Faith Works 9-30-22

Faith Works 9-30-22
Jeff Gill

Planning ahead one last time
___

It's no secret that the state funeral of her late majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, was planned literally decades before it was needed. "Operation London Bridge" and all that, plus "Operation Unicorn" if she died in Scotland. Every eventuality was taken into account.

When my father died a couple of years ago, and my sister and I went down to Texas to help our mother sort matters out, one thing very quickly occurred to us. My dad, who was a very thoughtful man in many ways, had never considered he might die in Texas. It wasn't their home, you see. It was just where they spent the winter in a retirement community by the Rio Grande.

For over a decade, they spent half the year in Texas. But my dad's plans all implied directly or indirectly that when he met his Maker, it would be from an embarkation point out of Indiana. It never occurred to him he'd die away from home.

Trust me, I'm not saying Queen Elizabeth was smarter than my dad, though they would have had plenty to talk about (Churchill, mostly). After all, she had lots of staff.

Yet just because we don't have a Steward to the Household and Black Rod and Chief of Heraldry and Lord High Chamberlain, et cetera, that doesn't mean we can't sit down with a pad of paper or a computer with a printer and knock out some final arrangement planning. It doesn't have to be a royal affair, but it does help to have a plan on paper, or in a 2022 sense, posted or uploaded or saved somewhere where people who care about you can find it, if say you die in Texas or something like that.

And at this point, I want to speak both to those planning for themselves, and those who are going to be responsible for executing those plans: often known as an executor, formally or informally.

Speaking as a longtime parish minister, one of the most painful parts after the initial grief for the family of someone who died is dealing with what is and is not prepared for. So many times I hear over and over "they took care of everything in advance," and then we learn this only meant there's a cemetery lot purchased.

With all due respect, if you've bought a burial plot, you've checked off one item on a very long list, and a fairly modest portion of the total cost. The funeral costs start with the handling of the body (we'll discuss cremation another day) and carry on into a number of areas where savings are possible, but there's still a number of expenditures involved, let alone details.

And it's also heartbreaking when family thinks "well, she had a small insurance policy to cover her final expenses" and in the process we learn the payments stopped on that policy, small though they were, when Great-Aunt Hattie Mae went into the memory unit three years ago. There are also times when everyone's sure there's some kind of provision for funeral costs but no one can find the paperwork.

Just to clear up a few other recurring confusions: Social Security has a death benefit, but last I checked it was in the low three figures. The deceased is a veteran? That will get you the flag and an honor guard of some sort, but it doesn't automatically cover everything. Or most of it.

Let's talk about the more uplifting parts of laying someone to rest, whether yourself or someone you love. I can't say this often enough, and I've said it many times, from pulpits and in print: there are few things that bring smiles to sad faces and cheer to a grieving family like opening an envelope and reading the outline written out by the deceased for their own funeral.

Lists of songs, music you like or even what you absolutely don't want at your funeral; preferred Bible verses are great, names of people you want to have speak at the service even better. If you want Corgis to be waiting on their leashes at the cemetery entrance when the hearse pulls up, you're going to need to say so in advance, and in writing. After all, you're not the Queen.

But as a pastor, I can safely say there are few situations where I've felt more secure and confident about how a service should go than when I'm working from a plan made out by the person whose homegoing we're about to honor.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a plan in an envelope in a filing cabinet. Tell him how you've made final plans at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 9-22-22

Notes from my Knapsack 9-22-22
Jeff Gill

Presidential groundbreaking presence
___


Hello, President Biden, nice to have you in Licking County!

I'm not quite sure on this, but I know we had Abraham Lincoln give a speech on February 14th in 1860 on his way to inauguration, from a train car just south of downtown Newark.

Other than that, which other presidents have we had in the area? In terms of "while serving" he's on a short list. Presidents Obama and Trump certainly flew over — can't miss the distinctive look of Air Force One, let alone the fighter escort — but didn't visit on the ground.

Andrew Johnson came shortly after Lincoln's assassination, and others have told that story at length, but it was another whistle stop more than formal event with "boots on the ground."

Rutherford Hayes from nearby Delaware, Ohio came here for Grand Army of the Republic events as a veteran himself, and at a couple of those James Garfield was present, though well before his presidency.

And I keep running into stories that Andrew Jackson passed through on the old National Road, but I'm not so sure of that one, though it's fairly well received that Jacksontown got its name from supporters of Old Hickory, if not from his actual presence here. Henry Clay did visit Hebron, and that's also a longer story with a powerful punch, but he is simply "the man who was almost President."

Presidents or potentates aside, the big question is "why a groundbreaking?" Especially when the ground is broken, dug, plowed, moved, and transported back and forth between piles and pits already.

Okay, so it's a symbolic act, like saying grace after a meal. You can be thankful after you've already eaten everything, right?

There's a "saying grace" aspect to public and political events like this. We took the first shovelful months ago, but today we celebrate that we started and we're well on the way to finishing. Speeches are actually more common than shovels, even when a dozen or more are wielded by a line of people noticeably not possessing manual labor skills: you see them all trying to coordinate that first scoop . . . on three, two, one, shovel! (Cue cheers.)

Why the attempt to synchronize shovels in the first place? It's actually a fascinating piece of tradition and a kind of religious ritual. The ancient idea is that the wholeness of the soil, which when untouched for long periods does indeed need cutting, not just shoveling, is something to respect. To break the ground is to open up what is below, and who knows what might get out?

In Japan, I am told, groundbreaking ceremonies are still quite overtly religious, in terms of calming spirits that might be disturbed and asking for blessings from powers that may be awakened, to protect the builders and occupants of what is to be put on the site. A few prayers for the construction crews and coming employees might just still be in order.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has prayed over a few construction sites, in fact. Tell him about the blessings you believe our community needs at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 9-16 & 9-23

Two columns in one email . . . 

Faith Works 9-16-22

Jeff Gill

State funerals and sacred occasions

___


Princess Diana's death in 1997 did not lead to a state funeral, although many remember it that way.

The nuances of a royal ceremonial funeral versus a state funeral are probably beyond most of us, but it's worth noting that the United Kingdom actually hasn't had a true "state funeral" since 1965, when Winston Churchill died. The Queen Mother and Prince Philip also had royal ceremonies but not a state funeral per se.

What makes the key difference is, obviously, the involvement of the state itself, and in the case of the UK an act of Parliament. Queen Elizabeth II as ruler of the United Kingdom will certainly have a state funeral.

In the United States, we have a slightly looser set of guidelines for such things, but not that much looser. A state funeral is generally only for Presidents; the set of rituals around a state funeral largely were born around the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and his extended memorials from lying in state under the Capitol rotunda to his burial in Springfield, Illinois.

General Douglas MacArthur was granted a state funeral in 1964, and other than former presidents, the last such was for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020. State funerals were also held for the Unknown Soldiers now at rest in Arlington National Cemetery.

My earliest memories of national news are not of the death of John F. Kennedy, but I recall bits and pieces of his 1963 funeral: the riderless horse with reversed boots in the stirrups, John-John about my age stepping forward to salute his father's casket.

What I first recall actually as a funeral was the one I saw in black and white from across the globe as the Vatican laid to rest Pope John XXIII a few months later. The open casket, the incense, the music was all quite striking to a young child.

At the end of January, 1967, many of the same elements of memorial and honors were seen in the funerals for the astronauts of Apollo I, with two at Arlington and one at the West Point Cemetery. The riderless horse, the honor guards, the salutes all seen on TV were my first experience of what I had yet to experience in person.

When military honors are given to a veteran, we participate in small ways in the larger traditions of state funerals. The flag draping the casket, a three volley salute with "Taps" played, the honor guard and presentation of the flag to the next-of-kin: all of these rituals connect any cemetery in the world to Arlington and the nation's Capitol, including the traditional phrase as the flag is presented:

"On behalf of the President of the United States, the (name of service branch), and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service."

In any funeral today, family members will seek to make connections between their grief and the mourning rituals they've seen and shared before. The challenge for many of us in conducting memorials is that it is more and more common for people to have relatively little experience with previous funerals, and their expectations are more oriented towards public events — like the services for Princess Diana — than a traditional family funeral. Smaller families and people spreading out adds up to not a few people reaching their 30s or 40s never having attended a funeral, and suddenly they have to plan one.

Some religious traditions have a liturgy, a very specific process through which the readings and speakers and acts of the attendees is already laid out. Many liturgical traditions will minimize personal stories about the deceased, guiding those sorts of speeches to a wake the evening before, or a community meal afterwards.

But the majority of people working out a plan for a funeral are not calling on such traditions, even as they have few of their own. As a preacher from a less liturgical tradition, I have plenty of latitude to work with, but the breadth can be overwhelming for a family as they grieve.

When it can get complicated is where people ask "can we do this thing I saw on TV?" Pop music used to be almost unheard of in funerals even outside of churches, but since Elton John sang for Princess Diana's, it has become quite common.

Have you planned your funeral service? It probably won't be much like Queen Elizabeth's…

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; yes, he's got his funeral outline planned, how about you? Tell him what you want or don't want at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

=+=+=+=

Faith Works 9-23-22

Jeff Gill

Thirty years of change & continuity

___


Last week while so many were thinking about state funerals and distant royalty, I had to address the obvious theme for faith communities around memorial services here and the effects of what's going on "over there."

My thoughts, though, were actually intending to stay closer to home, and meditating on the last thirty years: specifically since September 18, 1992.

The day before that I sat down with two other intrepid incorporators, and let me pause to note Karen Bunning & I would honor the memory of Marie Kerns who was regal in her own right, but no longer with us.

We three signed incorporation papers which Deb Tegtmeyer then hand carried to Columbus, where then Secretary of State Bob Taft made official on the 18th of September the still developing structure of the Licking County Coalition for Housing, now more often called simply "LCCH."

By Thanksgiving week we had three families in transitional housing and a budget made up of baling wire and bubble gum; thirty years later we're a little more stable but tied closely to HUD grants and state support for programs which all allow us to improve and enhance the stability of housing for people at risk for homelessness.

We weren't, and still aren't an emergency shelter organization; there are others doing that work, and we all have needs still, but the impetus of getting a transitional housing program going in 1990 & 1991 was that we just didn't have any place to house folks coming out of emergency shelter type housing. Data then and now shows that people are much less likely to return to emergency shelter if there's a solid transitional housing program for them to work through on their way back to independence and stability for their own living arrangements.

After a number of ideas and proposals that are amusing to recall today, a group of community leaders and agency staff members working with housing came up with a plan for transitional housing, a coalition of partners and participants who could come up with a number of locations, cover the staffing and the upkeep, and give people a chance to live securely after having been homeless. We found a landlord who would let our motley crew lease four units to sublet, so to speak, and thirty years later we own hatful and still lease others, assisting forty some families and over twice that many individuals to have a stable residence while they work out their transition to independence . . . hence, transitional housing.

Over the last few years, unsheltered homelessness has gotten more public attention, and even a little controversy around how we can best respond as a community to the needs of people who are unhoused. I've talked to some of the folks who are concerned about how our network of response works, and hope to have more to say on that subject soon, but those have been positive and fruitful conversations. Everyone agrees that homelessness is a problem, but when it comes to what people who are homeless should do, or how a city or county might respond, I've learned over the last thirty years there is lots of room for disagreement. 

What I've also learned, in our area and in travels and communication with other locations that struggle with some of the same issues, is that there are well-tested means by which we can increase the rate of people NOT returning to emergency shelter. That's the primary goal. You might be surprised to learn I'm not a fan of the phrase "end homelessness" because the reality is that as generations come and go, and people mature and face challenges, at any given time any community is going to have people at risk of becoming homeless. Our goal has to be ensuring that people only go through that only once if at all possible, that almost anyone can end up in a jam and find themselves in a tough spot, but they don't have to keep ending up in the same place. 

LCCH has been most successful, I believe, in helping those who come to us for assistance get to where they can not only help themselves, but they also find themselves wanting to help others. The most interesting part of being connected to an organization that's now been helping people for three decades is how often I have someone pull me aside to say quietly "LCCH helped me when I was without a home, and that made all the difference." And they're often volunteers today in helping others.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not sure he really intended to admit he's been around for over thirty years, but there you are. Tell him what you think would make a difference in our communities at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-9-22

Faith Works 6-9-22
Jeff Gill

A journey through dates and stones and memory
___


September 8 this past week, the eightieth anniversary of the tragic B-25 crash in downtown Newark, is both a reminder of a tragedy, and a connection to the past.

Those eight deaths, six Army Air Corps crew members and two local civilians caught on the ground, were truly how World War II came directly to the streets of Licking County. We had locals already in the military who were caught up in Pearl Harbor and Midway, but for the most part since Dec. 7, 1941 the war mobilization had been people leaving here and going "over there." It would be a few months yet before Americans would invade North Africa, let alone Europe, and Licking County residents would be there . . . but not yet.

The war came home, as green air crews and untested equipment went up, and one came down right here. The same model of bomber would crash in similarly heavy cloud cover into the Empire State Building a couple years later, but by then even the home front had become accustomed to training accidents and friendly fire once we were well into 1945.

In 1942 it was still hard to grasp, and the pain was still largely in the future, until that cloudy Sept. 8th. People died, right here, some with parachutes not quite opening, others killed by an airplane even while walking down a sidewalk.

And as I've already written, decades later, the shock of recognition for a new resident in reading the name "Newlin" on the crew list.

Russell Newlin and I share an ancestor so far back we barely get to call ourselves relatives, but I've been touched enough by the coincidence to visit his grave in Indianapolis. His father and grandfather died after his passing, and mother was still alive somewhere in the city when I first moved there. You can tell by the dates and the stones that they bought a plot of four graves to bury their son, and then used them as needed in the decades that followed.

In going to Crown Hill Cemetery, a familiar place in fact across the street from the seminary I attended, and visiting Section 96, I started to notice something when I went in search of Russell Newlin. Dotted about among this "newer" section of a cemetery with a long history, where President Benjamin Harrison, James Whitcomb Riley, and many other historic Indiana figures are buried, there were others. Other young deaths of 1942. The stones were a bit older than most, lichens and mosses helping them stand out when you realized what you were looking for.

And they tended to be the first of a family, with the painful reality of parents passing on years later, with fresher stones. Every few paces, an older 1942 or 1943 or 1944 headstone, then a cluster usually to the west, of related names who were clearly mothers and fathers of the first stone even when they didn't say so (and they often did). Sometimes four, occasionally eight or even twelve, and if you're of such a mind, you could puzzle out who the other relatives were or might have been, and a few mysteries left unsolved.

The tragedy remained. Not just of Russell Newlin's loss here in a plane crash trying to get to a further destination, falling short in Newark, Ohio, but of a scattering of twenty-something year old men, buried without spouses or children, now guarded by parents who had outlived them and a few more sentry grandparents and cousins and such.

It's a quiet corner now of the vast cemetery; most of the lots sold, few unused and those left probably doomed to be unoccupied as the family moved on, or forgot, or never knew. Visitors and flowers are rare, though you can see a few sections away where current committals are ongoing.

Here is just the memory of sorrow, of families coming to deal with both the emotional and practical side of losing an adult child in what, by the dates, had to often be in training and preparation and the run-up to the war itself, but they no less the casualties of that war.

Of course, I also think standing there of the ministers, the officiants, of how they would have tried to comfort those parents and siblings, in a season just before the time when almost everyone knew what this would feel like, forerunners of the grief and determination yet to come.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's done quite a few funerals himself. Tell him how you find comfort in sorrow at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 9-8-22

Notes from my Knapsack 9-8-22
Jeff Gill

Looking up and down the watershed
___


When I mentioned the Intel site as being bisected by a diagonal line, northwest to southeast, and the upper righthand portion draining into the Raccoon Creek watershed, a logical question came up: what about the lower left half?

This is the beginning of thinking with the landscape, and speaking in watersheds. In fact, while the northeast half ends up flowing past Granville into Newark, the southwest half of Intel's parcel drains over into Duncan Run, past Center Village and on into Big Walnut Creek's watershed at Hoover Reservoir, then downstream meeting Blacklick & Alum Creeks before it bends west under I-270, and on into the Scioto River just past Lockbourne.

So that level well-drained piece of real estate is part of those "heights" you hear about, faintly still, in our local geography: Licking Heights, Summit Station, Summit Road. In the old horseback and canoe oriented days, it is part of the "height of land" between drainages. In fact, the South Fork of the Licking River starts its trickling course just a stone's throw to the southeast of the area under development, with a presidential blessing coming this week. Just east of Mink Street, north of Rt. 161, a watercourse meanders first west, then very slowly turns south, making a wide arc around Jersey before picking up strength and speed towards Pataskala, then flirting with US 40 heading east until diving under at National Trail Raceway to join the canal era constructed Buckeye Lake . . . which took advantage of the watershed to create a reservoir for the Ohio & Erie Canal to drain both the artificial waterway and the now full fledged river due north past Hebron and Heath into Newark.

In other words, we are all downstream from what happens between Beech Road and Mink Street, one way or another. We could shrug at floods which didn't touch us, tut-tut at algae blooms in Millersport from excess nitrogen and phosphorus off of agricultural fields, and mutter imprecations when a water line repair means a boil water alert, but in general we don't think much about what's upstream from us, nor do we worry about those who are downstream from where we are, and what we're doing.

We are also downstream of impacts which are getting much discussion: new jobs and the need for skilled employees, the desire for housing and schools by couples and families and anyone moving here to work there, tax credits and incentives creating development which municipalities and local governance units hope increase revenues. Those downstream flows, trickle out, trickle down, trickle through, are all getting much play.

And I'm hearing a great deal about how Intel has been elsewhere, and is likely here, to be a good partner in not only economic but ecological matters. Frankly, I believe most of it, and I'm not worried about Intel. It's the "and everyone who follows them" that I wonder about, here downstream.

The beaver (no surprise there's a Beaver Road just east of Mink Street in those highlands, is there?) builds a dam, changing the flow downstream and backing up a pond above their lodge. They tend their shore, and keep up the beaver dam nicely. Meanwhile, other creatures move in to make use of the transformed landscape. There's where I'm watching closely.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he thinks highly of most busy beavers, and is respectful of skunks. Tell him about new wildlife you've seen lately at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 9-2-22

Faith Works 9-2-22
Jeff Gill

Eighty years and a journey through time
___

On September 8, 1942 the pain and tragedy of a World War came to the skies and streets of Newark, Ohio. A B-25 on a training mission preparing for overseas combat flew out of Wright Field near Dayton, now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and in heavy clouds with presumably faulty navigation systems came down to tree top level in the heart of Licking County.

The rest of the tale, the eight deaths, two local citizens killed on the ground and six crew members, is fairly well known in the area. When I first came here in 1989, it was one of the first pieces of local lore I learned, and over the years Kevin Bennett and Doug Stout have told the story very thoroughly to local audiences. Their research and diligence to honor the dead I cannot improve upon.

Where I found myself caught up in the narrative, though, aside from almost daily driving through the intersection where that crash occurred on Hudson Avenue, was the name of the third crew member. The pilot and co-pilot each had just enough time to exit the plane but not enough for their parachutes to deploy; the navigator went down with the B-25C Mitchell, dying on impact along with two service members hitching a ride to New York and the two women of Newark caught up in the destruction on the ground.

That Army Air Force navigator was Second Lieutenant Russell E. Newlin, of Indianapolis, Indiana. He was described as 30 years old in some early accounts, but in fact died at the age of 22, a very new and junior volunteer in the still fairly new service.

And he was a Newlin. This immediately caught my eye, because my mother's mother was a Newlin, and frankly it hadn't seemed to be a common name to me. Grandmother Walton's Newlin family was from east central Illinois, not far at all from central Indiana, and I thought all the way back in 1989 "we might just be related."

1989 was 47 years after the crash, and now 33 years ago from today, as we prepare to mark the 80th commemoration of the tragedy. 33 years ago, we didn't have the internet or Findagrave or many of the tools which both speed up research today, but also throw a great deal of dust into the gears of imperfect or disproven or outright incorrect information. You can, with computers, go wrong more quickly and with greater confidence. I don't want to go back to microfilm reels and dusty volumes in warehouses; I love the quick availability of scanned in images of books once hard to reach even when you went to the storage location, and how archives continue to be placed online available to all. Yet I'm aware of Sturgeon's Law as it applies to genealogical research as well as science fiction or television or any other field of human endeavor.

So over the years I've followed some dead ends in tracing the history of Russell Newlin, newly commissioned airman and youthful casualty of the earliest days for America of World War II. His context, and that of the servicemen and civilians who died with him, was one of a vast and hurried mobilization. Pearl Harbor was just nine months earlier; in the Pacific the Battle of Midway had happened only three months previously, while the European Theatre would not open for the United States until Operation Torch in North Africa two months later. Local citizens had been at Pearl Harbor and were being steadily drawn into the global conflict, but awareness and understanding of the scope and breadth of that world war was still limited to vague maps on the front pages of the Advocate and newsreels shown at the Midland and Auditorium Theaters just blocks away from the crash site.

I still know much less about Russell Newlin than I wish, but I can confirm we are related — just much further back than I thought we might have been. But his death, decades before I learned of it, has led me to learn more about the history of Quakers and Newlins in America, from central England to a grist mill in southeastern Pennsylvania, to a settlement in North Carolina where Newlins still populate both cemeteries and the landscape, and then the point where our lineages separate, even as multiple Newlins left slave owning country for free soil in Indiana and Illinois. Russell and I are cousins, many times removed.

The connection, though, remains.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's related to lots of Gills but none from around here, sorry! Tell him about any Waltons or Newlins you may have heard of at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-26-22

Faith Works 8-26-22
Jeff Gill

Theology, worldview, and head canon
___

There's a concept in fandom around various cinematic and literary franchises called "head canon."

Canon, of course, is borrowed from Biblical studies: as opposed to the two-n cannon, which fires off cannonballs, the scriptural canon is the roster of books or texts approved by the church over time.

In fact, I believe canon formation is one of the most spiritually interesting areas of church history, with odd asides such as Martin Luther despising Esther & James, but he consented to keep them in Protestant Bibles when erstwhile allies said fine, but let's also take out Song of Songs and Revelation. The Holy Spirit at word, or religious log rolling? You be the judge, but I think in canon formation you see how spiritual discernment works to get us the Bible we have, and the apocrypha and pseudopigrapha we don't reverence in the same way.

Canon is used today in a variety of forms. Sherlock Holmes is "canon" in the 56 short stories and four novels by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, but there are many additional works, some published and others more fan fiction, that make use of the Great Detective. They aren't canon, in other words.

Harry Potter is a cottage industry of sorts, with seven novels in print, eight movies made from them, and the author J.K. Rowling has written a number of short works and a play. They're all canon, but there are debates about how canonical variations in the films weigh versus the books themselves, let alone odd asides Rowling has made over the years since the last one.

And this is where "head canon" comes in. For some people, an image they have in their head is the "real picture." The color of one character's hair, or eyes, for instance. And there are pieces of backstory which are not canon, as in they aren't in the core texts, but which people can seize onto and insist are true, at least in their own minds.

Biblically, this comes up with a kind of head canon like the certainty most of us have about there being three magi, or wise men. If you go to canon, the words of scripture, it's just plural. No number, other than their having three gifts, which gave rise to the idea the multiple magi were three wise men.

I have a big hunk of head canon in my mind that I've come to impose on the Star Wars universe. I could bore you for possibly hours on it, but in sum, it's the idea that somewhere before the events in the 1977 film (Episode IV if you must), a plague ran through humanity in the galaxy we're learning about, killing most humans, hence there actually aren't that many "people" in the fictional universe we're encountering.

Cloning was one response, which we get to later on, and also droids: but (and this probably came to mind because I'd read "Dune" before seeing the first "Star Wars") there was a general distaste for robotic life due to past misuses of their autonomy. Remember in the cantina scene when the bartender oddly erupts "we don't serve your kind"? So droids were regarded nervously at best, and still prone to independent action.

Clones, though, were equally problematic, and especially when forced to maturity were functional but somewhat shaky and erratic: remember how bad the stormtroopers were at hitting a target right in front of them?

All of these ideas fill in plot holes, but are directly contradicted by other statements in official Star Wars canon. Whatever! I have my own head canon which helps me make sense of the story (don't ask me about Snoke).

And that's fine in fiction, but for faith formation, it can be a problem. I was once an associate minister with responsibility for Christian education, and learned one of the regular teachers was a fervent believer in astrology. As in, she spent major dollars in having astrologers do horoscopes for herself and her family, to help in making plans and decisions in her life.

Let's just say that was a pastoral challenge. Her theology about the person of Christ and the work of God was really quite orthodox, she had just figured out how the Lord used the influences of the planets and zodiac to prepare for us the road we would travel. We carried on quite an ongoing conversation about where and how this could relate to our shared Christian beliefs.

Our conversation here about theology and head canon will continue, too!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has his own sense of where the guardrails are. Tell him where you'd set the center line at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 8-11-22

Notes from my Knapsack 8-11-22
Jeff Gill

Watersheds as revelations on our landscape
___

Up in the northwest corner of our county, I found the headwaters of Raccoon Creek, a curl of ditch heading first west towards the border with Franklin County just a quick walk ahead, then bending to the south and back around until it was ready to make a wide loop around Johnstown, and on to Granville and Newark.

A generous estimate of a thirty mile length from just north of Westley Chapel Road, to the confluence with the South Fork of the Licking River within sight of the county Courthouse, Raccoon Creek is the force that has shaped most of the human history of our immediate area, and no small amount of the natural history as well.

It riffles across the Raccoon Shale at the lowest point it follows in Granville Township, within reach of the bike path. This geologic stratum is a member of the Cuyahoga Formation, and so is somewhere between 344 and 355 million years old, with the Dugway & Buena Vista Members just downstream, all part of the Mississippian subperiod of the Carboniferous era, and yes that means there's coal to our east, but you knew that.

At least it means we can ground our area at around 350 million years ago, and build from there: Black Hand Sandstone (good for building courthouses and such), flint beds to the southeast and some later sandstones to our north, as Africa ran into North America to our east and squeezed up the Alleghenies before tectonically drifting away, leaving our part of the continent to sigh deeply and settle down just in time for a long glacial nap.

After the glaciers retreated, you start to see some valleys carved out of the post-glacial landscape. It's not as dramatic as the Grand Canyon, but every time I drive back into Licking County along Rt. 161, just past Rt. 310, I find the view quite stirring. From the left as you head east, curving around in front of you, is the valley of Raccoon Creek, from its upland source now into a wide valley a few hundred feet deep. From the 310 overpass you slowly dive into that valley, past Rt. 37 and finally down next to Raccoon Creek itself, and shadowing that watercourse all the way into Newark proper.

But the watershed it drains runs well to the north, the uplands where Lobdell Run comes down out of the hills, and not quite so far south, where Moots Run winds north into the larger creek.

Living in Granville, most of us live in the Raccoon Creek watershed. We may not draw our water straight from the banks, nor do our washing there, but the hydrology on the surface is very important for the wells from which we do drink, and then we of course discharge our effluent (what a great euphemism!) into Raccoon Creek and on downstream. But who is upstream?

If you take that parcel so much discussed, the Intel property and the $100 billion-with-a-b investment into fabrication plants, and you draw a diagonal across it from northwest to southeast, the northern half of that land drains into Kyber Run, thence into Raccoon Creek, and on to our doorstep. Intel is upstream, and we are already connected.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's interested in watersheds even if they don't put them on most maps. Tell him about what downstream effects you're aware of at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-19-22

Faith Works 8-19-22
Jeff Gill

It's not essential that you agree with me
___

Discussion of theological essentials always provokes a wide range of responses, and is a useful reminder of why Christian unity is difficult to achieve in visible, immediate forms.

My own religious tradition speaks of a "Restoration plea" asking that churches unite on the basis of "Scripture only," but that's where we find some immediate dissension. I spoke of my own reading of the Bible and Christian tradition as leading me to disagree with calling the exclusion of women from the pulpit a "scriptural essential."

That got me a few correspondents sending me textual citations. That's right where I think we have a problem: single verses or even half verses aren't how we're going to reach true discernment on God's will spoken in the word of God in the Bible. I believe we need a wider perspective.

The Ten Commandments include "Thou shalt not murder." We're still sorting out the Hebrew to English context for "do not kill" versus "do not murder" and then parsing down into second degree and manslaughter and pretty soon we're doing legal homework, not theology.

I believe in a Biblical worldview. Where I end up crosswise with others who say the same thing is that I'm not always certain I know what a Biblical worldview is, and am willing to be pastorally cautious about applying my understanding to particular situations.

My essentials for a Biblical worldview start here, in four points: there is a God; the one whom I call God is good entirely; God is engaged with creation (or contrariwise, God is not indifferent); and finally that our best way to see or hear or understand such an infinite and eternal God who is good is by looking to Jesus of Nazareth.

How do we work from basic concepts like that to daily application and personal beliefs? There's the challenge between church and culture. Not to mention within church cultures.

For instance: I am very conflicted over applause in worship. Look, I grew up in the Sixties and Seventies when everyone in church youth groups talked about how when we were older, we'd encourage applause in church. And the idea that God is best honored by an icy, unemotive, stock-still congregation just can't be supported by belief in a loving God who is deeply interested in the decisions we make and the lives we live.

Yet the move to worship as concert venue performance has . . . issues. Okay? Can I leave it there? I'm not saying all applause is bad, or that never applauding is good. I just am still wrestling with how we can allow some moments in worship to just . . . be.

The last verse of the last Psalm says "Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!" If lute and harp and tambourine and dancing can all be used to praise God, why not applause? It's a matter of where, and when, and in response to what.

You can carry this same question of discernment into matters of love and justice, food and sex, money and sharing. When, and why? To the person begging at the highway exit? At the buffet thinking about seconds? In your estate planning? And yes, I would argue that sexual intimacy is best intended within the marriage tie, but it's hard to find a Bible verse that simply spells that out directly. I think it's an argument that calls on the best of a Biblical worldview, but as sexuality is connected to questions of stewardship and mutuality and covenant, more than a "here's the verse that tells you what to do."

And then there's how we apply our faith, personal or communal, to matters of public policy. I believe very strongly indeed in the power, the value, the need for each of us to perform acts of service. But I really have a problem with mandatory community service. I truly believe in the power of prayer, but I also believe forced prayer is like forced confession, or worse yet forced belief. You can't order someone to have faith, and prayer has to be voluntary to be, well, prayer.

What I believe we can do in community, and I pray we are doing in this space each week, is to provoke one another to reflect on where a loving God is at work in all that we say, and all that we do, and especially when we struggle to bring the saying and doing together.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's actually certain of a few more things than he was in the Seventies. Tell him what you're certain of at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-5-22 & 8-12-22

Faith Works 8-5-22 & 8-12-22
Jeff Gill

Hot takes in church? Not so fast.
___

When I was serving as associate pastor of a church while I was in seminary, during the 1980s, there was a fellow who often accosted me after worship about "English Only" as a possible state law or constitutional amendment.

He wanted me to address the issue in sermons and allow him to stand by me at the door collecting signatures for a petition to make "English Only" the national language. I said no, he could stand on the sidewalk outside, but not at the back of the church.

Happy, he was not.

But I don't recall getting any flack for it, other than from him.

Back then we also got the pre-internet classic, a mimeographed flyer telling us what Madalyn Murray O'Hair was about to do through the FCC to restrict religious speech. She died in 1995 and I still had copies of that chain letter handed to me long after.

So I won't say that the pressure on preachers to touch on politics is new. Certainly it is not. I have a personal interest based in our public history in this county about Chaplain David Jones, who left a record of passing through the area in 1773, and later owned a great deal of property in early Licking County, Ohio. He ended up traveling the then-frontier from his home in New Jersey and later leaving his parish in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania (yes, THAT Valley Forge) because his preaching on how rebellion against British rule was not against God's law, and it upset Loyalists greatly. Concerned church leaders gave him the assignment to try preaching in Welsh to the Shawnee both to test the theory that the western Indians were descended from Prince Madoc (wrong) and to let the atmosphere cool between Loyalists and the Sons of Liberty. David Jones preached politics, no doubt about it.

What I do think is new, and somewhat unprecedented historically, is the pressure to offer "hot takes."

If you've not run into the term, congratulations: you've learned to limit your exposure to social media! But hot takes are all the rage; they're often Twitter cheap shots, and they're as unformed as lava bursting out of a volcano. "If you aren't preaching about X, you need to think about whether you're really a Christian." "The latest Supreme Court decision reactions are making it clear who really cares about X."

Think "sweeping generalizations" but with intentionally jagged edges intended to cut and hurt, and you've got "hot takes."

The flip side is the incredibly strong trend to call nuance "indifference" and unwillingness to offer a quick summative agreement or disagreement not just "waffling," but to call a desire to pause and think things through "overt if not actual cruelty," even "silence is violence."

Trust me, there are virtually no preachers who haven't dealt with people walking right up to them immediately after a worship service — or my favorite, right before it's supposed to start — and demanding that you address a specific hot issue in the news. And again, this isn't entirely new, but the "hot takes" expectation does feel different to me, anyhow. "Jeff, this happened Friday and it was in the news yesterday: tell the people where we stand today!"

And (at the risk of pushing the Bothsideism button) it ain't just one partisan wing. In recent years I see and receive and am confronted with insistence that this issue can't wait, and must be given a hot take from the pulpit treatment.

It's an old joke, and a fair criticism, to respond to the idea that church bodies tend to think in terms of centuries . . . and the Sixteenth Century at that. Faith communities have a natural tendency to be, well, conservative, and by that I don't mean politics, but in the basic meaning of the term: to conserve, to preserve, to protect "the deposit of the faith" and not simply to jump where "itching ears" might take us.

Yet saying a religious leader or group of religious adherents need to take some care, if not due process, to reach a settled conclusion; if you respond that we need as a community to reflect and discern before we proclaim on a new issue — this is the kind of thinking in community that has become strikingly unpopular, and I believe we need to bring back into our midst.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got plenty of opinions, not always as a minister. Tell him what you think is a hot topic at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.



And then, right on its heels:

Faith Works 8-12-22
Jeff Gill

Here I stand, I can do no other
___

Lutherans all know the line, even if they don't speak German, "Ich stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders."

"Here I stand," said Martin Luther as the Protestant Reformation began, and he added "I can do no other" or perhaps "I can do nothing else."

Growing up in a heavily Lutheran town in northwest Indiana, even the Catholic kids knew about Luther and Melancthon. I picked those stories up as well, on the streets and in the churches whether Lutheran or not. (And there were elderly folk I was told by their grandkids quite seriously who did not believe you could get into Heaven unless you spoke at least enough German to say the Lord's Prayer, I mean, "Vater Unser im Himmel…")

Brother Martin knew his non-negotiables. Many religious and civil leaders of his day disagreed, but just enough supported him that he didn't end up like Jan Hus (look him up!). Today, we can mildly debate what Luther did and didn't get right about his protestations about the papacy and Roman authority in Christianity.

In my own tradition, there's a great love of a phrase with many supposed origins, since we aren't the only Protestants to use it: in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity. It first came up in Latin, and some translate the closing "caritas" as "love" which is fair enough as translations go.

Obviously, the hitch here is: what's essential?

I'll take a swing at it. Give me three strikes or so. I would argue that communion is an essential for Christian worship. My reading of scripture and tradition strongly urges me to affirm that we are best served in having Christians when we meet for prayer and praise to ground ourselves in that meal which Jesus Christ instituted. So mote it be.

Yet I do not believe the only way to rightly, or fitly hold a communion service is to have an ordained person behind the table to preside. I know I can find hundreds, nay thousands to raise their hands and voices to this and say "Nay, Jeff, your essential for communion is correct, but not HOW you go about doing it." So we would have agreement on essentials on one level, or from a particular angle, but disagreement in which we need either liberty or charity . . . or love . . . to work things out.

Getting to essentials is never as straightforward as it first appears. That can either make one quite tenacious, or extremely forgiving. Perhaps even both, but that can be challenging in its own way.

I have nothing against ordained clergy; a good thing, too, since I am one. But even as I would argue we are not absolutely necessary for communion, or even preaching, I'd also say I believe it is essential we open the opportunity for preaching and presiding at the table to females. I use that term intentionally; I say essential because I think there are negative consequences to limiting such a pivotal role in religious life to, say, just males (or just females, but I haven't run into that one yet).

And again, I know hundreds, nay thousands of fine upstanding folk will say "How can you call an essential that which I see a verse or two of scripture saying is forbidden?"

This is where as I was saying last week I really, really, really don't like hot takes. A hot take like "Letting women preach means next thing you'll let anyone in the pulpit." For everyone wanting to call down fire on someone saying that, my not-so-hot-take is this: I think we need to have a conversation. This is what's missing in too much church life, let alone civil discourse. (620)

Where I stand, and I can do no other, is on a belief that we need to talk to people who disagree with us. To hear them out, to understand the best of where their assertions come from, and to then try best as we can to offer our best understanding of how our faith leads us to stand where we do (see I Peter 3:15). Hier stehe ich.

Perhaps I'm too old to say this, but I am working on my essentials even still, fifty years after my baptism. And I have fewer of them than I once did, but I'm more certain of those remaining. Starting with the importance of our needing to talk, and including as many as possible at the table. To talk, and to eat together.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's sure there's always room for one more, call it Elijah's chair. Tell him about your essentials at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-29-22

Faith Works 7-29-22
Jeff Gill

Where do you get your information from
___

My primary source of information is from reading.

I'm not going to try to pretend that I don't watch TV, but for a variety of reasons I tend not to trust it. By the same token, I'm acutely aware of how I take material in print altogether too seriously. Can something be typeset and run through vast printing presses and sold in upscale bookshops and still be balderdash, not to say malarkey? Absolutely.

That's who I am, though. I have from my childhood taken published materials very much to heart. Of course, being a reader means you can end up learning years later, and sometimes embarrassingly, that the pronunciation you've heard in your head for so very long is so very wrong. Being a "reading first" person is a great way to go wrong with confidence.

Raised in a church which takes the Bible very seriously, I trace the origin of my print preferences back to those heavy King James Version volumes, the lighter and newer Revised Standard Version copies of scripture, and then in high school I was given a Good News Bible, in paperback, with those evocative line drawings in them (if you know, you know). Later I would pick up The Living Bible and New International Version editions, a Jerusalem Bible and New English Bible copies for reference, and now I have two tubs full of different translations . . . all in tubs because I can get all of them on my tablet or phone, and increasingly I use those for study and devotions and sermon preparation.

But wait, is that print material? It's text on a . . . page? Pixels? The simulation of a typeface and volume, but one I tap and swipe. I still recall the first time I referred back to one of my print Bibles and tried to double-finger pinch to enlarge text on it. Paper has many advantages, but that's not one of them.

What I learned from youth up through seminary, though, was how to use information sources to my benefit. To read the Bible, to consult concordances and Bible dictionaries, preaching guides and lectionary tools, and expand my understanding of how God is speaking today from out of the Hebrew and Greek whence they began (and I've got multiple copies of both those languages, plus some Latin and German laying around somewhere).

In all of that I wrestled with how to discern from ancient texts a modern application; to consider context and peel back the translations and get at what is being said, how the church has sifted and canonized these particular words, and affirms them to the church and the world as God's Word, speaking to us. No matter how inerrant anyone's views are, there's a realization that following initial manuscripts and within the translation process, we still are often a work in progress to get at where God is speaking — but most Christians of any sort are bound together in the promise and expectation that God is speaking to us there.

Not that long ago, in historical terms, the average home in central Ohio at best had maybe three books in it: an almanac, Pilgrim's Progress, and the King James Bible. You might have a monthly or even weekly publication showing up on your doorstep, on more perishable paper than the vellum volumes, a "Newark Advocate" or "Christian Messenger" with insights and opinions mixed with the news of the day, but that was about it. You didn't have to spend a great deal of time wondering about agendas implied in how the story was told, you got that up front.

I would suggest that we're still not so far removed from those days, quaint though that fire-lit picture might seem. Oh, we've moved on in print and glossy paper and TVs and now the internet, but as readers and discerners, we're not that different from our great-great-grandparents. We wrestle with how to get at who is speaking to us, in which texts or glowing screens, from which agendas, to what ends.

This is the great burden and opportunity for churches today: to help people sift wheat from chaff, to learn how to sort out base metal counterfeits from true coins of fact, to read and discern what we're being told. From the Bible to the pages of yes, even this newspaper.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's acutely aware of how the sausage gets made. Tell him what you think is going into the grinder at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 7-21-22

Notes from my Knapsack 7-21-22
Jeff Gill

The village may change, not the well
___


On a blue sky summer's day, I went in search of a place on the map.

Towards each summer's end, I have a personal tradition, a birthday gift to myself, where I spend a day or two afoot exploring the world nearby.

Some years back, I set myself a goal of catching the view from all of the significant high points surrounding the Newark Earthworks, so locations in Newark and Heath but also some points you might miss in the subtleties of our local landscape, in townships from Granville to Union and Licking. I got permissions and tried to stay on public or permitted land though I may have sidled up close to some trespassing, but never on purpose.

A few I had to return to late in the fall to see more clearly without leaves on the trees, but I bagged them all, just to put the viewscape clearly in my mind.

After that, I started to wade the rivers. Now this is where, as I've said before, I am not clear about how Ohio's trespassing laws work in public watercourses. I've gotten contradictory opinions from various knowledgable persons, and in general, I don't write a great deal about my creek walking in part because it's not the safest thing to be doing, especially on your own. I let family know when I'm going, where I'm traversing, and what time I expect to return, and they haven't lost me yet.

If I'm wading up or downstream, and a pool behind some obstruction creates a deep spot, and I clamber up the bank to work around it: am I trespassing? Odds are good that I may be. Again, I try not to.

My goal is to get a view of Licking County from the very bottom. We all know that keeping in our car, at a mile a minute, behind glass and air conditioning, up on the berm and the paved paths, is a terrible way to experience countryside. You get to know the roadkill, and spot only the most obvious trees, and plants only when they flower, if those. Otherwise you don't just miss the trees for the forest passing, you get it as a green blur.

Walking, carefully, along the rocky or mucky bottoms of creeks, which are mostly exposed in later August, you have to slow down. You can't even trot. And when you stop, as you must, you see the ribbon of sky overhead, the banks are actually above you, and the moving parade of water between your feet are all so much more immediate.

In the last decade, I've creek walked most of Raccoon Creek, up from Newark through Granville and past Alexandria, patchy through and around to the south of Johnstown, but only recently started working up past Green Hill Cemetery and Clover Valley Golf Course.

Depending on how you read the maps, Raccoon Creek's headwaters are in Hartford Township, just north of Tagg Road's intersection with Westley Chapel Road. When I visited, the first few hundred yards were dry, running first west before beginning the wide curve around Johnstown that ultimately heads it towards Newark.

But just west of the gravel road, a seep and a culvert and a still pond of runoff marked the furthest "upstream" of this watershed that was damp enough to deserve the name.

I hope you'll join me in an armchair exploration of this watershed, which I think is of mutual interest to us all who live in it.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he walks to work things out, or at least to clear his head. Tell him how you think better at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-22-22

Faith Works 7-22-22
Jeff Gill

Everyone doesn't agree with you (or me)
___

I closed out last time asking "What other assumptions were we making, then or now?" Because I think we really need to question some of our assumptions as members of faith communities, for those who participate and attend, and even for those who are seekers but don't have a stake in a particular tradition or institution.

Recently a member of Congress said that the government shouldn't be telling churches what to do, but that churches should be telling the government how things should be.

While this is not a Representative I agree with on much, if anything, I can take that point and agree in a certain way. Churches should, and do, tell governments what the Realm of God is, and how we should be bending the arc of history in that direction. If we have any integrity in our worldview and epistemology and metaphysics, heck yeah we should ask our elected representatives to follow truth, and not lies. I'm all in for that.

What the person in Colorado was implying, though, was that not only should the idea of a wall between church and state be dismantled (oh, so many columns there, past and future), but I heard her asking that we "return" (again, ?) to having Church tell State what to do. And that's where I hear some big ol' assumptions rattling around.

Sure, let's see how that plays out. If the Black Church is in charge of federal policy, I'm thinking we would move quickly to more support of child care, parental leave, and increased child tax credits. Was that what the member of Congress was asking for?

Or my good friends in the Anabaptist Churches, Mennonites and Amish and Hutterites, let alone the Church of the Brethren: if they are telling the government what to do, then the military apparatus isn't just going to get defunded, it might be closed and the bases not just renamed but repurposed into farms and fellowship halls. Was that the point?

Even more to the point, you could put the Catholic Church in charge of civic affairs. Political conservatives may be pleased about the stance on abortion and Pro-Life causes, but the economic policy positions may surprise them. Try reading papal encyclicals from Pope Leo XIII's 1891 Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno of Pius XI in 1931 or even John Paul II's 1991 Centesimus Annus. I'll be here when you get back.

Obviously my point is this: which church, or Church? The good Representatives who want "the church" to tell the state what to do are assuming most people are thinking of the same church and Christian positions as they are.

This is what democratic pluralism is all about, and why even the most conservative and committed person of faith is well advised to celebrate the freedom to be wrong in a place like America: because, news flash, many people out there think WE are wrong. So let's get about the work of convincing others of the truth we hold, and less emphasis on mandating everyone act and even think as we do, because victories of a coercive sort are always short-lived. Always.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still not done on this subject. Tell him how you convince those around you of the truth you affirm at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-15-22

Faith Works 7-15-22
Jeff Gill

In Many Cases, Most People Don't
___


Most people go to church. Most people who go to church go to megachurches.

Except they don't.

I was starting last week to talk about some of our misconceptions about what everyone does, what people do, or so we think.

A quick run of the numbers puts the regular churchgoer figure for our county, which I'd argue is not far from the averages nationwide, at or below one in five, some 20%. Which means four of five don't. An evangelistic opportunity on one level, a bracing reality check on another.

And the stats get tricky but for Protestants, maybe one in five of those who are going to church go to the really big ones. Megachurch is variously defined, to the point of confusion; average weekend attendance over 2,000 used to be a data gathering standard. I like to point out that, by this metric, a near majority of Catholic parishes are megachurch-ish, at least in size, but I'm just pestering Protestants for the moment. Multi-site has become bigger than getting cavernous and higher in the thousands, but the visibility of megachurches makes them more influential that perhaps they really are.

What is true is that smaller churches have been closing or merging faster in the last few decades, and there are not as many under 100 in membership churches. But that intermediate size is still the normative experience, and bulk of religious practice and experience in this country.

Most people believe in God; surveys continue to show high numbers of people saying so, even post-COVID, as attendance has gone down sharply in many quarters. However, there are many church leaders and theologians who argue that what most people believe in is something called "moralistic therapeutic deism," which I'm not going to unpack again this week, but is basically God without all the heavy stuff or religious superstructure. Of those who are members, let alone attenders, you might think most people within churches are in general agreement on doctrinal matters, but ask any local church minister: not so much.

There are debates aplenty about how to define a "Biblical worldview" or consistent parameters for what it means to be an "Evangelical," but the reality is that even within a fairly well-defined religious tradition, you find a great deal of diversity within any given congregation. Assuming everyone believes the most well-known tenets of a particular church if they're within that tradition is going to trip you up in a hurry.

This has come out in recent back and forth in American life and within churches around abortion, following the dismantling of the Supreme Court precedents of the 1970s regarding a federal standard on abortion access. In brief, it's the question of whether you believe it's wildly inconsistent or not that a solid majority of Americans said before last month in surveys they believe the Roe protections should stand, but nearly the same percentage says they are comfortable with restrictions after around fifteen weeks. That's not quite consistent, but it fits what I hear in general from people in this area.

What do most people think? It's a hard question to really ask, and in a time when minority positions of all sorts seem to be hardening in place, you have lots of voices saying it doesn't even matter. And as Mom always said, just because everyone is doing it or saying it doesn't make it right: "if everyone jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too?"

Our ability to create and maintain healthy communities, though, I would argue require us to get some clarity about where our current consensus actually is: around faith, around practice, regarding life and liberty in generally, let alone what happiness really is that we're supposed to be able to pursue.

We used to assume, many of us, that most people went to church — it's not clear that was ever true, and less so now — that most people believed the way we do about who God is and how to speak and listen in the divine presence, that most people planned to live a certain way, that most people had the same expectations of their government.

We also assumed everyone got the newspaper delivered to their house. As a paperboy in the 1970's, I can assure you it was never more than half. What other assumptions were we making, then or now?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he still tries to stay on the sidewalk after four years of walking a paper route. Tell him how you stay on the straight & narrow at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-8-22

Faith Works 7-8-22
Jeff Gill

Most People Don't
___


If the last six months have felt like a jet-powered roller coaster fright house ride, I get ya.

Events in the world, in the nation, in this county have taken off like a rocket, and just when you think you understand the trajectory or see the path of the tracks ahead, everything swerves and swerves again.

I will admit I like a line which I've seen repeated too often to attribute, but isn't mine: remember that cable TV news is a scripted drama. That's NOT (definitely not) to say it's all made up, but that there's always some selectivity and emphasis and a need in the producer's booth to keep viewer attention tied to the channel and the program. You have to do some prioritization and curation yourself to follow the thread.

Certainly actions of Congress and the Supreme Court either are or aren't what you can in fact find and read for yourself; when people ask me "what do you think" regarding such official matters, I have to check a few details out before I answer, to see what version of such realities the person I'm interacting with is asking about.

Depending on the sources you trust, where you get your overviews from, you may have one impression or another about a document which, in fact, I find very few people have actually taken the time to read. And being as specific as I'll get in this particular column, for now, I would note that you do not have to be a lawyer to read a Supreme Court opinion for yourself, and I'd hate to make too many assumptions about what one says or cast my weight behind any one group or faction before I took the time for myself to see what actually got said. I can't go to Ukraine to see what the facts on the ground are, so I trust Richard Engel quite a bit, because in effect I have to. But closer to home, I want to check things out to the degree that I can.

Let me simplify this for you. I regularly find that people have made broad general assumptions which influence their actions and expectations, ones which in essence are wrong, and not in a small, nitpicky way. I'll start with one of my favorite examples, which I am constantly trying to explain to people talking about church life, new church starts, and the need for evangelism by any and all of us.

"Everyone goes to church." This is simply not true, and sadly not even close. You can make a few spot checks, add up some numbers that are generally available, and without great precision still come up with a solid basis for saying on an average weekend maybe 17% of this county attends a worship service. A quick loose lap around the track: 179,000 residents, some 250 churches, once upon a time you could average neatly to about 100 a congregation, but today you have a slightly more complicated question because you have a few with a thousand or more, and many many at 30 or so a Sunday, but the average still works out to around 110-120 (the median is much lower, since the numbers cluster at the ends in two irregular groups).

You can retort that people attend less frequently, travel more, all true, but it's hard to push that figure up past 25% and I'd stick closer to 20% as a reliable figure for regular (more than once or twice a year) church goers. Which leaves over 130,000 souls without a steady harbor, so let the laborers go out into the fields, eh?

Likewise "everyone is going to the big contemporary churches now." Well, it would look that way. They've grown, most of them, from not existing twenty years ago to having a thousand or more a weekend coming through their doors. But there's only a dozen or so of them, and let's average them out to a thousand each, 12,000 people in large visible worship centers.

The community change is that about sixty years ago, we had maybe one thousand worshiper location (St. Francis), a hatful of 300 to 500 big downtown churches, and a strong contingent of 100 to 200 "small" congregations and a scattering of small rural chapels. It's the hollowing out of those small/medium churches that's changed the overall numbers. Today's 20% of 179,000 compares to 25% of 100,000 . . . so we have net fewer people in churches of any sort.

I will have a few more "most people don't" examples next week.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he tries to check his prior assumptions whenever possible. Tell him what you might be reconsidering at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 7-7-22

Notes from my Knapsack 7-7-22
Jeff Gill

Preservation one step at a time
___

How can we preserve the best of our village?

That's the question of the year. This time next year, if you think the last six months have been dramatic, just you wait.

Purchase prices are already up some say around 40% for homes, and for undeveloped land to the west of Granville, depending on the where and the which way, it's beyond that.

New builds and parcels changing hands are what's top-of-mind for many, but I think if the question is about how we preserve something of value in our community and region, step one is to get to know it.

When the Intel project was announced, I drove out there and meandered a bit. I was curious that next day if I'd be part of a parade, but it was just me driving down Green Chapel and Miller and Jug Street. I'm told by nearby residents the looky-lous did increase, but not so much. Not as much as the bulldozers and backhoes did to start widening roads and demolishing already purchased houses, within weeks, months at most.

What I wanted to do, though, was see what was being lost, and to consider it. I observed at the time that in fact, for much of the land in question, you could see the giant warehouses and spec builds already going in along the expressway to the south. Much of the reaction I got from that was to say "yes, but that's as much as we thought would go in."

I'm curious as to how well we know what it is we're mourning the loss of here, closer to my own home, with a slight bit more cushion than they have west of Mink Street. Charing the Board of Zoning and Building Appeals, I have to note that it's still surprising to me how often a person brings in a request for a variance (our primary stock in trade along with conditional use permits), and when I ask "have you spoken to your neighbor about this?" the most common response is a baffled "uh, no…"

Of course, those are worse when the neighbor has come to object and is sitting right there. I not infrequently introduce them, and regularly try to defer our action until — wait for it — they've actually spoken to each other. Sometimes, and sometimes with a little third party assistance, a solution can be found to mutual satisfaction.

So while our days are still warm, and long, I have a request of all of my neighbors writ large: go take a walk. Stroll the sidewalks. Look around, at the trees, the surrounding hills, maybe even saying hello to passers-by. See what we've got.

What I think will work much better is if we get a very specific, even granular sense of what we want to keep, to hold onto, to not lose. A general sense of alarm is understandable, but not helpful. Some losses are inevitable: no tree is forever, and homes get remodeled, even as we're all aging and some moving on.

A goodly series of strolls might help us all get a clearer sense of what's at stake, and what we want to maintain. As I keep saying, freezing the whole place in amber isn't an option, and really never was.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes a good saunter and should take more of them. Describe your favorite walks at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-1-22

Faith Works 7-1-22
Jeff Gill

Huzzah for the Fourth (or the Second)
___

John Adams, our second president, was perhaps the most openly religious of our early American politicians.

When it came to the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Continental Congress in no small part due to his efforts, Adams had strong feelings, often expressed.

It was actually on July 2, 1776 that the Continental Congress ended debate and approved the resolution initially proposed by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia on June 7 and seconded by Adams:

"Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."

In terms of parliamentary procedure, that's the motion on the floor. It was approved by the body, and the chair asked a committee of five members to draft a more formal declaration explaining this dramatic and drastic action. That's how we get the Declaration of Independence, largely written by Thomas Jefferson, with editorial assistance from Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Except the delegates as whole debated the draft, took out passages critical of the English people and of slavery, and then approved the revised Declaration on . . . July 4. Most didn't end up signing the official document until a month or more later.

It was the enabling action, though, the motion which created the authority to declare the United States as an independent nation, which Adams felt was the true cause for celebration, and indeed, for thanksgiving. And when the motion passed, later that day he wrote his wife Abigail, and said:

"The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.—I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

John Adams, like his cousin Samuel, believed that God was in the movement towards independence. Baptist preachers like David Jones, a key figure in the pioneer settlement of Licking County, had been run out of pulpits and threatened by Loyalist mobs for saying God was engaged and interested in the American experiment towards self-government and honoring the rights of (ahem) man. (Saying "all men" had inalienable rights was a big step for 1776…)

In my own religious tradition, the Irish immigrant Alexander Campbell quickly picked up a definite reverence for the movement of the Holy Spirit as he saw it around the events of the 1770s on this continent, and in preaching during the 1810s & 1820s he always marked the Fourth of July, and when he founded Bethany College his practice until his death in 1866 was to hold over commencement ceremonies until . . . July 4 of each year.

Joseph Smith, Jr. who, in that same era was to establish the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, made much of the Fourth of July, and pointed to the events and the documents of the founding of this nation as having divine inspiration at work in them. We recently heard a witness at a Congressional hearing speak of this belief as a core principle of his faith, that the Constitution is in its own sense divinely inspired, looking back to Smith's prophetic statements.

Congregations and clergy today still wrestle with the proper relationship between church and state. For any church to simply casually celebrate nationalism is a step into deep and murky waters. Yet there are events, coming long after the Biblical witness, which seem to speak to us today about God's intentions, how divine design is at work in the world.

When John Adams says "solemnized" in his letter to Abigail, he doesn't mean being solemn. He's talking about the legal and civic act of firmly establishing and passing along traditions and understandings, just as we speak today of "solemnizing a marriage" in the ceremony. John wants us to have fireworks and "shews" and a good time to mark our deliverance in 1776 for every year forward.

At the same time, I think we all would benefit from some "Acts of Devotion to God Almighty" to reflect on how it all worked out, from John's day to our own.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes a good shew or an illumination as much as the next fellow. Tell him about your bells and bonfires at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-24-22

Faith Works 6-24-22
Jeff Gill

Visiting a church on the way
___

July is peak vacation season, and we're hearing about new records of vehicles on the roads, reservations along the highways, and people waiting at airports for connections (and for cancellations, a different sermon indeed).

If you've been reading me for a long while, you've read variations on this before, but it's been a few years, and I think it's time to go there again: visit a worship service on vacation. You will gain much from the experience.

Some folks like to check with their minister to find out if a congregation of their tradition is located in the area they're visiting. That's an option. Going to the "same" church and seeing how different it is can teach us something about assumptions and expectations that really come home for us when we return, and see our familiar worship space in new ways.

What can really expand horizons is to let the Holy Spirit, or serendipity if you like, govern where and how you find a place to pause during a week or so away. Look for a sign or a reference in the brochures or any other nudge you might get, whether in a vacation community or just visiting family or friends on the road. Some place is likely to poke a steeple up in your field of vision, or post a sign right where you're looking for something else.

I've mentioned before the delightful experience we had in Deadwood, South Dakota, when a series of nudges led us to attend the church Seth Bullock helped build a century and a half ago (and if you don't know who Seth Bullock is, you don't know Deadwood). The priest of that Episcopal church couldn't have been more welcoming, and the congregants gave us some great hints about where we might go in the days we had left. They also noted that for as close as they were to the main tourist district, they didn't often get visitors from out of town like us. We talked about that after worship over coffee and cookies, and I think we all benefited from the conversation.

Plus, we had the experience of stopping to give thanks, to commune with believers, to share prayers and time in song and silence together. The sounds of the building, let alone the musical instruments, were different, the light in the windows and the feel of the seats, yet the Bible was familiar and the liturgy similar if different. I can only say: it felt right to be there, and it also made me value getting home, too, all at the same time.

Some people kick it up a notch, and intentionally attend a completely different kind of service than they normally do when they go on vacation. If they go to a traditional service, they visit a whole hog contemporary worship style church, just to remember what it's like; contrariwise, some (I think wise) contemporary preferring people go to a quiet, contemplative, liturgical service in their time away to keep the contrast in mind.

Either way, this can help you get off of the overly simplistic "right way/wrong way" model of thinking about worship styles. They are indeed different, and they each have a place; you might find your own feelings about them landing differently on your heart if you experience them in a different place.

But I would argue that however you do it, going to church on vacation is not about the question of not-not-going. We can debate the moral and theological merits of a weekly worship obligation at length, but I'm really talking about not missing out on the opportunity to attend a service where you don't know anyone, where your expectations and assumptions are set to one side, and when you are as truly choosing to attend as might be true any other day or week of the year.

It can be a transformative experience, in ways every service tries to be, but which you can help make possible for yourself and your family.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he may have a higher tolerance for feeling out of place than most. Tell him where you fit in at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 6-23-22

Notes from my Knapsack 6-23-22
Jeff Gill

Preservation and conservation
___

So we're all agreed our community is going to change.

Growth is change. No doubt about that. If you raise kids, you know you have to buy pants at certain times with an eye to how quickly they'll be outgrown, fashion trends notwithstanding.

And time is change, with erosion and decay and fading all part of the process; entropy will have its way and stuff has to be painted or replaced or tossed out with the trash.

As far as I can tell with basic internet searches, we're still thinking the human body, most of it anyhow, "turns over" every seven years or so. The material of which we're made today will by 2029 be new stuff, and here's the bad news: it will be made up of the stuff you decide to eat and drink in those intervening seven years. Hmmm.

Plus aging, et cetera, so we have a concept called life spans, generations, and for each of us, we have only so long, and perhaps pass along through children and students and associates what we hold dear beyond our life span, but after that it's the work of another.

If so the human life span, likewise the arc of a community. The material expression of it in buildings and roads and infrastructure, walls and signs and pipes and wires, all have a life span, wearing out and breaking down if you let it go long enough. Newark is going through a cycle of storm sewer replacement where in some places around Courthouse Square they've found brick vaults and ceramic tile going back over a hundred years, all of it starting to collapse and needing renewal if not replacement.

We also have the intangible infrastructure: ordinances and covenants and building code, strategic plans written decades ago based on laws sometimes a century or more in vintage, and not unlike our built environment, it can erode over time, and need renewal if not wholesale replacement. You can do it on a cycle, watch for emergent needs, or wait for a collapse in the pavement, literal or civic, to force everyone to jump into the hole and rebuild.

Similarly, if a body is made up of cells, a community is made up of people, and like those cells turning over year by year, we see certain roles and officials change even as the functions remain the same. Denison University is on its twentieth president; with each administration, some things change while much remains the same. Mayors and council members, village staff and volunteer officials, all partake of the same changing but changeless nature.

When you put an organism under stress, adolescence being one kind of pressure with fast growth and internal changes, the entire system has to adapt. From the immune system to the prefrontal cortex, the long bones extending and baby teeth falling out, just to stay yourself everything has to change.

Or to be very specific, soon we have the annual Fourth of July Parade in Granville. Every year it's the same; every year it is completely different. Some of the banners and vehicles, even a few people persist from year to year, but that same ol' parade? It takes quite a bit of intentional planning and effort to look just the same as it always has.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a regular role in certain parades, as well. Give him a wave on the Fourth, or through knapsack77@gmail.com as well as on Twitter @Knapsack.

Faith Works 6-17-22

Faith Works 6-17-22
Jeff Gill

A pastoral word for times of division
___

If you are called a "person of faith," regardless of your religious tradition or membership, it probably means one of a few things.

Faith is often referenced as a shorthand for "believes there is more to life than physical existence," whether an afterlife or heaven or a subjective awareness of self beyond death. Our local shorthand is "heaven or hell, you pick."

There are aspects of personal faith that may hold to no more than a sort of objective immortality — our good deeds endure, perhaps the elements that make up our existence last, like the carbon from the heart of ancient stars forming the essence of life as we know it. Reincarnation is not something I've studied, but it seems to carry pieces and parts of both the objective and the subjective.

And there are people of faith who believe that there are most certainly things that endure and God who is everlasting reigning over all, but don't think much about their later judgment or status in eternity. As I said, being a "person of faith" can refer to people with viewpoints about the divine and the eternal that might not track exactly with your own, and that's been one of the delights of writing this column over the years is the chance to learn how others believe and to test my own faith against the propositions of another. (Note to fellow Christians that I Peter 3:15 is always relevant!)

To be a preacher and teacher of Christian faith requires you both be more willing than most to state your assumptions in public, and be ready to respond to contrary opinions (again, I Peter 3:15). Sometimes that might be from non-believers or outright atheists, or it might be coming from near at hand, as a fellow believer in your particular tradition disagrees with how you are presenting or explaining the faith you at least outwardly share.

For anyone who thinks debating let alone discussing faith with an atheist or agnostic is a waste of time, I invite you to hunt up online one of my favorite stories about how "The Great Agnostic," Robert G. Ingersoll, ended up in a train compartment with another former Civil War officer named Lew Wallace. Wallace was raised in church, but as an adult was unaffiliated yet thought himself a Christian of a generic sort. On the way home from a political convention where they both had played a role, Wallace challenged Ingersoll's agnosticism as a barrier to his advancement in politics, and in return Ingersoll asked Wallace to defend the faith he claimed to hold.

The result of Wallace's reflections on why he believed what he did was a book, entitled "Ben-Hur." The full title is "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ" and we have "The Great Agnostic" to credit, in no small part, for having that story, since transformed into a stage play and multiple cinematic renditions.

Disagreements about subjects for which there is little objective evidence are inevitable. And there's a tragic human tendency — one could almost call it sin — to separate and divide groups over such disagreements. II Corinthians 6:17 gets used all too often as a basis for calling on the like-minded to "come out" and separate themselves from unbelievers.

There's one discussion to be had about whether a persons whose beliefs don't precisely track with yours is really to called, Biblically or otherwise, and unbeliever. But I also find myself pulled to consider along with verse 17 the earlier statement in the same passage by Paul to the church in Corinth, at verse 14: "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers." Right, don't put yourself in a place where someone whose views are at odds with yours can control what you do. That's what being yoked together, put in harness side-by-side, can impose.

What I worry about is the tendency to want to separate any divergent view far enough away to where we never have to spend time arguing with each other. The impulse I understand: it's nice to sit and talk with people who already feel and think and work just as you do. Colleagues and friends and family, when you're all on the same page, are great company.

But I don't believe our faith is strengthened, let alone advanced, by only being practiced in the midst of the like-minded. When iron sharpens iron, a little friction helps both edges stay sharp.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he dislikes divisions of all sorts, and perhaps enjoys a good argument all too well. Tell him what's what at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.