Notes From My Knapsack 9-21-17

Notes From My Knapsack 9-21-17

Jeff Gill

 

Door to door to door

___

 

Years ago, I sold Boy Scout popcorn door to door, and got a great story out of the experience: I grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana, and I got to sell a five pound bag of Orville Redenbacher popcorn to Orville Redenbacher.

 

In general, I didn't look forward to the popcorn sale day, when we spread out across the town in various station wagons (it's the early Seventies, okay?), except for the then-rare experience of getting to have lunch at McDonald's, but I did well enough. My younger brother only told me years later that when he had to go out on "Popcorn Day" he'd mime pushing the doorbell, stand there a while, then trudge on; the mom driving his group around would comment on how he had such bad luck with people not being home. He hated the whole process.

 

Fast forward, and my son went around with what became a nationwide popcorn deal for Scouts; he had sold wrapping paper for elementary school in Hebron, mostly to family, and then in band there were candles and candy and a few other vats of cheese that turned out to be more tiny pots of . . . something.

 

Door to door sales are hard. I had a paper route, back when kids delivered papers (again, Seventies), and there would be drives to sell subscriptions. Those prizes were some great stuff, I thought then, and I pushed myself. I got a radio, a trip to a college football game, a few other items, never the telescope or tent or trip to New York.

 

Today, I live near one of our village's entrances off of the expressway. I'm also an officer in our neighborhood association, and when I took that role one of the previous holders told me "one of your jobs is to call the police non-emergency number when solicitors come around." My reaction at first was "really?" But that changed.

 

First, as soon as the weather warmed up, I was amazed at how many van loads of folks would get dumped down the block and set loose with clipboards and order forms. Some were very persistent, and I would see how an elderly lady next door would get nearly-literally arm-twisted. I'd ask "are you registered?" or any other question, and see a shocking eruption of hostility. It became easier to make the call to 1234.

 

Especially after the second or third time the officer would come back, after showing up and tracking down the waif with a pen on a string, and finding out they were runaways. A couple of times a summer, the police would follow the thread back to the van, the "boss," and the hotel room six of them were sharing. Many – not all, but many – of the "subscription sales" and other door-to-door solicitors were not what they claimed, and on more than one occasion one of them would pull the police checking on the location aside and say "help me."

 

I don't know what the right law about solicitation in Granville should be. But the idea that there be some regulation, some way to sort out the situation, other than everyone having to put a "No Solicitation" sign on their door, that makes a world of sense to me.

 

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

Faith Works 9-16-17

Faith Works 9-16-17

Jeff Gill

 

What do you believe, and how would I know?

___

 

There's a very old preaching illustration that can be summed up with the question: If being a Christian were a crime, is there enough evidence to convict you?

 

There's an echo here that wasn't as audible years ago, when we were more ready to confuse Christendom with country, and the mainline Protestant churches tended to assume that the culture of America was entirely supportive of "our" religion.

 

We could spend some serious time on a discussion of how the mainline never was that main, on Main St. or from sea-to-sea (for one thing, the "mainline" model never took Catholicism into account, let alone non-Christian faith communities, which have been with us since before the Declaration of Independence), but there was a normative model not long ago. It was an image of popular piety that we carried into civil religion across the nation, and many, even non-believers, had in their popular imagination of "being Christian."

 

That standard model, that kind of imagining envisioned that a good citizen going about their business like everyone else was also, pretty automatically, a good Christian. Looking back, we missed a great deal when we started to assume that religious formation was or ever could be a responsibility we could pass along to popular culture. Pop culture is, well, pop culture.

 

And even in the heart of that "middle America" imagination, there was an uneasy awareness that for many regular churchgoers, there wasn't much evidence for how faith in a loving God directly involved in our lives was an active and vital part of who we were. How did that amazing realization, if we'd come to it and affirmed it, make our lives different from someone else who hadn't taken that step in faith, but drove the same car, took the same vacations, read the same books, and enjoyed the same recreations? "Is there enough evidence to convict you?"

 

The good news is, from where this preacher stands, the huge shift in the last generation to Christian missions in this country. Yes, people have and probably should comment critically on "missions tourism," where folks go somewhere warm and exotic to do two days of service to those in need and get five days of cheap vacation in a tropical paradise. But let me say with as much weight as I can bring to bear: I've not seen that around here. Not at all.

 

To Haiti, to Zimbabwe; to South Carolina and not the fancy parts; to Mississippi and the Gulf Coast without a pause at a casino, even for the buffet; and now to Houston and Florida. Almost exactly one year ago, terrible flooding hit north-central West Virginia, and our congregation is preparing to go next month to a place that's hard to find on a map, let alone in a vacation guide. The hands-on work is most missional, most vital when the big ticket relief efforts are over, the telethons are done and the large corporate entities have moved on. It's the mucking out and tearing off of drywall, the peeling of paint and re-shingling of a patch job that's already years old.

 

Already, it's being said that faith-based organizations have brought in, both to the Houston area and to south Florida, almost double what FEMA has put on the ground and in people's hands. That's not being said to hack on FEMA, just to point out how large and broad those church organized responses are.

 

And most critically, and as the mission team folk from my own congregation have taught me, it's after FEMA is a faded memory that people still sitting in the midst of a fair amount of still visible destruction start to wonder "does anyone really care?" When the first adrenaline rush passes, and the surge of National Guard help and boxes off the big trucks are being delivered somewhere else, the local people who absorbed the brunt of the blow are only then taking stock of what they've lost, and what looking forward means now.

 

This is where a few van loads of people with a mix of carpentry and electrical and plumbing and just leather-gloved "rip it out" skills, showing up to just say "how can we help?" can move hearts and lift spirits, let alone take a ruined house and make it a habitable home again.

 

In this country, and overseas, mission service in the name of your faith can create some compelling evidence that your beliefs mean something.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him where you've seen faith made visible at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 9-9-17

Faith Works 9-9-17

Jeff Gill

 

Passages of mystery and wonder

___

 

As a preacher in a Christian congregation, a big part of my calling is to preach, obviously.

 

Most Sundays, those gathered as part of our worship hear me present a message taking the hearers deeper into the passage of Scripture selected for that week, whether a choice I've made based on the season or situation we're in, or more often from a three year cycle of readings encompassing the whole Bible called a "lectionary." My usual comment on that is that I follow the lectionary every week, except when I don't.

 

Even with a three year cycle of over 150 sets of readings from the Old Testament and the New, Gospels and Psalms, you don't quite get everywhere. Nahum isn't heard from much, let alone Titus. Obadiah and Philemon can be missed, but there are also the chapters from Isaiah and Luke which may not get as much attention as the 53^rd or 10^th, and themes are sometimes hard for even a trained clergymember to discern from what the lectionary selection gives us.

 

Advent is still a long ways away, so right now we can venture into a topical series or travel through the life of a figure from the Bible, that either our own spiritual disciplines are pointing us towards or sometimes we just want to challenge ourselves and the congregation with passages we're not familiar with.

 

Bruce Wilkinson did this a few years back with the Prayer of Jabez, a short passage from I Chronicles hidden in plain sight, where in chapter 4 verse 10 this man of God says "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory!" There was much gold in that vein, as it turned out on further delving.

 

Feminist theologians and preachers like Barbara Brown Taylor and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza have invited us to look more closely at Jael in Judges (chapter five, and you'll need a strong stomach!), at Matthew 14:21 where there are five thousand men numbered "besides women and children" who are left uncounted, and at the woman by the well in John chapter four.

 

My wife has friends from her National Park Services days who worked at Carlsbad Caverns, whose favorite visitor question, often asked, was "how many miles of unexplored passageway are there?" Exactly.

 

One metaphor that sticks in my mind for exploring the Scriptures is a vast system of subterranean passageways, like Carlsbad or Mammoth Cave. There are the large "historic" entrances that most visitors start with: the Twenty-third Psalm, the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37, the "Christmas" stories of Matthew & Luke 2 and the Holy Week accounts concluding all four Gospels.

 

Once you get into the heart of the caverns, there are the grand galleries and main passages, well trodden, clearly marked, with plenty of guidebook entries and lots of stories about the stories as the rangers and signage tell you. The Psalms as a whole, Ecclesiastes chapter three, the stories of Joseph in Genesis and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is Daniel; the parables of Jesus dotted through the gospel accounts and the best known teachings of Paul in Romans 8 & I Corinthians 13.

 

Then you start to explore side chambers, not alone but off the beaten path, of the prophets speaking truth to power (five major, twelve minor, each with a unique message but a singular passion for the poor), of history obscure in context or meaning, such as the death of the man of God in I Kings 13 and the strange events around his passing.

 

Deeper still, there are hard to navigate openings into the Cave of Adullam (have you ever been there?) or in I Peter where Christ preaches to the spirits in prison. In Judaism, it's often said that you shouldn't start to read in the mystical writings until you're over 40; I had a seminary professor say that Christians should have the same guideline for reading the Book of Revelation.

 

I am indebted to Allan Boesak, the South African preacher and teacher, who explained to white Midwestern middle-class Protestant pastors years ago that, during the era of apartheid and oppression, Revelation reads very differently to people living under the same pressures. His comparison sticks with me still: in America in July, you drive past signs saying "Bridge freezes first" but everyone knows that's a sign for the winter. It's not confusing. Likewise the stories of tribulation and triumph are less for the comfortable than for the afflicted, in their due season.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he likes the obscure passages and familiar stories in equal measure. Tell him about your discoveries in sacred writings at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter. 

Faith Works 9-2-17

Faith Works 9-2-17

Jeff Gill

 

Helping out and looking within

___

 

Many years ago, when I was serving as pastor in a place with many and serious economic ills, our community was offered aid.

 

When you don't have much, you don't turn down anything, right? An offer is an offer, so the word came that a semi-trailer would arrive on a certain day and we would have a crew ready to unload, at an address where some short-term storage could be done securely.

 

On the hour expected, the truck showed up. From the start, the whole operation felt very different than any of us had expected. The driver was hired, fair enough, but he made it clear he expected to be on the road again in no less than two hours, and he was going to get lunch and we were on our own. He unlocked the back doors and was quickly off down the street.

 

Standing at the back of the semi was a scratch crew, mostly made up of ministers, it being a weekday. And a few well-intended retirees. Inside, with almost four feet to clamber up to reach the trailer's floor, was . . . stuff.

 

We'd been asked if we needed . . . I'll just say "certain items." Those sounded helpful to our work in that town, and we said yes. The "helpful" person on the other end said "we'll throw in some other similar items which might be similarly useful."

 

"Throw" was the operative word. And it was quickly clear to us that someone with a business that shall not be named had set a crew to work throwing the contents of a warehouse of "stuff" into this truck. Imagine a semi-trailer filled to three or four feet in height with drifts of loose items.

 

And I'll be blunt. Most of it was trash. Returns, remainders, extras, probably a fair mix of flawed or rejected items. The "certain items" we'd said yes to? They were all the way in the back, and I kid you not there were three sad boxes of that stuff . . . and a truckload of all the rest.

 

Those "free gifts" ended up costing our community churches a few hundred in dumpster fees, while a company got a tax write-off under false pretenses. We could have raised heck somehow, I realize in retrospect, but we had neither the time nor the energy, so we sifted out what we could use for our kids programs and sent the rest to a landfill, where it was doubtless destined, but now at our charitable group's cost.

 

I tell this story now not to settle scores (or you'd be reading some names here!) but to explain why charitable groups and churches alike ask those who want to help with Hurricane Harvey or similar disasters to send MONEY. Contributions. Cash.

 

Yes, in-kind donations can be critical. And they will, in certain situations, have their place. Some groups are very skilled at obtaining and sifting and shifting those sorts of items, and if you hear about an effort, God bless them.

 

But there is no one who has done much work with non-profit and faith-based and disaster relief efforts who doesn't have a story about helping unload a truckload of winter parkas after a Florida hurricane, or having to trash a ton of canned goods with bulging lids. Both poorly considered good intentions, and flat-out venality . . . we can say "sin" here, can't we? . . . mean that getting big piles of help often means heaps and heaps of trouble, and time spent taking out someone else's trash when you're there to help people in need.

 

Your faith community doubtless has a relief arm. My own denomination's "Week of Compassion" does great work, "One Great Hour of Sharing" is used by a number of churches, while Church World Service is an ecumenical relief agency with a great track record. United Methodist Committee on Relief, or UMCOR is excellent; I and communities I've been a part of have seen how effective the Salvation Army, LDS Charities, and Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) are for everyone involved. Parachurch groups like Samaritan's Purse and Habitat for Humanity are great partners as well, and of course the American Red Cross is always there first and usually last. They're all online, and all worthy recipients of your gifts.

 

John Wesley is known for his aphorism "Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can." Give where you will, and give what and as much as you can, and remember that your monetary contributions are almost always the fastest and most effective way to get help to those who need hope.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about where and how you like to help others at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes From My Knapsack 9-7-17

Notes From My Knapsack 9-7-17

Jeff Gill

Statuary and other public goods

___

Perhaps it's just as well that we don't have more public sculpture in Our Fair Village.

Around the nation, there are debates about Confederate generals on horseback and monuments to oppression in bronze and marble, the wording of plaques in public places no longer reading as quaint as much as they now sound downright cruel, or even simply wrong.

We've had a form of this sort of public discussion, albeit about private property on public display. At the head of Main Street for generations the entry sign in stone for Denison University said "A Christian College of Liberal Arts." Tons of granite, that by 2006 no longer spoke the truth.

In fact, when "the Centennial Stone" gateway went up in 1931, the word "Christian" was controversial in some quarters, because it signaled the end of a specifically "Baptist" identity for the college. And that move in 1931 to a broader understanding of their mission pointed to the change that came 75 years later, since the mission of Denison is today rooted in a more secular vision of education. You can debate whether that's an improvement, but was certainly true that the old memorial gave some visiting families pause as they came for their first look.

There are other inscriptions on different gateways between the village and the college, but little in the way of artistic depiction of historic figures. Some modern abstract sculpture, but you have to go to Newark to see bronze persons remembered, from a grandpa with a candy bar downtown to Mark Twain by the Midland; a reading child at the library arch to Shakespeare and Monet at the Ohio State Newark campus.

We do have two kids and a puppy in front of the Granville Public Library, and a more hidden woman pouring out her thoughts behind the Robbins Hunter Museum. On the side entrance to the Avery Downer House is a memorial Robbins Hunter, Jr. placed to celebrate Victoria Woodhull, his part in marking the nation's bicentennial and more recently refurbished. On the hour, a three-quarters sculpture of the first woman to run for President of the United States, carved in wood, painted and well shellacked, comes out on her balcony to gaze upon the people she was ready to represent.

And we do have a stump. Carved of stone, marking a more perishable original, it sits on the spot where the first tree was cut down with a steel axe as the 1805 pioneering party entered this valley from Granville, Massachusetts & Granby, Connecticut, the stump becoming a speaker's platform for the dedication sermon. Those New England pioneers we now know not to be even the first Europeans to reside in this township, let alone the first humans by some thousands of years, but their names, which undergird the village as we know it today, can still be read on that sculptured stump.

Should we have more busts, a hero on horseback, other sculptures in public places here in Granville? Somehow, that kind of monumentalism doesn't quite seem in place for this place. Our tastes are more to the simple lines of Greek Revival and pointed steeples, Federal brick and the occasional fanlight, green lawns and Doric pillars.

I am glad we have Victoria, though. On the hour, for a few moments. She seems just right for our town.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he has done little sculpting, other than in mashed potatoes at dinnertime. Tell him about statuary that's caught your attention at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.