for us all, as Deb Dingus walks and weaves this vast and diverse county into something that is, well, united. For we are, or at least can be, and certainly should be united here in Licking County.

 

Thursday, May 26, Deb will come back to Newark where she began 50 days earlier (a rainy eight mile day to start, which we hope not to repeat at the end!), and somewhere around noon or just before we will celebrate the closing of a circle in the main courtyard of The Works. She will pass through the Canal Market District which will be dedicated the next day with a triumph of its own on the 27th, but on May 26, I hope many of you remember, and perhaps come join us, as we reflect on what Deb has done for us in a journey perhaps without precedent, but not the last such venture in Licking County.

 

We're already talking about walking and working, service and learning, prayer and practice as a model for others: starting here in our Land of Legend. It has been a journey of discovery, no doubt, but it has most emphatically been a circuit of connection. Let's stay united.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your journey and how you pray your way one step at a time at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes From My Knapsack 5-12-16

Notes From My Knapsack 5-12-16

Jeff Gill

 

It's Just a Day, One You Make

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This week Denison University marks a Saturday commencement, their 175^th.

 

Two more weeks and a day later, Granville High School has commencement, the number of which I'm not sure, except that it's the Class of 2016 and that's a kind of important class to me and mine.

 

A commencement ceremony is, if you break the word down, a beginning, a commencing of something, not so much an ending, even though that's really what's on order. Diplomas are handed over for what has been done, concluding speeches and songs and celebrations mark an end to public schooling or a college career. It has very much a sense of an ending to it.

 

But in fact those who complete their stage of education are simply preparing themselves to commence another. Even a college graduate who has no intention of graduate school is going to, on the job, be going "to school." A new computer program or database system, the official workflows or office protocols all have to be learned, mastered, utilized, and it's what you've been going to school for, truly: to be ready to learn how to work with and in that new framework.

 

You commence to learn as you end a form of formal education, and so this is a turning point, a signal day for you whether concluding a college degree or completing a high school curriculum.

 

The rest of what makes a commencement ceremony is ritual and culture and tradition. It is theater of a sort, with a script and acts and a finale.  It is a day, and in one sense it's a day like any other day, except your school district, your family, your community has chosen to make of it a particular sort of day. It's special because we've decided to make it so. It has a sunrise and a sunset and in between the usual number of hours, a day like almost any other.

 

I have a friend who is a woodcarver. He takes a piece of wood and makes something of it, and enjoys pointing out how a particular feature or aspect of the finished product is actually the result of a knot or a twist of grain. That irreducible element of the material is bent to make an ear, a handle, a feather outstretched. It becomes art.

 

Another friend works in sculpture, banging away at a large piece of rock. Cracks and seams in the stone dictate some of the lines, and she makes of them what she can, her vision turning some of the rest of the material where she will.  In the end, the piece of art has its own integrity.

 

And I work with words, myself. Certain subjects come to mind, arise on the calendar, and there's a length and placement I have to keep in mind. Within those parameters, I can create. It is both constrained, and free, all at the same time.

 

Commencement days are very much like those pieces of artisanship. Some is given, and much is not open to adaptation, but in between you can make marvelous connections. In the end, it is what you make of it.

 

For all of the local graduates, college and high school alike, I hope for you that the art of your day be a practice run for work yet to come, taking each day on its own terms, but making of each as you can a thing of beauty. It is just a day, but what a wonderful day.

 

Make of it what you will!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about how you make a day out of the tools at hand at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-7-16

Faith Works 5-7-16

Jeff Gill

 

Transformation Isn't Always On the Outside

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Mother's Day weekend, the dogwoods are in full bloom, and spring is ready to turn the page to summer, all solstices aside.

 

Next week begins the local series of commencements (Denison's used to be on Mother's Day for years and years, but they've grown wiser: it's next Saturday), and this is a big commencement season in your columnist's household.

 

It's also bittersweet; my mother and father are coming to town at the end of the month, but my wife's mother passed away this week last year. That's also always a part of Mother's Day, as you experience it in community, in families, through the years. There are those we give thanks for who are with us, and those we remember who have passed on; all that we do is intended, in one small part at least, to pass along models and examples for mothers yet to come into that role.

 

In church life we've learned better than to just focus on the mothers with children on this day. Those who would have had and could not, those who have lost children, those whose circumstances we may never fully comprehend can be excluded and hurt if we're too entirely about numbers and distance and generations, but it's worth a little extra effort to find a way to celebrate the mothers that are, as well as the mothering we all need and have often gotten from many and diverse sources.

 

We are mothered in school by teachers and lunch ladies, mothered by nurses and doctors and caregivers, mothered by Sunday school leaders and even occasionally by ministers. A motherly love was expressed by Jesus looking down from the Mount of Olives over Jerusalem, and we would reflect that particular love as we would all elements of Christ's personality.

 

It is hard, and even in a practical sense impossible to be mothered by institutions – even the institution of the church. One of the reasons I like to lift up Mother's Day in the liturgical year (some do not, and I respect the observation that it's not in the Bible) is that it's really about personal connections in life and faith and family. We can add to our collection of mothers in our lives through interactions and involvements in a number of organizations, the church included, but while we sing and speak this time of year of "Alma Mater," there's no collective that can truly love us with a mother's love. It's the people we meet at Alma Mater who show us that love, that care.

 

It is in the relationships we build with people, face to face, personal and connected, that we come to know just why Mother's Day is such an important day to so many. On the Fourth of July we celebrate that "Columbia's the gem of the ocean," but on Mother's Day we give thanks for the individuals who have shown us what love really is.

 

And if you're looking for someplace to take Mom, or one of the motherly influences in your life, this weekend, you really should come to downtown Newark and check out FAMFEST. Again, "The Works" is a unique and wonderful museum, about to celebrate a 20^th anniversary that includes, quite frankly, a whole lot of love, but you can't love a big brick building. It's the people who manage it and run it and volunteer for it who put the love inside of all the hard edges and factory exterior.

 

They tell us "Newark FAMFEST was founded on the belief that experiences in Film, Art and Music can be a catalyst for personal, social and economic transformation." That's true, but that truth only is communicated through the interactions with the artists and creators and curators at work on what they have to share. Come on down to the LeFevre Courtyard at "The Works" to celebrate Film, Art, & Music in our community.  (See www.newarkfamfest.com for more info.)

 

We need those connections now, it seems, more than ever. When labels and speeches and social media are full of tension and fear and anger, that's when we need a mother's touch the most. Not only our own mother, but the mothers and fathers and caring adults and visionary youth of our community to create spaces where those personal encounters can happen: and FAMFEST looks to be exactly one of those, perfectly fitting into this Mother's Day weekend.

 

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