Faith Works 7-06-13

Faith Works 7-06-13

Jeff Gill

 

237 birthdays, and counting

___

 

Yes, I'm back from Philmont Scout Ranch, and yes, I know you've been promised a series of columns on the Bible that's not done yet (two more to go!), but I would like to seasonally digress before we go on with my scriptural mediations.

 

We're wrapping up a week of celebrations and commemorations of the birth of the United States of America, now 237 years young. During the days leading up to July 4, there've been some other special observances for the 150^th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1, 2, & 3, and also of the end of the Siege of Vicksburg. Here in Ohio, we're creeping up on the bicentennial of the Battle of Lake Erie, Oliver Hazard Perry's key contribution to the War of 1812 and perhaps the brightest moment for the USA in that conflict other than the writing of "The Star Spangled Banner" in Baltimore harbor.

 

But it's the Glorious Fourth that we tend to focus on, which marks . . . well, what does it mark, exactly?

 

Technically, it is the date on the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. John Adams had pressed the resolution which the Declaration itself represents on July 2^nd, and it was signed on August 2^nd, but the resolution was, technically, "ratified" on July 4^th, and some evidence indicates it was first read to the public on July 4.

 

John Adams wanted the country to celebrate July 2, which he felt was the moment in which a new nation was born, but he reconciled himself in later years to July 4, dying on that day in the same year as Thomas Jefferson, which certainly ratified the date in a strange sense.

 

Many of you probably are familiar with a letter John wrote to Abigail Adams and this passage from it: "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."

 

Yes, he was talking about what he thought July 2^nd would be for us in the future, but the general outlines have held true to our celebrations for the Fourth of July . . . except for . . . you're probably a step ahead of me here, aren't you? "Solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty."

 

You can tell that John, Massachusetts puritan that he might be by birth, was wanting something more than solemnity ("Shews, Games, Sports" et cetera are all on the list), but devotional moments are part of the program in his vision of July 4. Did we use them all up back on Memorial Day weekend, those pauses for reflection and prayerful appreciation? I don't have a program in mind, I'm just noticing the general lack.

 

Part of what we might need to reclaim Adams' sense of what this observance should be is right there in the letter to Abigail.  Because while many have heard the preceeding statement, too few know the very next lines of their July 3, 1776 correspondence: "You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. -- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. -- Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."

 

As we celebrate freedom, and recall from Gettysburg's battlefield a "new birth of freedom" Lincoln called for from there; as we watch Egypt stumble in implementing democracy and we welcome home our "blood and treasure" from Afghanistan even as we hear calls to send troops in harm's way for well-meant purposes around the world; we might just read and reflect in our Independence Day events and activities on the rueful reflection and prayerful consideration suggested by John Adams in these lines, the ones he wrote right after commending to us "bonfires and illuminations" and fireworks in the night.

 

I trust in God that we shall.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your reflections on independence & freedom at knapsack77@gmail.com or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Knapsack 7-04-13

Notes from my Knapsack 7-04-13

Jeff Gill

What is America, anyhow?

___

It was disconcerting to read a letter to the editor in a recent Sentinel expressing the hope that a writer whose opinions disagreed with their own would not be heard from again here.

These pages, and the columns of any American newspaper, are ideally a place where the rich, full, complex and diverse range of community viewpoint can be aired, where they may find themselves in open disagreement, and where they might be able to exchange full and frank arguments about the basis of their respective perspectives.

To say not "I disagree with you, and here's why," but rather "I wish you'd go away and not come back" is . . . well, to me, that's not America.

What is America?

America is Eugene V. Debs, and William F. Buckley. This country has given birth to the Republican Party, and the Democratic Socialists of America. We are Mother Jones, and Mother Angelica. We’re Rachel Carson and Dorothy Day, Carrie Nation and Hillary Rodham Clinton. This nation is Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd, Harold Stassen and Norman Thomas.

Woody Guthrie's song reminds us we extend as a nation from California to the New York island, even as Irving Berlin's song asks God to bless America; we also encompass the train they call the City of New Orleans, and the Big Rock Candy Mountain, and on beyond the hundredth meridian.

Within this very week, committed pacifists will enjoy martial music from marching bands as fireworks explode overhead, while elsewhere on the ground in broad daylight SEAL teams in combat zones will use alternative dispute resolution techniques to end arguments peacefully. Those are both very much America.

America is "Howl" and "Leaves of Grass" and "Casey at the Bat." We are Phyllis Schlafly and Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Our nation has been led by elected officials like Harvey Milk, Richard J. Daley, Barbara Jordan, Bella Abzug, Salmon P. Chase, and James Traficant.

To our bemusement and amazement, we are "Birth of a Nation" and "Die Hard 5," but we're also "The Trip to Bountiful," "Places in the Heart," "Days of Heaven," and "Field of Dreams."  Of course, we're also "Transformers: Dark of the Moon."

In music, we're the inspiration if not the nationality of the composers of "From the New World" and "Grand Canyon Suite," while we're certainly "West Side Story" and "Fanfare for the Common Man." We are the Ramones and Frank Sinatra; we're Etta James and Janis Joplin and Joan Jett; we're Willie Nelson and Mark Mothersbaugh. America is jazz and rock and roll and elevator music, we are jukeboxes and iPods and streaming downloads, we are for good or ill the home of MTV and BET and CMT as much as we are Univision and Telmundo.

America can be Scout troops and soccer leagues, art academies and drill teams, amateurs and professionals working side by side with children underfoot and interns doing the heavy lifting. We're capitalists and state socialists and social democrats. We're media celebrities if only for fifteen minutes, and we're small town publishers of weekly print products that work three times as hard to sell the same amount of ad space.

As Walt Whitman, that great unacknowledged legislator of Camden, NJ said, "Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

And we need us all, for it is only from "e pluribus" that we get our "unum"; it is only out of many that we can find our common oneness. Because that's what America is: a one that only can be found through the many, and as for that many, as Uncle Sam's finger points out, this means you, too.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him where you find America at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-15/22/29-2013

Faith Works 6-15/22/29-13 (that's right, three weeks' worth all posted at once)

Jeff Gill

 

June 15 – A place of gathering

 

Monday night, June 24, from 5:00 pm to dusk, there's a special program going on out at the Newark Earthworks.

 

If you visit the Great Circle there off of Rt. 79 that Monday, you'll attend an event I regret missing. My friends with the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma are coming, two busloads of them this time, with Chief Glenna Wallace. They are returning to Ohio & Canada to mark the 200^th anniversary of the death of their leader Tecumseh. They will later that week visit the battlefield in Canada where he fell and the place where by tradition he is buried, but first – they want to visit our earthworks.

 

The event on Monday the 24^th is a celebratory affair, emphasizing the ongoing effort to finalize the United Nations' World Heritage List status of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks here, and in Chillicothe & at Fort Ancient. It's made even more interesting by the fact that 30 German Lutherans are visiting St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Newark, and all those folks and their host families are joining in the program and activities set up by the Newark Earthworks Center.

 

My involvements with the earthworks these last few years have had me wondering what hat I'm wearing at any given time, because it gets complicated. There's an element of the archaeology that first drew me to this subject, but there's also the role of pastor which I'm surprisingly often called on to occupy while we discuss and walk and even pray together, considering what it means to have ancient sacred sites right here in Newark, Ohio

 

Whether it's been at a funeral for a colleague in this effort, or negotiating the various understandings of multiple groups about things like "how do we open an event – with a prayer, a song, a speech, and what does it mean to do it in that order, or some other pattern?" or just to be greeting a sunrise at a place hallowed by use for thousands of years: it gets complicated.

 

If I were a Disciples of Christ pastor in a town with a two thousand year old church in the middle of today's community, and the usual assumptions about "whose church is this?" focused around Roman Catholic or Anglican, I'd have some of these challenges to think (and pray) through. Some traditions welcome ecumenical prayer, and others have reasoned and heart-felt reasons for avoiding such involvements.

 

When you add in American Indian spirituality, which itself runs the gamut from purely naturalistic to overtly Christian, the complications are fascinating, even as the personal and emotional issues can be challenging. Five years ago, when we re-dedicated the newly refurbished museum at the Great Circle, there were some quite shocked when our invited guests from Mexico, the Aztec Dancers, had banners with Mary & the infant Jesus on them. The tropical feather costumes and beaten brass jaguar masks and native flutes had obscured the fact that there is also a strong Christian component to what this group does and how they do it: even as they dance to call on the rain to fall (and it did, that day, in buckets…).

 

So this time, add in a crew of Lutherans, a number of whom won't be speaking much English. Complicated enough for you?

 

What it all says to me is that these ancient mounds have been a focal point for pilgrimage for many, many years. They help to define a place where people come together. I trust God to show us why, why here, and why now, even as I listen and look for the ways the Kingdom may be working – through Indians, through Aztec dancers, through German travelers – where I hadn't expected to have an encounter with holiness, with good news, with grace.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him where you like to gather with others to seek divine guidance at knapsack77@gmail.com or @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

*  *  *

 

June 22 – A book for the ages

 

It still surprises me how often people who are interested in spirituality and faith and even organized religion (up to a point) will pull up short when it comes to talking about "The Bible."

 

"Why does an old book have any place guiding your life or mine today?"

 

To be fair, you rarely hear the question asked that directly. It usually comes up when you're talking about moral and ethical decisions, and when a Christian of whatever tradition makes a reference to a scriptural passage, and you see . . . a wince. Maybe a comment along the lines of "but doesn't the Bible also say [insert something about stoning or dietary restrictions here]?"

 

As if that's a real debate ender.

 

I'd like to spend just a few weeks this summer talking about bibles, The Bible, and all the various forms "The" Bible takes, and whether or not it makes any sense at all for someone to claim in 2013 that their life finds meaning and purpose in words first written or spoken thousands of years ago.

 

(Regarding capitalization, I will drive both you the reader and my editors bonkers through these next few columns. There's nothing in the Bible, the Holy Bible, or The Bible, etc. about punctuation, mainly because all the oldest manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek have none. Seriously. No capital letters, no periods or commas, and in many cases, no spaces, which is why being a scribe was such a technical profession – you not only were in the small group who could read, but reading those kinds of documents still takes a very special sort of eye. But bible, Bible, and biblical studies et alia will vary in presentation, and I ask that you presume respect on my part even if my conventions on orthography aren't the same as yours.)

 

The basic point, about old books and new challenges: I mentioned in this space last week an event happening this Monday evening, at the Great Circle of the Newark Earthworks. No one finds it odd that people get a special sense of place, especially with a personal or family connection, from visiting an ancient site. We even call some "sacred sites," as many American Indian folk do our 2,000 year old earthworks.

 

Now, they're old, they've been used for different purposes over the last 200 years, and there were gaps in the use and understanding of them, but the idea that people would be inspired and moved personally by coming and standing in the midst of them today: that's not strange to our ears at all, is it?

 

One way the Bible is important to many of us, I'd argue – not the only or even main way, but a significant aspect of the relationship – is that it is deeply meaningful to stand in the presence of this sort of age, this history, the deep connection it helps us feel to those who have dealt with life and looked into eternity from their vantage point in the past.

 

In the Bible, we read about family, people from whom we can claim at least a certain spiritual descent, and see them wrestle with problems very similar to our own in many ways. Sometimes, when it has to do with how to herd sheep and goats, or what we think of as we grind our grain for dinner, we need a little help to translate the ideas as much as the language. And for clergy and others who do that sort of cultural translation, in teaching or preaching, even the points of strangeness themselves can have a teaching moment to them.

 

I was once doing a Bible study at the Licking County Justice Center, and starting to skip over a chunk of Genesis, when one of the inmates pointed at the text, and commented about a character there with multiple wives in conflict. "I've got two ex-wives and a girlfriend, and kids with all three, and I know exactly how Isaac feels!"

 

You never know quite when the Bible will speak to you, or through someone sitting next to you. I hope you'll stay with me as I spend the next few weeks looking at the structure, narrative, and meaning of the Bible to believing Jews & Christians in this community.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what your favorite book of the Bible is (or translation, for that matter) at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

*  *  *

 

June 29 – The Bible as library

 

The word "bible" comes from "biblia," or "books." Not book, but books.

 

The Bible, as we know it – and yes, different Christian communities, let alone Jewish tradition, know it in slightly different forms – is not "a" book, but a library of books.

 

So it's not that surprising that if you go to two similar small communities in Ohio, with librarians of different ages, training, and temperaments, you might find slight differences in what's on the shelves.

 

Both would have "The Pickwick Papers" by Charles Dickens, but one might have a full set of Anthony Trollope while the institution just a few miles down the road has more Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and so on. The purpose of the place is still very much the same.

 

The Roman Catholic faith includes a set of writings between the Old & New Testaments, these two wings of our proposed library collection here, which is a special viewing room of books that are instructive, but not authoritative, called the Apocrypha. Some Anglicans keep them around, too, and I've got them on the shelf even if they aren't in my congregation's pew bibles.

 

And the Eastern Orthodox have a bonus psalm, while organizing the Apocrypha a little differently.

 

For Protestants, there's general agreement on the two "wings" of our library structure, 39 volumes in the Hebrew scriptures, or Old Testament, 27 of the Apostolic writings, or New Testament.

 

But Martin Luther never much liked Jude, James, Hebrews, or Revelation, and almost got them taken out, but when it was discussed in a church council, there was so much interest in also taking out one of Martin's favorites, Song of Solomon, so he dropped the whole idea (roughly true, if edited for length and content).

 

If you look into the Hebrew understanding of their holy books, you find a structure within what Christians call their older, or first testament: in Judaism there is a usual reference not to a "bible" per se, but to "The Torah, the prophets, and the writings," or sometimes called the "Tanakh" which is an acronym for those three major divisions.

 

Torah means teachings, and they are also known as the "five books of Moses": Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, & Deuteronomy. It's the core narrative of the people Israel, their journey towards a land of promise, out of bondage, and to an understanding of God as one, a Creator God who is personally and intimately interested in our lives. Torah is both law and story, not just a volume of stipulations, but not just a travelogue, either.

 

The prophets are individuals in the land once entered who spoke to keep people on God's path – or to warn them when they were leaving it. And the writings include historical texts, poetry, and some touching stories that mix both (like Luther's beloved "Song of Solomon").

 

In the Christian writings, this rough blueprint is echoed: the four gospels are a mix of story, and the fulfillment of law that Jesus calls grace. You can't read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as just biography, but they aren't self-help texts, either.

 

As Torah is followed in most Hebrew collections by history (Joshua, Judges, Ruth, etc.), the Gospels are followed by the Book of Acts. Where "the writings" are in the Old Testament, the New places the epistles, letters to the newly birthed churches of Christianity, and the final rumble of five major and twelve minor prophets is echoed by the conclusion of the apostolic writings in Revelation.

 

Even the placement and pattern of the books has a point, has a purpose. Next week, I want to talk about how this collection, diverse in voice and viewpoint, also has a coherence, a unity of story even as we work through our own variety of interpretations.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your preferred study Bible, or place to sit and do your daily readings at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-8-13

Faith Works 6-8-13

Jeff Gill

 

Thoughts on leaving Fairmount Cemetery

___

 

Depending on when or where you're reading this, you may not know about the delightful sixteen year old young woman who died in our county after an accident on Memorial Day.

 

If you don't, it is enough to say she was well loved by family and friends and classmates and many, many more. She was, as is obvious, far too young to die – as if there is an age where it ever feels entirely right.

 

After a memorial service which attempted to sketch out the depth of our feeling and the breadth of our love for her, a procession longer than I ever hope to see again, and shorter than the number who would have gone if they could, wended its way from Lakewood High School to Fairmount Cemetery on US 40, the old National Road.

 

We passed milestones one after another, worn and weathered, some of the words obscured by the years, "Cumberla…" and "Wheelin…" above numbers once incredibly important, now so small in terms of modern speed as to be no more than the historical curiosity they now are.

 

Others have passed these milestones of course, wagons and carriages and sulkies and carts and buggies and Model Ts and Packards and Hudsons and Mustangs. Earlier funeral processions have gone by them, and more will no doubt do so in days and years to come, while the milestones sit and stare, declaring their sullen distances to no one in particular.

 

The family of the young woman we've lost has been to this cemetery before, for older family members whose days had become a burden, and yet even then it didn't seem like the right time. So much more so today, bright and clear and even beautiful in a way I could only be thankful for later.

 

With the saying of the last formal words at the graveside, and the singing of one last song, we turned and walked away, back to our cars. There were more gatherings to share, stories yet to tell, but for now we were done here.

 

At the top of the hill where the cemetery sits is a small brick church, and matching in bulk next to it, a mound. Some twelve to fourteen feet high, it's a mound from a period that archaeologically goes back about 2,500 years, a period we label today as "Adena," from a typical such mound on the grounds of the Adena Mansion down in Chillicothe.

 

Most Adena mounds are cemeteries themselves, rising up where our contemporary graveyards spread out. Each new usage, from the ground level to the peak, represents a set of interments in most cases, a collection of remains from those who had died in the family or clan over a multi-year period. So some are cremated remains, some bundles of bones, and occasionally a complete, "extended" committal in the middle, likely a person whose death either triggered the next usage of the site, or simply the one who died most recently before the time for burying had begun.

 

Today, the emotion is raw, ragged, painful and deep. Like any fresh, major injury, it is impossible to imagine healing and calm satisfaction ever again while you are hurting with the initial impact. Maybe after a healer's care, perhaps in a day or two, you won't be there yet, but you can conceive of it happening someday. Not in the moment.

 

Yet there, looking down at all of us, is a sign, as are the stones set into the ground all around us, of how that day will come. When those honored dead were brought here, on a litter carried by family (we would imagine), their grief was no less real, no softer-edged, not something you could quickly dismiss. It was over two millennia ago, but you know, you just know, that the pain was sharp and vivid as the remains were covered with earth.

 

You don't want to call it, or imagine it, as detachment, let alone uncaring, but there is a time and season for each wave of feeling in turn. The tide will recede, and when it comes up to fullness again, it will be a different time altogether. The layers mount up towards the sky on the mound, our rows of tombstones extend further towards the horizon. Walking along them, we spot a name we know, remembering that earlier day when we came.

 

And we pass through the gate, and drive down the road, but know that we will be back. One way or another.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County. Tell him about a cemetery dear to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Knapsack 6-6-13

Notes from my Knapsack – 6-6-13
Jeff Gill

Vertical challenges in Our Fair Village
___

Philmont Scout Ranch is out in the northeast corner of New Mexico, on the eastern side of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range that you look at from the west if you're in Taos.

75 years old this summer, the property was given to Scouting by Waite Phillips for exactly the purposes to which a group of some seventeen youth and adults will put it in a few weeks: backpacking and hiking. All our food and gear for sleeping and cooking will be on our backs, 35 to 50-plus pounds worth.

And the hiking starts at Base Camp outside of Cimarron, NM at about 7,000 feet of elevation, and our trek (Trek 22 for those who know the process) will cover 81 miles over ten days on the trail (plus a day of orientation at the start, and a day of celebration and check-out at the end, for twelve days total).

The high point on our ten day journey is Baldy Mountain, 12,400 feet, and we don't just hike from 7,000 steadily up to 12,400 and down again over the trek. It's up and down and the whole Grand Ol' Duke of York routine. So training for us tenderfeet is important.

You can put on miles in Ohio, but what about building up those muscles for going uphill, and even more critically, downhill, with loads of water and gear on your back – and properly stowed, on your hips, weight-wise?

For that, you need vertical elevation, and that's not what central Ohio is known for. Add in a busy schedule of clearing the decks so one can be gone for almost three weeks (we're taking the train there and back), and there's not much time to go to places like Zaleski or Shawnee State Forest's rigorous backpacking trails, or put in sharp steep hikes at places like Fort Hill. So what to do?

First, they tell us that eastern woodland hikers sometimes run afoul of thinking their bodies are trained, but hit challenges and injuries because they were in woods on dirt trails for their mileage pre-Philmont, and out west the trails are hardpan and rock. So they actually recommend lots of miles on pavement, and stair-climbing.

Two places I've made extra trips when I have just a spare moment, and my ministerial schedule permits: Licking Memorial Hospital, from the cafeteria area in the basement to the stairs above the sixth floor, gives you virtually nine levels of double staircases from bottom to top and back again, and a second loop for luck; also the Don Hill County Administration Building in downtown Newark gives me five (ten with twice). So there's some stair-based endurance and pounding for my joints.

But right here in Granville, I've found a ten mile loop that gives me almost enough vertical to be challenging, although the real test will be when I hit the true mountain trails, and I'll let you know how it compares.

Anyhow, if you go to the Bryn Du Mansion, head down Jones and west on the walking path; take the side spur after The Colony, then the first turn left, into Bryn Du Woods – bear steadily west, across the main drag to the road that curves up towards Alligator Mound Hill, and then take the emergency access road, walking around the two gates, wheezing your way up to the ancient Alligator itself. Enjoy the view, catch your breath.

Now head down (a couple ways to do this, some of them legal) but end up at College and Granger, turn south, cross Broadway and go up Mount Parnassus; down the backside of it to the gates of Maple Grove, west on Maple to the Pearl St. connector to the bike path, bike path to Main St., and turn right, up the hill past the Old Colony Burying Ground.

Through the Four Corners, up President's Drive to the crosswalk, up the stairs to Swasey Chapel. If you're lucky, the chapel doors are open, and you can go up the steps to the balcony, across, and down the other steps. Then down to Slayter and the stairs behind the commons to Deeds Field and Piper Stadium, wend your way around to Washington, and out Pearl, now North St. to the Bioreserve. Take a loop there, then back to Bryn Du by as much more of this as you can stand, or the direct route of Pearl to Broadway and home.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your favorite local hikes at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-1-13

Faith Works 6-1-13

Jeff Gill

 

One foot in front of the other, one eye on the sky

___

 

Some call it Cowboy TV.

 

Others call it The Nature Channel.

 

You look up, or from the right vantage point, you look out, and see a widescreen, 3D, high definition vista.

 

The high def is less so if you have big droplets of sweat on the inside of your glasses, but it's the work of a moment to wipe them off, mop your brow, and gaze.

 

The sky is filled with the slow motion boil of cumulus, glowing white on top, hints of glowering purple below on some clouds.

 

As yet, there's no front, no wall cloud, no solid shadow of approaching rainfall. With the right gear, in the right location – even if that's not under a wide, overhanging roof – you can enjoy that sight on its own terms.

 

But more pleasurable is this collection of ever changing monuments to evaporation, condensation, and potential precipitation. There are fair weather cumulus, no greys or dark blues showing the clouds as heavy with water, but all cotton ball puffs as a child would glue to their tempera-painted sky.

 

And then there's cerulean itself, a cloudless sky. Usually even a "cloudless" sky has one or two somewhere in the distance, down by the horizon, just for contrast. Not always: sometimes you get, with crisp air of a clear morning, what the pilots call CAVU: ceiling and visibility unlimited. You still have something to look at, though; a pure blue sky has a contrast all its own, and compels your eye to search deeply into the color.

 

Ohio in the summer is more given to a milky blue, when humidity promises both clouds to come and the weight of dampness across your back heavier than the pack you're carrying.

 

That kind of not-quite blue always ripples from stratus to cirrus mixed with cumulonimbus, when humidity takes on both solid form and generates the slashes of lighting that bind heaven to earth.

 

Storms pass, as they always do, and then the calm, the recovery of nature's concert as you walk from bugs to birds to occasional amphibians and animals in the underbrush.

 

Then night falls; you have your camp set up, your fire banked or maybe you never lit more than your stove, and with its roaring off, you just watch the stars come out.

 

If you get out into the townships, or further afield, you see the night sky as startlingly active. Yes, some of that will be the lights of high flying jet planes, flashing their steady blink across the sky from horizon to horizon, but there are higher, faster, steady points of light that move with stately grace from north to south. Satellites, you learn with a good long viewing of a clear night sky, are not all that uncommon.

 

Once in a while, if you're fortunate, a brighter glob of light will angle across from western horizon to your east, more diagonal to your view than most of the aircraft. It's the International Space Station, humanity's outpost beyond the atmosphere, with a few intrepid souls (Americans, Russians, Canadians, sometimes others) looking back down on our planet during their work breaks.

 

We look up, watching the sky, now brightly washed through the middle, from northeast to southwest, with a path of milky illumination, the ISS flying perpendicularly to that starry band.

 

And beyond? How can you not think of beyond? Even the brilliant sunlight filled blue draws your thoughts past the mere accident of color to what lies behind, above, beyond. But moreso now, by night, the moon not yet up, the stars glittering in their field of intense black.

 

Tillich spoke of God as "the ground of being," and there's a life to the blackness of space, a vibrancy to it that does not force you to think only of vacuum, of the void. You feel a presence.

 

What kind of presence? That's what we discuss in churches, in our worship centers and home study groups. In one form or another, we all stand against the spirit of the age to say we believe in a meaning beyond our moment, a person bigger than personality. We start with that truth claim, that there is more than material substance to this cosmos in which we hike, swim, fly, and then we reach out a little bit further, to ask "Who are you?" What kind of presence: one of love, or of indifference? Of care, or of oblivion?

 

To which Christians whisper, as they look on the night sky: "Jesus."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; you're likely to see him dishing out shortcake at the Newark Kiwanis Strawberry Festival this weekend. Tell him what you see in the sky at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-25

Faith Works 5-25-13

Jeff Gill

 

Prayer on the move, on foot

___

 

My friend and colleague Martha Grace Reese, author of "Unbinding the Gospel" and Newark native, pointed me years ago towards "walking prayer."

 

She cheats and uses snowshoes and cross-country skis part of the year up in Minnesota, but the idea really is the same. You don't have to sit, or kneel, or stand in a church building let alone in your "prayer closet" or what-have-you to pray, to pray meaningfully and effectively.

 

You can walk.

 

Walking prayer is a tradition going back to the desert fathers of monasticism in the Egyptian wilderness, and you can even look back to Jesus himself in his forty days of preparation, where it's not at all said that he sat and prayed. He moved through the desert, even as he walked up a mountain for spiritual retreat.

 

I doubt he waited to start praying until he got to the top!

 

"Long Wandering Prayer" by David Hansen has been a touchstone for me since Martha Grace recommended it, who uses so beautifully Tolkien's phrase about Strider "not all who wander are lost."

 

Recently, many of us in Licking County, in Franklin County, and beyond, had to say good bye to Mark Welsh on his recent, unexpectedly sudden death. Mark walked through his life into a deeper understanding of Native American culture, both as it relates to our local landscape, and to the Indian nations now mostly resident in the West, but with vital ties still to the eastern woodlands, to our own Newark Earthworks.

 

He and I got to lead together a number of walks around the remnants of the walls and enclosures and mounds scattered between the more formal parklands better known, and Mark would gather us in a circle on a grassy plot by Union Street to lead in prayer. That spot would be full of industrial noises and many distractions, but his voice and words would remind us of the many ancestral voices once raised in the "Ellipse" where for hundreds and thousands of years the honored dead were laid to rest.

 

But he would always refer to the walk itself as a form of prayer, and tease me about not having yet made the walk from Chillicothe's mounds to Newark, as he'd done repeatedly. I hoped to make it with him someday.

 

On Tuesday, the Newark Earthworks Center has one of the four "open house" days at the Octagon Earthworks, at 33^rd St. and Parkview near Licking Memorial Hospital. It's a weekday, and school not out yet, but we're going to use the time, in part, to invite folks to come at either 10 am, or 5 pm, to take a walk that starts and ends at the Octagon (135 acres of earthworks that's but one component of a formerly four and a half square mile complex), and walks through the streets and alleys of modern day Newark, looking at traces of the 2,000 year old architecture.

 

It's an interpretive walk, taking about two hours and covering barely three miles or so, but some of us will be remembering Mark, and his reminders to us to be aware of the ancestors, and of the deeper meaning of walking.

 

And at my church, we've been talking about taking this the next step, and doing some "Scripture walks," Bible studies on the move if you will. We'll have one in nature with pauses for readings and reflections, which we'll do out at Dawes Arboretum on a Saturday in July, and then a walk through the streets of the city, because Isaiah and others in the Bible have much to say about urban life, too. Prayer, reflection, and health for body and spirit.

 

In fact, I'm focused on walking and spirituality because of my summer plans to head to Philmont Scout Ranch in just a few weeks, where backpacking means everything we do is tied to walking, being centered while on the move. And my training time with full pack has reminded me again of how well walking prayer suits me.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; yes, he's looking forward to ten days and 81 miles without a shower. Tell him where you find peace and connection at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.

draft two!

Notes from my Knapsack 5-23-13

Jeff Gill

 

First, you have to escape yourself

___

 

After the Cleveland captivity story came out in the news, I was surprised by how many people asked "why didn't those women just walk out?"

 

If pressed, folks would usually agree that it would have been hard at first, but later? Across a decade? They should have found an opening, an opportunity.

 

That attitude assumes that, like a POW, your every moment is consumed by the passion and the focus to escape. In fact, survival would quickly start to trump escape as a topic for intense reflection and anticipation, and the need to focus on what it takes to stay alive, to stay fed, would surely make escape a more distant consideration, and then over time it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

"No one has come to rescue me" after about a year becomes "No one will rescue me" and resignation, acceptance, and adjustment to your fate. Urges to break out and flee are tamped down with small, occasional reminders of your captor's power over you, and before long . . .

 

In fact, we have a local example of this, if two centuries old. Billy Dragoo was somewhere between twelve and sixteen when he was captured on the other side of the Ohio River, up in the western Virginia mountain valleys, at the headwaters of the Monongahela.

 

As the American Revolution ended, the dispossession and dislocation of Native Americans increased, even as the instigations of the British at Fort Detroit, continued albeit on a lower-key level. So it was that some landless, desperate Shawnee youth went across the Ohio, hunting for unguarded cabins, stealing weapons and supplies, picking through gardens, and occasionally taking captives.

 

In a raid near present-day Barrackville, West Virginia, this group ran across two families, and in the unexpected encounter a flurry of gunfire ended with most of Billy's family dead, he and his mother taken captive, and halfway back to the security of the Ohio River, a fall crippled Mrs. Dragoo and she was killed and scalped in front of him.

 

As the group made their was diagonally across Ohio, Billy became the third European American to leave a record of having passed through Licking County as it would be a few decades later. Even as a captive, even as a youth, he saw what a beautiful place it was.

 

Traded, adopted, married into villages of Indian people, by the time Dragoo is thirty, he has become in all outward means an Indian himself. When he travels to Pittsburg to find a better gun around 1803, he's startled to run into his brother, who survived the attack unknown to Billy, and has little English.

 

There are many sources for "Indian Billy's" story, and they reward the re-reading. But the upshot of it is that he only slowly, and partially returns to Western ways. His first wife follows her tribe west with their two daughters, and with their two sons Billy Dragoo goes to Virginia, and re-marries, has many more children . . . and ends up living in Licking County for the last thirty years of his life, buried here in 1856 somewhere in his eighties.

 

People wondered why he didn't escape when he could, but Indian Billy struggled to explain in later years: he was hungry, he'd seen most of his family killed in front of him, he needed the help of his captors to survive, and then he finds himself with a wife and family who need him to help them survive, and the years rolled by.

 

Living in two worlds is harder than it looks, and it doesn't look easy.

 

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

Faith Works 5-18

Faith Works 5-18-13

Jeff Gill

 

Winds of change, flames of celebration

___

 

Happy Pentecost!

 

We Christians occasionally note that the prevailing culture likes to snap up religious holidays and turn them into occasions for merchandizing. Which it does, because that's what our culture does.

 

In a capitalistic market economy, opportunities to make money will be seized by someone, and if there's a better way to find a profit, competition will either push the prices down or make the product more widely available . . . which is how you get mountains of junk shipped here from Shanghai every November for Christmas presents at every possible price point and color combination.

 

Even Easter, with evocations of Spring and hints of fertility across the landscape, gets everyone of whatever faith tradition the chance to buy pastel candy eggs and brightly colored new clothes.

 

So it might be a good sign, from a religious leader point of view, that no one has figured out how to make a buck off of Pentecost.

 

Fifty days after Easter, hence "pente" like pentagon, but with the ending for "times ten," Pentecost is described in the New Testament book called "The Acts of the Apostles," or just "Acts," in the second chapter.

 

It marks the descent, or "pouring out" of God as Holy Spirit on the gathered community of believers, praying together in the upper room where they had last been with Jesus less than eight weeks before. They were united in a spiritual experience that both spoke to each of them individually, and bound them to one other in an ecstatic awareness of the divine presence that filled them and overflowed them so much that . . .

 

Well, the stated initial reaction was "Yo, Peter, a little early in the morning for hitting on the cheap wine!" (You can look it up. Acts 2, remember.) They were happy, and joyful, and singing, and shouting, and apparently the neighborhood reaction wasn't entirely out of line, and Peter was very understanding.

 

He explained (yep, still in Acts 2) that they weren't drunk, but filled with enthusiasm over what God has done, and is doing – en-theos, literally enthusiastic because they had God, "theos," in them, "en-" and around and with them. And the listeners were invited to join in with the celebration.

 

So it's also called the "birthday of the church." Some congregations will even have cake, or a lunch followed by cake (that's how my church is celebrating, because that's how we roll).

 

It's a little surprising, actually. Folks could sell church birthday cards, or special cake toppers, or just party hats that look like little flames on top (sound odd? Read Acts 2), and the list goes on.

 

But what neither we within the church nor the world around us has managed to do is to make this spiritual celebration too tangible. There's just not much stuff you can attach, and market, and sell, when the focal point is spiritual intensity. The only real connection you could make to the event to be commemorated is through a gathering, around 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning as they did that day in Jerusalem, where people get together from a wide variety of backgrounds, earnestly seek the presence of God in their lives, and then sing or even shout for joy when that presence is felt.

 

And that marketing angle is already pretty well covered. Drop by any congregation you like and see how they sell it: they may even have cake, with candles.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your celebrations of God's presence at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Knapsack 5-16

Notes from my Knapsack 5-16-13

Jeff Gill

 

First, you have to escape yourself

___

 

 

Beneath the news that's so horrified and transfixed us out of Cleveland, there's a question that keeps popping up.

 

Why didn't those three women try to escape?

 

In fact, it appears that they did try, and that their captor is said to have been quite adept at mixing physical restraints on the doors (multiple locks, boarded windows) and on their persons (ropes and chains) with psychological manipulation. It even looks like his decision to let one woman have a child six years ago might have been to give him even more leverage over his tragic, twisted household.

 

If you live a life filled with choices and possibility, where you have options and autonomy on an everyday basis, you may be a bit slow to realize just how tightly circumstance can bind a person, no less than cords and chains. But we have in our local history another point of contact with these sorts of situations, even if two centuries intervene.

 

Billy Dragoo was a boy of twelve or a bit more in 1786, along the upper reaches of the Monongahela River in what's now West Virginia. His family had recently moved to the area  following the formal end of the war with Great Britain we call the American Revolution, with peace in 1783 ending, it was hoped, overt hostilities between the western parts of the colonies, now states, and the British fort at Detroit.

 

Col. Henry "Hair Buyer" Hamilton was no longer paying bounties for American scalps, but the Ohio country on either side of the river was still unsettled: in both the lack of permanent farm communities, and unsettled as well in the mood of the Shawnee, Mingo, and Wyandot peoples whose way of life was severely compromised by the withdrawal of British support. Hunting was hard, the old ways undermined by the arrival of guns and trade goods and the collapse of the beaver market, and alcohol kept the pot on simmer all around the region between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River.

 

So it was that a raiding party, years after such raiding was supposedly no more, came through today's Barrackville, West Virginia. A party of young men, dispossessed Native Americans, were stealing horses, grabbing stores from gardens and unguarded cabins, and on this October day in 1786, they killed most of two settler families in a surprise encounter. Letting a few run off to escape, they kept with them young William Dragoo.

 

He became only the third European person to have left a written account of passing through Licking County (after Christopher Gist & Rev. David Jones), and though he was a captive led against his will from the Muskingum watershed through the heart of our area, its beauty made an impression.

 

Known at the end of his life as "Indian Billy Dragoo," his story is more fully told elsewhere, but he found himself as winter came in the Detroit area adopted into an Indian family to replace a lost son, then married to a widowed woman who needed someone to hunt for her.

 

It was not until 1804, a year before Granville was "settled", that the now at least thirty year old man returned to Pittsburgh, in search of a good hunting gun, and learned in a chance encounter that his father and brother had survived the attack that killed his mother and so many others, and even then, he was slow to return to "his people." Ultimately, he remarried another Euro-American woman, and came to farm and live out his days in Licking County. The full story of his life can be found elsewhere, and is well worth the reading. He died in 1856, and is buried off Briarcliff Road west of Perryton.

 

Did "Indian Billy" just like the lifestyle in the woods, with his adopted family? Or did he reach a point where he simply couldn't imagine being welcomed back home? We don't know. Seeing his mother die at his feet, and the distance he traveled, and what he had to do to survive: slowly, the very idea of escape can become distant, dim. And you stop believing that you even can.

 

I suspect only William Dragoo could understand the courage it took Amanda Berry to even imagine escaping, let alone to do so.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your favorite story of escape and rescue at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Newark Central "Knapsack" 5-14-13

Newark Central – Notes from my Knapsack 5-14-13

 

To print or not to print, that's the question

 

Jesus says in Matthew 13:52 "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

 

On the other hand, the Board of Governors of the US Postal Service just said to the Postmaster General that they want him "to evaluate further options to increase revenue, including an exigent rate increase to raise revenues across current Postal Service product categories and products not currently covering their costs."

 

That would include bulk mail like our print newsletters, which are estimated to need at least a 30% rate increase just to cover the actual cost of processing and delivery.

 

Now, even if just that happened, our costs per newsletter for postage would still be half of what it would cost to put a First Class stamp on them. But you add on the increasing delays, and generally erratic delivery times for Second Class/Bulk mail . . . but talk among direct mail professionals is that the threshold for those rates is likely to go up from the current 200 piece minimum to something like 500, or more. We put out about 220.

 

I'm coming up on my one year anniversary of serving you in pastoral and administrative leadership, and probably no subject, no change or adjustment in congregational life has gotten me more questions, more concern, and yes, more anger than the decision I made to shift to every other week print newsletters. We've been accustomed to a weekly newsletter for many years.

 

"The Newark Christian" began 74 years ago as a monthly, and as we head for a diamond jubilee commemoration in 2014, it has been a key part of our life as a faith community, right along with the building at Mt. Vernon Rd. & Rugg Ave. and our Cedar Run Lodge. We use it to communicate with each other as much or more than the telephone.

 

Of course, before 1939 we didn't have a newsletter. But the cost of technology and staff to produce such a thing, along with cheap postal rates, made it feasible, and it has been incredibly useful.

 

Now we spend (with new USPS regulations) about eight cents per piece to create (not counting staff time) and moving past twenty cents to mail. Which arrives anywhere from the next day (as it used to be mostly for most addresses) to two weeks later for many of us just a few miles away.

 

And then there's e-mail. Not everyone uses it, but many do. It arrives pretty much when the office hits "send." In the face of that technology, our "peers" in size and type of church around the area either have stopped mailing newsletters, or have monthly only, with few "snail" mailed and those First Class.

 

So as your pastor, I'm thinking about all of this, and about Mt. 13:52. We will still be mailing some, of something, in 2014, of that much I'm sure. And Lisa and I still want your e-mail if you don't get this already on your computer!

 

In grace and peace, Pastor Jeff

Faith Works 5-11

Faith Works 5-11-13

Jeff Gill

 

Writing, Reading, and Being Read, Word by Word

___

 

Last week we were talking about electronic communication and social media in the life of faith communities.

 

Answering machines stand largely silent, as voice mail, texts, and those little message boxes on sites like Facebook, let alone tweets are now how we learn someone has gone to the hospital, or even better, than someone came home. It's not all bad, and in fact, it can be pretty good for pastors and others in religious leadership.

 

Electronic expression is a parallel, but separate shift we're experiencing right now. Reading and writing and sharing of documents, articles, and books themselves is often something that never touches paper.

 

Many of you, I know, read this column online (and thanks for subscribing online, which also gives you full access to an e-version of the paper layout if you like!). It still amazes me to realize, having written this and another column for Gannett's Media Network of Central Ohio for over a decade, that from my first articles for print in the 70s in junior high to my local paper, to today, I've gone from typewriter to paperless.

 

And when I say paperless, I mean there's not a physical artifact anymore in four weeks out of five (or more) from idea to outline to final product . . . and if you read this online, then it never hit paper for either of us at any point.

 

I use Evernote on my Kindle Fire and computers when ideas hit me, or to start my usual sermon note pattern; occasionally if I just have my fairly-dumb phone, I'll text a tweet note with the tag #NTS (Note To Self) which I'll scrape and re-copy later off of Twitter. My draft outlines and close-to-final columns go onto my own laptop and sometimes to Google Drive so I can fiddle with them from some of the other computers I'm on through the week.

 

Then my editor gets the final version from me by e-mail, marks it up (and fixes errors, thanks!), and zips it off into the Advocate's electronic sausage factory where it gets placed and printed or put out onto the internet under the proud banner of our newspaper. Newspaper: there's an artifact of a word right there.

 

Does my writing and reflecting on the world, and in my sermons, on the Word, change when it is developed on screens and touchpad's, as opposed to in ink scratches across a legal pad, or tapped one letter at a time onto foolscap wound into a Smith-Corona?

 

It's hard to imagine that it doesn't. The process of engaging ideas to text has be influenced in some ways by such radical changes in format and technology. Of course, some said this about the typewriter, back when the first novel (I'm told) written on one was the high tech fast-moving story of . . . Huckleberry Finn.

 

So maybe not.

 

I can't identify particular ways typing on a computer keyboard causes me to put out different strings of words or to craft certain sorts of images than I did when I was working with a device I had to reach up and actually "Return" at the end of a line (which is why that key on the right, kids, says "Return" – no kidding!). I didn't start using computers regularly on a personal level for word processing until 1999, by which time I'd been writing for quite a while. So I may just still be channeling old manual cosmos habits even while writing in an entirely virtual manner today.

 

This becomes a concern when folks see, as worship gets to the Scripture reading, lots of others open up a device, see the glow shining up from a screen, and people don't flip pages, but tap to get the right passage as they read along. With the best of intentions, some ask "Is that really Bible reading?"

 

My answer is "Of course it is." I encourage it. Your smart phone Bible app and e-reader access to the readings for the week mean that you can have your devotional time anywhere, and I don't think – although I'm watching with a certain questioning curiosity – that reading the Word on electronic words scrolling past is any more or less appropriate than if someone showed up in church on Sunday with a scroll under their arm, and when they sat, started opening the thing up and twisting their way across Isaiah with me.

 

Just don't jab the person next to you with the scroll ends, and we'll all engage with the words, because it's all about how we start to come to an understanding of what it means to understand the Word, the Logos, the Subject himself.

 

And I think Jesus can speak through our technology just fine.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; you can send him mail and he will read it, but mostly he gets e-mails at knapsack77@gmail.com, or you can follow @Knapsack on Twitter.