Faith Works 4-14-18

Faith Works 4-14-18

Jeff Gill

 

Endings leading to beginnings

___

 

When I first moved to Licking County in 1989, outside of the congregation that had called me one of the first gatherings I attended was of the Newark Area Ministerial Association.

 

A monthly gathering of clergy from all around Licking County, it was already decades in existence then; out of their weekday lunch meetings came the Licking County Jail Ministry which was just getting going as I arrived, and a few years later as we assembled the basis of the Licking County Coalition for Housing in 1992, NAMA was the springboard for much of the cooperative and collaborative efforts of area churches into areas like housing and hunger and helping in general.

 

NAMA was also the sponsor for the annual community Thanksgiving service, and Holy Week services including a noon to 3 pm Good Friday service, the "Tre Ore" observance which had been in and around downtown Newark since the early 1960s. Quite a number of other community events leaned on NAMA to provide basic support and logistics and personnel through the year.

 

I left for West Virginia in 1993, returned to the county and Hebron in 1999 and quickly got back involved with the jail ministry and the Housing Coalition, but it wasn't until I was called to the pulpit and back into full-time Christian ministry with Central Christian in Newark, in 2012, that I came back to NAMA meetings.

 

It was clear that quite a bit had changed in the time in between. Many of the stalwart congregations in the NAMA fold had changed, mostly smaller; many of the pulpits from which NAMA members came were served in those days by interims and retired ministers, who often lived not just outside of town but outside of Licking County. Not a few of the other full-time ministers lived away, and a number were bivocational, so their weekday job meant a lunch on a Thursday wasn't something they could attend.

 

We jumped around, different days, into breakfasts, but still mostly weekdays; we tried meeting at non-church locations in Heath and Newark, but the number attending kept shrinking. Some churches called new clergy who said to those of us who invited them "I don't do community stuff," others said "I would if I could find the time."

 

And two years ago, the CROP Walk committee said to a few of us "if you don't jump in and save it, we won't have one." I've been on CROP committees in three states and always supported the concept, but I didn't offer to join the effort and it didn't happen last year, either. I was chided by a colleague for not doing so, but I explained my commitments and involvements, and said "it's too much as it is, what would you have me drop to add that?"

 

About the same time the Thanksgiving service almost wasn't, and I offered our church building, not downtown but willing and we hosted. I have a sentimental attachment to such services (another column) and I hated to see it go. Last November I was asked if I could take it on, and I had to decline due to a family scheduling conflict . . . and for the first time in probably half a century here, and for nearly that in my own life, there was no service Thanksgiving week.

 

Holy Week has been a complex web of services in years past, but up to a dozen clergy involved; this year, my vocal cord procedure and lack of voice took me out, and I learned it was all basically two ministers and a lay leader who covered it all. And it was, one of them said, too much.

 

So, not to draw this out too long: we met last week, and concluded NAMA as an organization. It has served God's purposes for generations, and it now has come to a time of passing on. And in passing, perhaps after a season in the ground, something new will sprout.

 

I already imagine a quarterly gathering, on a Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon, with a different list of necessary events a County Christian Leaders Summit could support. Some of the old ones might come back, but it can't be all about sentiment. We need to pray together, discern wisely, and choose with humility. What was traditional yesterday may not serve tomorrow as well, and we need to let some traditions, and even bad habits, pass on.

 

So that something new might be born, but receive a valuable legacy passed on, by groups from our community history such as NAMA.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's been a member of NAMA for years and will also be glad to say he was. Tell him what you think might be ready to be birthed into our community at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 4-12-18

Notes from my Knapsack 4-12-18

Jeff Gill

 

Life finds a way
___

 

Ian Malcolm is noted scientist, at least in fictional terms. He's had a number of star turns but is best known for his comic relief and insightful observations in the original "Jurassic Park" movie when, after the re-creators of the dinosaurs into the present day explain how they've made sure that there's no way their risky revivals could break loose, he says:

 

"Life cannot be contained. Life breaks free. Life...uh, finds a way."

 

Spring is the time when the simplest property owner, the least horticultural caretaker or lawn tender, we maintenance-impaired mis-managers all realize the truth of Dr. Malcolm's now all-purpose aphorism: "Life finds a way." (Memes available on request.)

 

Through mulch and sidewalk cracks, up between patio pavers and among the more desireable plants, life keeps finding a way. The spring may bring the spray bottles and lawn care tank trucks, the long-shanked weed pullers and rolling spreaders of granules bearing a chemical punch, but still, life finds a way.

 

The dandelions, brought ashore at Jamestown before 1610 whether in an apothecary's trunk or ship's ballast cast ashore onto a virgin continent from Europe, are now already peering with a yellow squint out of our too long deferred flower beds. Various plants, native and non-native, are poking up from the half decayed leaf mould and bits of scattered buds now cast down as the serious work of leafing out has begun.

 

We look at our greening lawns, in various states of disrepair after the winter, and make our plans for verdant, lush, comforting landscapes, on our quarter-acre or quarter section, but closer up you can tell that life is finding all sorts of ways to complicate our plans for a relaxing summer. Shoots and suckers and tendrils and stems pop up, and a new variety for every season of warmth ahead.

 

Mustards and clovers, chickweeds and dead nettles, they're already at work from just above the surface of the soil; crabgrass is working invisibly, and while it won't really attract your attention until later this summer, if you don't get ahead of it now it's almost not worth the fight later. And on the sun-shaded north-facing walls and structures, microscopic life forms are getting ready to erupt into enough life to attract dust and dirt and spread their grey and grimy stains across the siding of your house or fence rails around the lot.

 

You may think you used a paint last year or a solution in the power-washing last fall which means you don't have to worry about these things, but . . . life finds a way. You have to keep an eye on which lines you don't want crossed, where the borders are supposed to be between this plot and that landscaping feature, because life is finding a way right now to break it down and erase it, given enough time.

 

Yes, those limbs you meant to trim back when it was freezing, but you were waiting for the right not-too-cold, still freezing but not miserable day? Too late. Or you can cut now, watch the wounds weep, and wonder if you just killed that still desired tree or bush (you probably won't, with care and restraint). All those tasks of winter you were going to get to? Now it's time to plunge in and try to stay ahead of the tide, the green wave of growth.

 

Nature may not always throw dinosaurs at you, but nibbling in small but steady ways on your property, life will indeed find a way.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he and his wife and the bank own a house and a patch of weed-besieged lawn. Tell him how you co-exist with ravenous nature at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 4-7-18

Faith Works 4-7-18

Jeff Gill

 

A solemn anniversary with long shadows

___

 

50 years ago, I was six years old. I'm not quite old enough to recall where I was or what was going on when President Kennedy was shot, though I have a dim recollection of JFK's funeral procession rolling past on a black and white TV, the horse with backwards boots in the stirrups riding alone after the caisson carrying the casket.

What I do recall is the spring of 1968, and how that second half of my second grade year was shadowed by violence: first, the killing of Rev. Dr. King on April 4th, then the death of Bobby Kennedy on June 6th. I remember my parents were very upset about King's assassination, and seeing news coverage of riots not far from where I lived in northwest Indiana; I recall more specifically having just started summer break and waking up to say to my mother "it's a beautiful morning!" on June 5th and her responding "no, it's not, they've shot Bobby Kennedy" (he died the next day after being attacked just after midnight in California). Clearly, these deaths meant something to me even in a modest town in the Midwest.

There was an unease at school and at home, a sense of things coming unstuck, of bombings and shootings and killings against a backdrop of Vietnam, and with the earlier echo of Nov. 22, 1963 still ringing in everyone's ears.

And in truth, the anxieties I saw on the faces of the adults around me only grew as bombings in post offices and government buildings increased in frequency (the next year and a half saw over four thousand incendiary and explosive devices set off in the United States, with a crescendo reached in May of 1970 at Kent State). The violent official response to protests in Chicago the summer of 1968, around the political convention there, were bookended by riots in cities seemingly all around me as a child the year before and the year after.

So I have to admit, as a white male raised in an overwhelmingly white town in a very white state, I grew up unconsciously associating civil rights and racial justice with violence and fear. I did not start to see or understand the history behind Dr. King's work until I was much older, and honestly I don't think I got a broader sense of what the civil rights movement was about until, in 1991, I got ahold of a copy of "Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63" by Taylor Branch.

The double blessing was, in a series of coincidences that those of us who believe call "the work of the Holy Spirit," I got to spend the better part of an hour talking to Rev. Gardner C. Taylor just after finishing the book. He was a friend and close ally of Martin Luther King's, and his reactions to the book (mostly favorable) and his questions about how I understood what it was about (which was minimal) opened up my heart and my awareness about the struggle for civil rights in America. It was sealed by an unexpected realization that we'd both been through church fires as ministers, and swapping stories about how to preach and pastor a church without a home.

The longer title of "Parting the Waters" is because the subtitle is the actual name of the three part social history Taylor Branch was writing, "America in the King Years," continuing with "Pillar of Fire" covering 1963 – 1965 & "At Canaan's Edge" from 1965 to King's assassination in 1968 and its immediate aftermath.

Three volumes is a great deal of reading, but I would strongly encourage any readers here to at least consider taking on "Parting the Waters." To learn of the depth and breadth and complexity of the civil rights movement both saddened my understandings, but also lifted my heart. The young King in his first congregation faced the same sorts of challenges a new pastor has to overcome, even before he walks out the doors of his church and confronts the racism of his new hometown. And the many allies and co-workers, most of whom I'd never heard of, without whom we might never have heard of Dr. King . . . it's truly an epic tale of America.

King was killed 50 years ago last Wednesday. It marked a number of roads not taken, and his death along with those of Kennedys before and after him did cause a certain hardening of hearts, which we are still trying to soften. The story melted mine, and I pray you might feel it warming yours.

 

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

Notes from my Knapsack 3-29-18

Notes from my Knapsack 3-29-18

Jeff Gill

 

Sunrises

___

 

About now, sunrise is at 7:15 am, thanks to the clever busy helpful adjustments of the government a few weeks ago. We are saving daylight, having trimmed an hour off the morning and pasted it onto the evening. Huzzah.

 

So I'm waiting to get sunrises back where they belong in my morning routine, or where I think they should be about this time of year.

 

I've written more over the years about moonrises than sunrises, because of the Newark Earthworks and their ancient, learned geometries from two thousand years ago, and through them I've learned how amazing it can be to watch a moonrise, which few end up doing.

 

But most of us have watched the sunrise, at some point or another. It can be a painful experience, if you've waited through a long dark night, and found yourself watching the east for light, for hope, for a beginning or an ending, but weighted with sorrow.

 

Or it can be a joyful moment, especially if you went to a special vantage point, moving up to it in the dark, in pre-dawn gloom, and were where you could enjoy to the fullest the gathering light moving up in advance of the breaking forth of the sun's rays over a distant horizon.

 

Sometimes, a sunrise is just the price you pay for a party that went on too late, a job that began too early, and you see it in your rear-view mirror or squint into it through the windshield, a feature of a time of day you'd prefer to be able to avoid.

 

I know there are many who enjoy a good western view, on the gulf coast of Florida or out in California or even islands beyond, where you can relax by watching the sun set with a cool drink near at hand, letting the red rubber ball squeeze down into the ocean far off.

 

But I find myself most put in tune with the day, with my life, getting to sit where I can see the first light of day tint the highest tree branches near me, then watch the glow work down the trunk and to the ground, finally warming my face where I sit with a good hot cup of coffee.

 

A good sunrise can put you in touch with those for whom it's a sunset far to the east, and make you mindful of those who off to your west are still waiting for the first glimmer of dawn. A morning that begins with a sunrise that can warm your heart will light up the whole day, even when the sun is eaten up by clouds overhead later on.

 

This Sunday, many of us remember a sunrise thousands of years ago, one that began in predawn mists of uncertainty and anxiety, but which by full light had turned into a day full of rejoicing and wonder. Sunrises can do that for you.

 

This spring, and it is indeed spring no matter what the forsythia are saying to us, I hope you get a chance to wake and greet a sunrise to see what it has to say to you. It might just cast a light on the day and days ahead, that makes more clear than even a good night's sleep alone can bring.

 

Happy Easter!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he will be atop Horns Hill at 7 am on Easter morning. Tell him what the sunrise says to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 3-31-18

Faith Works 3-31-18

Jeff Gill

 

Seeing and hearing, a story

___

 

She almost bolted out of the dark interior of the church into the bright sunlight of Jerusalem.

 

Inside, the crowds and the turmoil had been enough to throw her off, but the tour guide had taken them to the tomb first, then to the Golgotha chapel, which confused her. The guide did his best to help orient everyone in this ancient building, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, explaining how the original stone quarry had been reshaped and built over, across seventeen centuries, including the place of Jesus' crucifixion, and the location of his now empty tomb, but the lamps and candles and icons and incense . . . it was all too much for her.

 

Other tour groups crowded in on every side, a chorus of guides speaking at once, in different languages, and when she heard their guide tell everyone that they had free time to wait in line to enter the "Edicule," the chapel built around Christ's tomb at the heart of the church, but that it would be a two hour wait, she turned and went back out the main, ancient doors and into the courtyard.

 

This was not what she was hoping for, what she'd expected when she signed up for a tour of the Holy Land. There had been wonderful experiences so far, and she wasn't regretting being there for a minute, but this stop on their week long program had thrown her for a loop. She was thinking about Easters past back home, the flowers and morning light and stillness only broken by organ music and hymns, and this was . . . something different. Too different. She couldn't keep the cross, or Jesus, foremost in her thoughts.

 

They were to head back out the Jaffa Gate, and west to their hotel for lunch in two and a half hours. She could tell the tour guide had seen her look on tourist faces before, and he quickly agreed to let her leave, after a few questions confirmed for him she could make her way back on her own.

 

Even the courtyard, about the size of her backyard at home, was crowded. She worked her way through the entering pilgrims, heading back to the main point of entry to the church. A turn, a couple more blocks, and blessedly, the Old City opened up and there was even something resembling a small park in front of her. An open bench sat in the sun like an invitation.

 

Looking around, there were low ruined walls, a sign saying something about a "muristan," and the closest thing to green growing plants she'd seen in some time. The sound of the guides in the echoing hollow spaces of the church were gone, and there was a bit of wind blowing through the tiles and towers around.

 

Then she saw the cat. It was sitting on a stretch of wall off to one side of her, paws tucked together beneath, but one in the cat's mouth, then curling up behind an ear, pulling it forward and around, again and again.

 

The cat grooming itself suddenly took her to a different place. She was at home, but not at home. Her cat back in Ohio, cats anywhere, a cat in this place two thousand years ago, would have groomed themselves in just the same self-possessed, repetitive way. Past and present felt closer together, and she to that past represented by the city, the streets, and that busy bustling too crowded church. And then she heard the name of Jesus.

 

It was "Jesus," and "sepulcher," with German accents, in the midst of more she couldn't quite make out, but they had come out of the Lutheran church across the way, and were walking as a group without a tour guide, heading exactly away from the street which would take them to the ancient church, the traditional place of crucifixion and resurrection. And then they came to halt all together, just in front of her, pointing all the wrong way, an apparent leader of sorts squinting at a map.

 

She summoned up her courage, and her one year of high school German, and stood up. "Gehen kirche Sepulcher?"

"Ja?" replied the woman with the map.

 

With a muddle of "Ich spreche ein sehr bisschen Deutsch" and "rechts, zwei . . . blocks? Then rechts nochmal?" the light dawned, fingers pointed at the map, and the group turned in the correct direction with a flurry of "danke! Danke fraulein!" over their shoulders.

 

She sat back down, and smiled. She had pointed them in the right direction. Towards Jesus.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your trips to disorienting places where the familiar can still show up at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.