Faith Works 04-30-05
Why do we pray in Licking County?
Jeff Gill
Christians pray. The Lord’s Prayer, morning prayers, bedtime prayers; we pray in worship services and we pray in private. We speak to God, addressing ourselves to the Creator of the Universe, with a sense of trust in the belief that God listens, and a sense of wonder that God might answer.
Moslems pray, offering their submission, or “Islam” (the literal meaning of that awkward transliteration from the Arabic) to Allah, five times a day at minimum, whether alone or in association with other believers.
Jews pray, both in corporate worship that calls for a “minyan,” the ten men needed for official services, or alone before the Lord Who is One, Adonai.
Hindus pray, to a variety of divine figures who embody manifestations of the Divine Nature, but prayers both “set” and spontaneous are part of their tradition as well, no matter how different their worship spaces look to Western eyes.
Native Americans, or members of the First Nations as the Canadians say, pray; they speak most often of what they do devotionally as “listening,” with much less emphasis on asking or requesting than what they hear Anglo-Europeans do in prayer. Those who happily accept the label “Pagan” or Wiccam say much the same about their prayers.
Buddhists . . . well, they are more comfortable, for the most part, with the word “meditate,” but there are many traditional petitions and praises to the embodiments of Buddha-nature that sound like nothing other than prayer.
And the profane speak the name of God in a variety of forms, most of which are rude and disrespectful . . . but often with a frustrated or helpless tone that almost makes you think they could even be . . . naaaahhh. But Jesus really doesn’t have a middle name as far as anyone can tell from the Bible, in case you wondered.
So what are we all doing when we pray? Of course, there are those who would say that if you are not praying to the real, actual God, you are moving your lips and wasting oxygen; there are also those militantly atheistic enough to say we’re all doing that.
Others, a fair number around these parts I would guess, believe that prayers not intended and aimed and shaped by the right or true or orthodox position are getting much less communion and communication out of their prayers than they might. There is more of an economy of efficiency than an assertion of accuracy among Licking County believers of all faiths. Even very conservative Christians around here would agree that prayers of the monotheistic faiths, Jewish, Christian, and Moslem are spoken to the same one God, but with less efficacy depending on one’s spiritual disciplines and personal faithfulness. Most would even say God hears the misuse of divine labels by the profane; they just would not want to be in their shoes when the answer comes back.
Do those who pray think they talk to God? Almost without exception, yes. Do they think they change God? Generally, no. Serious pray-ers mostly see their prayers as having effects on those who offer the prayers, opening a channel for God’s grace and peace to work in them through a powerful non-verbal communication in response; they also understand their prayers as having an effect on others by being the vehicle for allowing that grace-filled power to flow more freely in a world often intent on blocking God’s intention. While free will, in this post-Calvinistic world, is widely understood by believers as the autonomy God respects in human persons, those who freely choose prayer can give an appropriate and effective nudge to events in the world by opening doors for God to work. And such openness allows our will to be aligned with the will of God, a source of power for those who believe.
Prayer is . . . how would you answer that?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. Share your story of prayer at work with him at disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Booster cover article 04-24-05
Jeff Gill
Moonrise Over Newark
Two noted scientists came to Newark over twenty years ago to disprove a theory. What they discovered instead was an achievement of Native Americans that still amazes them, and may yet awe modern inhabitants of the Licking and Raccoon River valleys.
Ray Hively, an astronomer, and Robert Horn, a philosopher, professors at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, came across Ohio to examine the world-famous Newark Earthworks, 2000 year old geometric forms on the landscape whose alignments and purposes are still dimly understood. They will return to the area to speak on Wednesday, May 4th, at 7:00 PM, in Founders Hall on the campus of the Ohio State University in Newark. They will share what they have learned, and what they are learning, about the remarkable relationship between what they call “these amazing earthworks” and the moon.
Hively and Horn originally wanted to use the Octagon to test a theory they had about the field of “archaeoastronomy,” the study of ancient structures and their alignments with astronomical events such as sunrises at the equinoxes (twice a year when the day and night are “equal”) and solstices (twice a year when the sun stops moving north or south and returns in the opposite direction). They thought that there might be as much wishful thinking as reality in finds of astronomical alignments at places like Stonehenge in England, Pueblo Bonito in New Mexico, or Serpent Mound in southern Ohio.
The Octagon of the Newark Earthworks, just one part of a once four square mile complex of connected earthern architecture, seemed to offer a good test. With eight sides, seven openings and the eighth opening along a short “neck” of parallel walls to one of the two vast circles in the area, there had to be enough possibilities to show how almost any arrangement would result in some astronomical point on the horizon being highlighted.
[box item: Website www.OctagonMoonrise.org]
The results of their initial survey was a bit startling. For all the chances, there were no sunrise related major events of the solar year pointed to at all. That already seemed to show that their theory was incorrect, but to be thorough, Hively and Horn checked the rise points of the moon.
That was a bit of a leap, because few ancient astronomers anywhere in the world had built any structures aligned with moonrises. The sun follows a very regular, annual pattern with essentially no changes from year to year (and a good thing, too, or winter and summer might swap from era to era). Moonrises are a different thing entirely.
In fact, the European scientist Sir Isaac Newton, the inventor of calculus in the 1600’s, remarked that the only mathematical problem “that ever gave me a headache” was calculating the movements of the moon, rising in a varying pattern of northern and southern rises across an 18.6 year cycle. This complexity meant that few pre-modern societies anywhere in the world had marked and measured this moonrise pattern.
When Hively and Horn applied moonrise data to their survey of the Octagon, the results were immediate and striking. The central axis of the connected Circle and Octagon structure pointed directly to the maximum northern moonrise of the 18.6 year cycle, and other walls and gateways of the architecture encoded most of the other key lunar alignments.
After publishing their find to great excitement in the archaeological community, they realized to their chagrin that the most recent maximum north moonrise had passed by. For the last nearly twenty years, they have continued to study and analyse the data “encoded in the design of this internationally recognized wonder of the ancient world” in the words of the Newark Earthworks Initiative, sponsors of Hively and Horn’s return to the Newark area in preparation for the upcoming maximum northern moonrise.
Their talk, entitled “Lunar Observation and Hopewell Architecture at Newark,” refers to the term used to refer to Native Americans in the Ohio area around 2000 years ago. One exciting aspect of the upcoming moonrise cycle, with visibilities beginning next fall, is that since the culture known as Hopewell faded from view around 500 AD, this may be the first occasion people have watched the moonrise over the Newark Earthworks aware of the alignment it’s built around -- for over a millennium and a half, 1,500 years. When cathedrals were built in Europe and cliff dwellings in the American southwest, these structures were already a thousand years old. When Vikings first set foot on North America, they had been abandoned for 500 years; when Columbus fatefully arrived, they had waited silently for a thousand.
Hively and Horn believe that they have discovered even more traces of the original intention of the ancient architects, geometers, and astronomers. The Newark Earthworks Initiative of the OSU-Newark campus and a group of local historians, archaeologists, and interested parties have created a website for those interested in the earthworks and the upcoming moonrise: www.OctagonMoonrise.org.
The Ohio Historical Society, owners of the site known as Octagon State Memorial, have negotiated dates of open public access with the leaseholders of the grounds, Moundbuilders Country Club, on June 6, August 8, and October 23, with access for the general public starting on the 22nd at sunset (which is around 6:30 pm), one of the early visibilities for the maximum northern moonrise.
After the city of Newark and Licking County had voted to preserve the remaining earthworks in the 1890’s, preservation options were limited: once the state militia had finished using the area for summer maneuvers as originally planned, the area was used for a golf course as early as 1901. The current lease with the country club begins in 1910, and part of the preservation history of the site is the use for golf. While not an ideal plan in modern terms, the original intent of both community and club members was to find a way of managing a large, open site before the idea of national or state parks had even come about.
In fact, the club itself is part of Ohio history, being not only one of the ten oldest golf courses in the state, but the “back nine” or original nine holes of golf laid out by Thomas Bendelow in 1911 are likely the oldest continuously played links in the state.
The Newark Earthworks have a fascinating history, prehistory, and ongoing story of discovery. You are invited to come join the still unfolding story on Wed., May 4 at 7:00 pm on the OSU-N campus in Founders Hall auditorium.
Caption -- This computer generated image represents the view of one of the moonrises over the main axis of the Octagon of the Newark Earthworks. One of the "Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World" according to England's Cambridge University, the largest geometric earthworks in the world contain secrets of astronomy still being revealed. (Courtesy CERHAS - Univ. of Cincinnati)
Jeff Gill
Moonrise Over Newark
Two noted scientists came to Newark over twenty years ago to disprove a theory. What they discovered instead was an achievement of Native Americans that still amazes them, and may yet awe modern inhabitants of the Licking and Raccoon River valleys.
Ray Hively, an astronomer, and Robert Horn, a philosopher, professors at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, came across Ohio to examine the world-famous Newark Earthworks, 2000 year old geometric forms on the landscape whose alignments and purposes are still dimly understood. They will return to the area to speak on Wednesday, May 4th, at 7:00 PM, in Founders Hall on the campus of the Ohio State University in Newark. They will share what they have learned, and what they are learning, about the remarkable relationship between what they call “these amazing earthworks” and the moon.
Hively and Horn originally wanted to use the Octagon to test a theory they had about the field of “archaeoastronomy,” the study of ancient structures and their alignments with astronomical events such as sunrises at the equinoxes (twice a year when the day and night are “equal”) and solstices (twice a year when the sun stops moving north or south and returns in the opposite direction). They thought that there might be as much wishful thinking as reality in finds of astronomical alignments at places like Stonehenge in England, Pueblo Bonito in New Mexico, or Serpent Mound in southern Ohio.
The Octagon of the Newark Earthworks, just one part of a once four square mile complex of connected earthern architecture, seemed to offer a good test. With eight sides, seven openings and the eighth opening along a short “neck” of parallel walls to one of the two vast circles in the area, there had to be enough possibilities to show how almost any arrangement would result in some astronomical point on the horizon being highlighted.
[box item: Website www.OctagonMoonrise.org]
The results of their initial survey was a bit startling. For all the chances, there were no sunrise related major events of the solar year pointed to at all. That already seemed to show that their theory was incorrect, but to be thorough, Hively and Horn checked the rise points of the moon.
That was a bit of a leap, because few ancient astronomers anywhere in the world had built any structures aligned with moonrises. The sun follows a very regular, annual pattern with essentially no changes from year to year (and a good thing, too, or winter and summer might swap from era to era). Moonrises are a different thing entirely.
In fact, the European scientist Sir Isaac Newton, the inventor of calculus in the 1600’s, remarked that the only mathematical problem “that ever gave me a headache” was calculating the movements of the moon, rising in a varying pattern of northern and southern rises across an 18.6 year cycle. This complexity meant that few pre-modern societies anywhere in the world had marked and measured this moonrise pattern.
When Hively and Horn applied moonrise data to their survey of the Octagon, the results were immediate and striking. The central axis of the connected Circle and Octagon structure pointed directly to the maximum northern moonrise of the 18.6 year cycle, and other walls and gateways of the architecture encoded most of the other key lunar alignments.
After publishing their find to great excitement in the archaeological community, they realized to their chagrin that the most recent maximum north moonrise had passed by. For the last nearly twenty years, they have continued to study and analyse the data “encoded in the design of this internationally recognized wonder of the ancient world” in the words of the Newark Earthworks Initiative, sponsors of Hively and Horn’s return to the Newark area in preparation for the upcoming maximum northern moonrise.
Their talk, entitled “Lunar Observation and Hopewell Architecture at Newark,” refers to the term used to refer to Native Americans in the Ohio area around 2000 years ago. One exciting aspect of the upcoming moonrise cycle, with visibilities beginning next fall, is that since the culture known as Hopewell faded from view around 500 AD, this may be the first occasion people have watched the moonrise over the Newark Earthworks aware of the alignment it’s built around -- for over a millennium and a half, 1,500 years. When cathedrals were built in Europe and cliff dwellings in the American southwest, these structures were already a thousand years old. When Vikings first set foot on North America, they had been abandoned for 500 years; when Columbus fatefully arrived, they had waited silently for a thousand.
Hively and Horn believe that they have discovered even more traces of the original intention of the ancient architects, geometers, and astronomers. The Newark Earthworks Initiative of the OSU-Newark campus and a group of local historians, archaeologists, and interested parties have created a website for those interested in the earthworks and the upcoming moonrise: www.OctagonMoonrise.org.
The Ohio Historical Society, owners of the site known as Octagon State Memorial, have negotiated dates of open public access with the leaseholders of the grounds, Moundbuilders Country Club, on June 6, August 8, and October 23, with access for the general public starting on the 22nd at sunset (which is around 6:30 pm), one of the early visibilities for the maximum northern moonrise.
After the city of Newark and Licking County had voted to preserve the remaining earthworks in the 1890’s, preservation options were limited: once the state militia had finished using the area for summer maneuvers as originally planned, the area was used for a golf course as early as 1901. The current lease with the country club begins in 1910, and part of the preservation history of the site is the use for golf. While not an ideal plan in modern terms, the original intent of both community and club members was to find a way of managing a large, open site before the idea of national or state parks had even come about.
In fact, the club itself is part of Ohio history, being not only one of the ten oldest golf courses in the state, but the “back nine” or original nine holes of golf laid out by Thomas Bendelow in 1911 are likely the oldest continuously played links in the state.
The Newark Earthworks have a fascinating history, prehistory, and ongoing story of discovery. You are invited to come join the still unfolding story on Wed., May 4 at 7:00 pm on the OSU-N campus in Founders Hall auditorium.
Caption -- This computer generated image represents the view of one of the moonrises over the main axis of the Octagon of the Newark Earthworks. One of the "Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World" according to England's Cambridge University, the largest geometric earthworks in the world contain secrets of astronomy still being revealed. (Courtesy CERHAS - Univ. of Cincinnati)
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Faith Works 4-23-05
Jeff Gill
An Anniversary Season With Much to Remember
In a series of 60th anniversaries around these April weeks marking the end of World War II, last week included the commemoration of Bergen-Belsen’s liberation, and this next week marks when American troop reached Dachau. Both were concentration camps.
Something still striking to me is the difference between those weeks. German SS troops were lined up as if in review, waiting for the GI’s at Belsen, where Anne Frank had died just days before. The cosmos of evil they had created for not only the Jewish and other groups to be “concentrated” there for a “final solution” was a world they had made for themselves, as well. It had become so normal for them that they didn’t see how the liberators would view them, and so they waited and stood proudly to hand over their responsibilities.
What they were responsible for was starvation, disease, and executions on a whim. No one took that responsibility from them, but they were held to account, immediately arrested and held, at least to start, in the bunkhouses where they had jammed the thousands they herded day by day to death.
At Dachau, days later, the reality of what they had created penetrated even Nazi rationalizations. The camp guards fled long before the Army rolled in the gates.
But I think about those men standing at attention, waiting on parade at Bergen-Belsen. If it was out of a sense of true acceptance of responsibility, it might be a sign of hopefulness about human nature. The truth is that we are not so much the rational animals we like to think ourselves as, but we are at root rationalizing creatures, skilled at trying to defend the indefensible.
People of faith still look back on the events around and within the Axis powers, countries where many of our own American ancestors came from, and struggle with how to come to terms with what was seen as justifiable from pulpits let alone people’s living rooms. Some European priests and nuns, and a few bishops did the work of truth and courage, saving Jews from deportation and death. Not a few turned a blind eye.
The German church embraced National Socialism, Hitler’s party and platform, without hardly blinking an eye. Two weeks ago saw 60 years since Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed just as Allied troops neared his prison, part of Nazism’s last convulsion of vengeance and cruelty. Bonhoeffer was one of tragically too few pastors of the state church who said “No” to “Hitler is Lord,” and paid the price willingly with his life.
Elie Wiesel, caught up as a youth in the death camps, asked the question in his book “Night,” in the starkest of terms when watching a young friend dangle from a prolonged execution: “Where is God?” He felt as if the first whisper of an answer came to him as “He is right there, in front of us.” Wiesel and humanity still struggle with a fuller answer to this question of existence, more of the meaning of our own than of God’s.
Any of us who attend many funerals, let alone we who conduct them, knows that the generation which witnessed these events, and have some of the closest insights into what it means to carry the burden of faith through the valley of shadow, are passing through that vale in large numbers. Not so very long from now, there will be no living witnesses to those soul shaking and heart stirring events. The responsibility must be handed on, to children and grandchildren and churches and communities – not just museums! – to remember what they did. To remember Bonhoeffer and Roncalli, Wiesel and the GI’s who freed the camps, is the responsibility of us all.
Jeff Gill is a writer and supply preacher who writes this in memory of the many liberators of Europe and Asia that he has helped honor in death at their funerals, and hopes to commemorate in life. If you have stories from 60 years ago or about events in six weeks, send them to disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
An Anniversary Season With Much to Remember
In a series of 60th anniversaries around these April weeks marking the end of World War II, last week included the commemoration of Bergen-Belsen’s liberation, and this next week marks when American troop reached Dachau. Both were concentration camps.
Something still striking to me is the difference between those weeks. German SS troops were lined up as if in review, waiting for the GI’s at Belsen, where Anne Frank had died just days before. The cosmos of evil they had created for not only the Jewish and other groups to be “concentrated” there for a “final solution” was a world they had made for themselves, as well. It had become so normal for them that they didn’t see how the liberators would view them, and so they waited and stood proudly to hand over their responsibilities.
What they were responsible for was starvation, disease, and executions on a whim. No one took that responsibility from them, but they were held to account, immediately arrested and held, at least to start, in the bunkhouses where they had jammed the thousands they herded day by day to death.
At Dachau, days later, the reality of what they had created penetrated even Nazi rationalizations. The camp guards fled long before the Army rolled in the gates.
But I think about those men standing at attention, waiting on parade at Bergen-Belsen. If it was out of a sense of true acceptance of responsibility, it might be a sign of hopefulness about human nature. The truth is that we are not so much the rational animals we like to think ourselves as, but we are at root rationalizing creatures, skilled at trying to defend the indefensible.
People of faith still look back on the events around and within the Axis powers, countries where many of our own American ancestors came from, and struggle with how to come to terms with what was seen as justifiable from pulpits let alone people’s living rooms. Some European priests and nuns, and a few bishops did the work of truth and courage, saving Jews from deportation and death. Not a few turned a blind eye.
The German church embraced National Socialism, Hitler’s party and platform, without hardly blinking an eye. Two weeks ago saw 60 years since Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed just as Allied troops neared his prison, part of Nazism’s last convulsion of vengeance and cruelty. Bonhoeffer was one of tragically too few pastors of the state church who said “No” to “Hitler is Lord,” and paid the price willingly with his life.
Elie Wiesel, caught up as a youth in the death camps, asked the question in his book “Night,” in the starkest of terms when watching a young friend dangle from a prolonged execution: “Where is God?” He felt as if the first whisper of an answer came to him as “He is right there, in front of us.” Wiesel and humanity still struggle with a fuller answer to this question of existence, more of the meaning of our own than of God’s.
Any of us who attend many funerals, let alone we who conduct them, knows that the generation which witnessed these events, and have some of the closest insights into what it means to carry the burden of faith through the valley of shadow, are passing through that vale in large numbers. Not so very long from now, there will be no living witnesses to those soul shaking and heart stirring events. The responsibility must be handed on, to children and grandchildren and churches and communities – not just museums! – to remember what they did. To remember Bonhoeffer and Roncalli, Wiesel and the GI’s who freed the camps, is the responsibility of us all.
Jeff Gill is a writer and supply preacher who writes this in memory of the many liberators of Europe and Asia that he has helped honor in death at their funerals, and hopes to commemorate in life. If you have stories from 60 years ago or about events in six weeks, send them to disciple@voyager.net.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Oh, and for those who inexplicably look here regularly for other reasons, the link that's provoked some extra views is:
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/
and again thanks to Jay Rosen for his interest and thoughtful prelude to my offhanded observation. (Just read the link, OK?)
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/
and again thanks to Jay Rosen for his interest and thoughtful prelude to my offhanded observation. (Just read the link, OK?)
Greetings! If you have wandered this way thanks to Jay Rosen's kind quotes in PressThink, i am a sad disappointment indeed. This is less a true blog than a place to put copies of my print material (which saves me a step when asked for copies, a peculiar but regular part of writing in a Midwestern community: "can i get a copy of that thing you wrote on the stuff when you did?"), so there is little of current interest unless you live in Licking County, Ohio.
If you're interested in Licking County, Ohio, on the other hand, there's all kinds of fun stuff here.
Anyhow, say hello at disciple@voyager.net and tell me i'm full of beans, or extend the analogies even more dangerously. Most "professions" are extremely comparable in their engagement with the world o' today, and jointly suffer from an overly developed sense of their own uniqueness, tho' i fear ministry has a particularly virulent form of the disease.
If you're interested in Licking County, Ohio, on the other hand, there's all kinds of fun stuff here.
Anyhow, say hello at disciple@voyager.net and tell me i'm full of beans, or extend the analogies even more dangerously. Most "professions" are extremely comparable in their engagement with the world o' today, and jointly suffer from an overly developed sense of their own uniqueness, tho' i fear ministry has a particularly virulent form of the disease.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack & Cover Story 04-17-05 (column now will run 04-24-05 in Comm. Booster)
By Jeff Gill
Our house has a great many old things in it. Antiques? No. Neither the Lovely Wife or I have ever developed a taste for antiquing as a leisure time activity, nor the household income, and a six year old would constitute a running argument against having furniture or furnishings of value. But we have steadily accumulated tables, sideboards, rocking chairs, prints, and the odd chess set that all have a history behind them. Some began marriages for either of our parents, or were housekeeping materials for relatives and friends who passed them down until they reached us. Now, we see them as having reached their logical, and even final destination. To which the old adage says, “You want to hear God laugh? Make plans.” Yet each item has a place and relationship that fits together not just the here-and-now, but also ties a good hunk o’ past to our today. Aunt Alice Baldridge died last week. She was my father’s oldest sister, and lived most of her life in Portland, Oregon, so I didn’t know her as well as I might wish. Her mother died when she was quite young, and on her deathbed said to her husband that he would do well to marry her younger sister, and he did. They had five more children, with my dad bringing up the rear. So there was a quarter-century between them, and also some physical distance in that Alice Gill lost her hearing entirely, for reasons still unclear to me, and went to the Iowa School for the Deaf. There, with other hearing impaired young men and women, they learned a way of life and vocational skills that could allow them to live on their own. Part of those skills was a wood shop, and a story passed down in the family was that the fellow who oversaw the making of a set of furniture for each graduating student was sweet on Alice, but there was no feeling in return. The furniture, handmade but with a simple elegance, included a drop-leaf table now in our entryway. The other pieces, mostly unremembered, went their ways, but this little adaptable stand wandered through the family, with a long stop and my memories of it having a plant on it with a lace doily, near the phone table in Grandma Gill’s various homes. After Grandma Gill died, my dad ended up with that particular piece, heavily water-stained. It sat in the basement until the right time came, and my dad’s woodworking skills refinished and repaired it until it was fit for polite society again, or at least what passes for that in our home. By a quirk of timing, Aunt Alice’s Deaf School drop leaf table was the first item of furniture that entered our new house at the end of 2004, brought to Licking County by my folks. I’ve learned far too little signing from the Baldridge side of the family, although I have good memories of many occasions when the loquaciousness of all concerned meant that there was not an unwritten upon piece of paper anywhere in the house. A few words or phrases, flickers of the ASL alphabet relearned a dozen times, and the indelible cuss words learned from cousins is all I have in that line. The table is a quietly unremarkable piece of furniture, suitable for scribbling a note on the corner, or perching a ceramic pitcher with fake flowers (no more potted plants Dad, I promise). I don’t think about all of this each time I pass it by, but amazingly often most of this and more flash through my mind on the way from upstairs to down. It’s just an old table? Sure. I think of my Aunt Alice as my folks head to Oregon for the funeral, and wonder, too, did the fellow who made it ever find the woman of his dreams, and give her a table of her own? Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; to drop a story in the knapsack, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Booster Cover 04-16-05
By Jeff Gill
Your Responsibility, Their Commitment
“There are women paying child support, more than when I started here in 1991,” says Nancy Johnson, director of the Licking County Child Support Enforcement Agency (CSEA), part of the Domestic Relations Court of Licking County.
Whether women or men, fulfilling their child support obligation or reporting the failure of others to make their payments, the work of this office, just a block east of the Courthouse, is unified by one fact.
“We do what the courts tell us,” says Johnson.
“State law and court orders tell us what to do, and we’re here to make sure it gets done.”
Johnson oversees a staff of 73 employees who are all working to make sure that up to 50,000 children in Licking County are receiving court ordered child support from non-custodial parents.
All the numbers related to divorce and child support are staggering. CSEA handles over 14,000 cases, which can include anywhere from one to ten children. Due to overlaps and repetition between cases, the actual number of children receiving child support is difficult to figure with precision, hence the range of 30,000 to 50,000.
2,000 cases at any given time are in the Legal Division, represented by a main floor room filled wall to wall, floor to ceiling with file folders side by side on tight packed shelving. (“You should see the basement,” observed a staffer in passing as Johnson led a quick tour of the office space.)
“We pick up women on felony non-support, too,” Johnson notes, while also describing the work in this room as including establishment of paternity, contempt of court actions relating to non-response and other enforcement actions.
Case managers through the building average 970 cases apiece, with the state guideline preferring less than 500, “but that’s true in all 88 counties, sad to say,” Johnson adds.
The lobby open to East Main Street is a well-lit, spacious room with children’s toys and chairs. “No one comes here to get child support checks,” she explains, “but we offer assistance in a wide variety of areas relating to our responsibilities,” with a special counselor available for walk-ins to assist with applications, forms, and follow-up paperwork.
“Licking County is still a very cash oriented economy in many ways,” explains Johnson, “so while most child support is handled by payroll withholding and sent through the Columbus system for checks to the custodial parent, there are still quite a few who need to come in and make their payments in cash after payday.”
Whether to make payments or investigate the reasons for problems in receiving court ordered payment, the CSEA office is open from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, from 7:30 am to 7:00 pm Thursday, and from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm on Friday.
“We learned from our clients that it is very helpful to them on both ends of the process to have us open one evening a week, so that’s what we did,” Johnson says proudly. Though allocated more staff by state formulas, they try to stay within minimum budget while offering maximum service.
“Our main contact point is with the mothers and fathers, but what really motivates us here is to help the children. That’s what keeps most of us working each day.”
While working closely with Judges Steiner and Baldwin of the Domestic Relations Court, their “bosses,” CSEA also works with Licking County Job & Family Services (JFS) and other initiatives in the county like the Interfaith Legal Aid Clinics that are held each month at a different location around the county. They are entirely separate from Child Protective Services, which is housed within JFS at a different location.
“We can work with clients to get clarification, but not as an advocate. This agency is closely defined as to what we can do in relation to the court orders surrounding custody and payment; our job is to make sure that gets carried out,” notes Johnson. While they can’t fill out legal paperwork for a client, they can point them to where they can get assistance such as the free legal clinics.
What a client can do at CSEA is report non-payment, request reviews of income after three years or a 30% increase in the income of one of the parents, or get assistance with paternity related issues that includes free genetic testing. Any party to an action in court documents can get printouts of payment information through their office as well.
Depending on how you read the data, CSEA is playing an important role in the lives of up to half the children in Licking County, making them a major, if largely unnoticed (and unappreciated!) strand in our social fabric today.
“People often are not happy about dealing with us, but we try not to take it personally,” Johnson admits. “I’m very proud of my staff for how friendly and positive an attitude they maintain, and we hope that helps both the clients and the children in the long run, too.”
By Jeff Gill
Our house has a great many old things in it. Antiques? No. Neither the Lovely Wife or I have ever developed a taste for antiquing as a leisure time activity, nor the household income, and a six year old would constitute a running argument against having furniture or furnishings of value. But we have steadily accumulated tables, sideboards, rocking chairs, prints, and the odd chess set that all have a history behind them. Some began marriages for either of our parents, or were housekeeping materials for relatives and friends who passed them down until they reached us. Now, we see them as having reached their logical, and even final destination. To which the old adage says, “You want to hear God laugh? Make plans.” Yet each item has a place and relationship that fits together not just the here-and-now, but also ties a good hunk o’ past to our today. Aunt Alice Baldridge died last week. She was my father’s oldest sister, and lived most of her life in Portland, Oregon, so I didn’t know her as well as I might wish. Her mother died when she was quite young, and on her deathbed said to her husband that he would do well to marry her younger sister, and he did. They had five more children, with my dad bringing up the rear. So there was a quarter-century between them, and also some physical distance in that Alice Gill lost her hearing entirely, for reasons still unclear to me, and went to the Iowa School for the Deaf. There, with other hearing impaired young men and women, they learned a way of life and vocational skills that could allow them to live on their own. Part of those skills was a wood shop, and a story passed down in the family was that the fellow who oversaw the making of a set of furniture for each graduating student was sweet on Alice, but there was no feeling in return. The furniture, handmade but with a simple elegance, included a drop-leaf table now in our entryway. The other pieces, mostly unremembered, went their ways, but this little adaptable stand wandered through the family, with a long stop and my memories of it having a plant on it with a lace doily, near the phone table in Grandma Gill’s various homes. After Grandma Gill died, my dad ended up with that particular piece, heavily water-stained. It sat in the basement until the right time came, and my dad’s woodworking skills refinished and repaired it until it was fit for polite society again, or at least what passes for that in our home. By a quirk of timing, Aunt Alice’s Deaf School drop leaf table was the first item of furniture that entered our new house at the end of 2004, brought to Licking County by my folks. I’ve learned far too little signing from the Baldridge side of the family, although I have good memories of many occasions when the loquaciousness of all concerned meant that there was not an unwritten upon piece of paper anywhere in the house. A few words or phrases, flickers of the ASL alphabet relearned a dozen times, and the indelible cuss words learned from cousins is all I have in that line. The table is a quietly unremarkable piece of furniture, suitable for scribbling a note on the corner, or perching a ceramic pitcher with fake flowers (no more potted plants Dad, I promise). I don’t think about all of this each time I pass it by, but amazingly often most of this and more flash through my mind on the way from upstairs to down. It’s just an old table? Sure. I think of my Aunt Alice as my folks head to Oregon for the funeral, and wonder, too, did the fellow who made it ever find the woman of his dreams, and give her a table of her own? Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; to drop a story in the knapsack, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Booster Cover 04-16-05
By Jeff Gill
Your Responsibility, Their Commitment
“There are women paying child support, more than when I started here in 1991,” says Nancy Johnson, director of the Licking County Child Support Enforcement Agency (CSEA), part of the Domestic Relations Court of Licking County.
Whether women or men, fulfilling their child support obligation or reporting the failure of others to make their payments, the work of this office, just a block east of the Courthouse, is unified by one fact.
“We do what the courts tell us,” says Johnson.
“State law and court orders tell us what to do, and we’re here to make sure it gets done.”
Johnson oversees a staff of 73 employees who are all working to make sure that up to 50,000 children in Licking County are receiving court ordered child support from non-custodial parents.
All the numbers related to divorce and child support are staggering. CSEA handles over 14,000 cases, which can include anywhere from one to ten children. Due to overlaps and repetition between cases, the actual number of children receiving child support is difficult to figure with precision, hence the range of 30,000 to 50,000.
2,000 cases at any given time are in the Legal Division, represented by a main floor room filled wall to wall, floor to ceiling with file folders side by side on tight packed shelving. (“You should see the basement,” observed a staffer in passing as Johnson led a quick tour of the office space.)
“We pick up women on felony non-support, too,” Johnson notes, while also describing the work in this room as including establishment of paternity, contempt of court actions relating to non-response and other enforcement actions.
Case managers through the building average 970 cases apiece, with the state guideline preferring less than 500, “but that’s true in all 88 counties, sad to say,” Johnson adds.
The lobby open to East Main Street is a well-lit, spacious room with children’s toys and chairs. “No one comes here to get child support checks,” she explains, “but we offer assistance in a wide variety of areas relating to our responsibilities,” with a special counselor available for walk-ins to assist with applications, forms, and follow-up paperwork.
“Licking County is still a very cash oriented economy in many ways,” explains Johnson, “so while most child support is handled by payroll withholding and sent through the Columbus system for checks to the custodial parent, there are still quite a few who need to come in and make their payments in cash after payday.”
Whether to make payments or investigate the reasons for problems in receiving court ordered payment, the CSEA office is open from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, from 7:30 am to 7:00 pm Thursday, and from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm on Friday.
“We learned from our clients that it is very helpful to them on both ends of the process to have us open one evening a week, so that’s what we did,” Johnson says proudly. Though allocated more staff by state formulas, they try to stay within minimum budget while offering maximum service.
“Our main contact point is with the mothers and fathers, but what really motivates us here is to help the children. That’s what keeps most of us working each day.”
While working closely with Judges Steiner and Baldwin of the Domestic Relations Court, their “bosses,” CSEA also works with Licking County Job & Family Services (JFS) and other initiatives in the county like the Interfaith Legal Aid Clinics that are held each month at a different location around the county. They are entirely separate from Child Protective Services, which is housed within JFS at a different location.
“We can work with clients to get clarification, but not as an advocate. This agency is closely defined as to what we can do in relation to the court orders surrounding custody and payment; our job is to make sure that gets carried out,” notes Johnson. While they can’t fill out legal paperwork for a client, they can point them to where they can get assistance such as the free legal clinics.
What a client can do at CSEA is report non-payment, request reviews of income after three years or a 30% increase in the income of one of the parents, or get assistance with paternity related issues that includes free genetic testing. Any party to an action in court documents can get printouts of payment information through their office as well.
Depending on how you read the data, CSEA is playing an important role in the lives of up to half the children in Licking County, making them a major, if largely unnoticed (and unappreciated!) strand in our social fabric today.
“People often are not happy about dealing with us, but we try not to take it personally,” Johnson admits. “I’m very proud of my staff for how friendly and positive an attitude they maintain, and we hope that helps both the clients and the children in the long run, too.”
Monday, April 11, 2005
Faith Works 04-16-05
By Jeff Gill
Church news is usually not the breaking headline kind of stuff.
“Looking Over Our Shoulder” is, in fact, a pretty common feature of the local congregational publication; and newsletter bloopers are, oddly enough, a staple of newsletter content.
What makes for effective communication in a church is a point of frequent debate not just in the parish office but even at staff meetings and even when the board comes together.
Specialists in such things will strongly recommend lots of “white space,” or large borders around blocks of text, and simple graphics that reproduce well on the kind of technology used in churches. Old timers who will otherwise bemoan how small print is everywhere else will see “waste” if the page is not a dense block of 10-point type, and ask how much was paid for those “squiggles a child could draw.”
“Your basic question is who do you want to reach with this communication method,” says Angela Herrman, with the "Disciples Home Missions" of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). “Are you doing your newsletter to reach new members with basic information they don’t know and people may forget to tell them, or are you publishing it to reaffirm to long-time members that we’re still doing what they already know their church is doing?”
The problem here, I pointed out, is that the correct answer for most churches is “both.”
“That’s right, so you need to have sections, with a familiar header or logo, that recur each week or month, so those who don’t have kids can easily skip the Youth News and young families can find the Coming Events.”
And the pastor’s column?
“Short. Short is key, because the newsletter isn’t where people turn for theological analysis or an extra sermon. Point them to where they can find those things, but don’t try to do it all in long blocks of text.”
Which, she says, is important for all age groups or levels of church familiarity. Bullet points, highlighted phrases, and, oh yes, lots of white space around key articles.
“This is not as much of a literacy-based culture as it once was, and people’s eyes tend to dance around. Text blocks make their eyes skip and slide to the next image or margin.”
The problem, I can attest, is that those of us who tend to write for newsletters love words and writing and information, and assume that most people want as much to read as we do.
In newsletters, words can get in the way of good communication.
Francis of Assisi knew this, too: I’m told that he once said “Preach the Gospel always. If necessary, use words.”
That would make a good masthead quote for a church newsletter!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; to share your church news or notes with him, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Church news is usually not the breaking headline kind of stuff.
“Looking Over Our Shoulder” is, in fact, a pretty common feature of the local congregational publication; and newsletter bloopers are, oddly enough, a staple of newsletter content.
What makes for effective communication in a church is a point of frequent debate not just in the parish office but even at staff meetings and even when the board comes together.
Specialists in such things will strongly recommend lots of “white space,” or large borders around blocks of text, and simple graphics that reproduce well on the kind of technology used in churches. Old timers who will otherwise bemoan how small print is everywhere else will see “waste” if the page is not a dense block of 10-point type, and ask how much was paid for those “squiggles a child could draw.”
“Your basic question is who do you want to reach with this communication method,” says Angela Herrman, with the "Disciples Home Missions" of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). “Are you doing your newsletter to reach new members with basic information they don’t know and people may forget to tell them, or are you publishing it to reaffirm to long-time members that we’re still doing what they already know their church is doing?”
The problem here, I pointed out, is that the correct answer for most churches is “both.”
“That’s right, so you need to have sections, with a familiar header or logo, that recur each week or month, so those who don’t have kids can easily skip the Youth News and young families can find the Coming Events.”
And the pastor’s column?
“Short. Short is key, because the newsletter isn’t where people turn for theological analysis or an extra sermon. Point them to where they can find those things, but don’t try to do it all in long blocks of text.”
Which, she says, is important for all age groups or levels of church familiarity. Bullet points, highlighted phrases, and, oh yes, lots of white space around key articles.
“This is not as much of a literacy-based culture as it once was, and people’s eyes tend to dance around. Text blocks make their eyes skip and slide to the next image or margin.”
The problem, I can attest, is that those of us who tend to write for newsletters love words and writing and information, and assume that most people want as much to read as we do.
In newsletters, words can get in the way of good communication.
Francis of Assisi knew this, too: I’m told that he once said “Preach the Gospel always. If necessary, use words.”
That would make a good masthead quote for a church newsletter!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; to share your church news or notes with him, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Faith Works 04-09-05
By Jeff Gill
Both Old and New Testaments, Hebrew Scriptures and Christian Gospels alike, are filled with images of Monarchy, of Kingship and Kingdoms, realms and rulers.
In the funeral of Pope John Paul II, with vast processions, lying in state, and the ornate surroundings for elaborate liturgies, we have our best point of contact in the modern world for what it means to imagine the royal aspect of divinity presented in most Biblical texts.
Karol Wojtyla of Poland, the man who became a priest, a bishop, a cardinal, and then one of the greatest Roman Pontiffs of this or any age, made the papacy accessible for many in a way not seen perhaps since Peter started the office from a humble setting in a quiet corner of Rome 2000 years ago.
Yet the outwards signs of an office with that many years of tradition behind it and most of the earth’s surface incorporated within it (Pontiff comes from the Latin for “bridge builder”) makes for palaces, mitred crowns, and armies of attendants even aside from the ceremonially fierce if only halberd-wielding Swiss Guard. And for some, those imperial trappings can be off-putting on a religious leader. Ask Martin Luther, for one instance.
Do we need royalty or pomp and circumstance in our lives? Many who would call themselves “Bible believing” Christians would say no, pointing to the texts of humility and simplicity. Intriguingly, the accounts of the private papal apartments tell of Spartan lodgings suitable to an as-yet-undecorated dorm room, but even those with a strong taste for the unadorned have to grapple with the richness of Biblical imagery around robes and scepters, jewels and trumpets.
In the papacy, even Protestants find a view of something that instructs and uplifts. The British monarchy has turned to self-parody, and most other European royal houses have either passed from the scene or are shriveling in that direction.
But in the affairs of the Vatican, both in the majestic farewell playing out through this week, and as the world, almost against its better judgment, watches a small chimney near the Sistine Chapel from the Plaza of St. Peter for a tell-tale wisp of white smoke, there is something compelling in all this spectacle. Not just a sight to see, but an image of something simultaneously distant and personal, of direct importance to our lives yet unaffected by everyday bothers.
Undoubtedly John Paul will join Pope Leo who talked the Huns away from the gates of Rome and Gregory the proto-reformer as “the Great.” His own impact on the wider world is unquestioned even by those who objected to much he stood for personally. But it is the ongoing vitality of the Papacy itself in the modern world that is one of the unspoken mysteries of these unusual days we are living through in the weeks after Easter.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. If you have tales to tell of faith at work, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Both Old and New Testaments, Hebrew Scriptures and Christian Gospels alike, are filled with images of Monarchy, of Kingship and Kingdoms, realms and rulers.
In the funeral of Pope John Paul II, with vast processions, lying in state, and the ornate surroundings for elaborate liturgies, we have our best point of contact in the modern world for what it means to imagine the royal aspect of divinity presented in most Biblical texts.
Karol Wojtyla of Poland, the man who became a priest, a bishop, a cardinal, and then one of the greatest Roman Pontiffs of this or any age, made the papacy accessible for many in a way not seen perhaps since Peter started the office from a humble setting in a quiet corner of Rome 2000 years ago.
Yet the outwards signs of an office with that many years of tradition behind it and most of the earth’s surface incorporated within it (Pontiff comes from the Latin for “bridge builder”) makes for palaces, mitred crowns, and armies of attendants even aside from the ceremonially fierce if only halberd-wielding Swiss Guard. And for some, those imperial trappings can be off-putting on a religious leader. Ask Martin Luther, for one instance.
Do we need royalty or pomp and circumstance in our lives? Many who would call themselves “Bible believing” Christians would say no, pointing to the texts of humility and simplicity. Intriguingly, the accounts of the private papal apartments tell of Spartan lodgings suitable to an as-yet-undecorated dorm room, but even those with a strong taste for the unadorned have to grapple with the richness of Biblical imagery around robes and scepters, jewels and trumpets.
In the papacy, even Protestants find a view of something that instructs and uplifts. The British monarchy has turned to self-parody, and most other European royal houses have either passed from the scene or are shriveling in that direction.
But in the affairs of the Vatican, both in the majestic farewell playing out through this week, and as the world, almost against its better judgment, watches a small chimney near the Sistine Chapel from the Plaza of St. Peter for a tell-tale wisp of white smoke, there is something compelling in all this spectacle. Not just a sight to see, but an image of something simultaneously distant and personal, of direct importance to our lives yet unaffected by everyday bothers.
Undoubtedly John Paul will join Pope Leo who talked the Huns away from the gates of Rome and Gregory the proto-reformer as “the Great.” His own impact on the wider world is unquestioned even by those who objected to much he stood for personally. But it is the ongoing vitality of the Papacy itself in the modern world that is one of the unspoken mysteries of these unusual days we are living through in the weeks after Easter.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. If you have tales to tell of faith at work, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Notes From My Knapsack 04-10-05
By Jeff Gill
Spring break right after Easter with heavy rain outside meant only one thing: Peeps in the microwave!
That’s right, put your Marshmallow Peeps (any color, bunny or bird shape) in the nuke chamber for ten seconds on low power, and watch them puff up to basketball size!
Eat after with a spoon; they deflate pretty quickly, but after the science lab stuff with six varieties of egg dye has worn out . . . or they are now 23 glasses of uniformly grey colored water . . . inflated peepery is pretty darn fun.
Then it’s 10 am, and the day looms ahead, with more rain.
But you may have no Peeps left by now. If you do, they could be getting very dry and hard, another reason for the microwave trick.
The Little Guy and I hit the Columbus Zoo (the aquarium could care less about precipitation), along with The Works, staffing the William Kraner Nature Center out Flint Ridge way for a volunteer afternoon with Licking Park District, and the bird viewing room at Dawes Arboretum.
We’ve been working on our card manufacturing, too, covering the dining room table (“so what’s new?” asks the Lovely Wife) with paper, early attempts, and triumphant works of festive greeting art. Hallmark quakes with fear in their Kansas City citadel, as we laugh away commercial sentiments in favor of colored pencils, crayon, marker, and watercolor vistas (can you say “mixed media”?) surrounding unrhymed truisms as direct as any display rack can provide.
St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, and First Day of Spring Break cards have all gone into production in Little Guy Studios, with Time Change cards our last project.
(We interrupt this homey meandering with a public service reminder: when you set clocks forward Saturday night, did you change your batteries in smoke detectors, testing them and your CO sensors with a quick “bzzzz”? We now return you to sentimentality, already in progress.)
First, a Fiftieth Anniversary card for my beloved’s parents, united in marriage on what was, this year, Easter day! The design for this salute is a bigger challenge, since no one the Little Cardguy knows well has hit this big 5-Oh. My own folks, currently basting and marinating in Rio Grande heat, are just a couple years off their own Golden Occasion, and of course we Loving Parents are only on the brink of their twentieth, not even worth a capitalization.
On the other hand, 20 years ain’t too shabby nowadays, and we might just celebrate it anyhow. Keeping a marriage in good repair is an art form that some say is fading, and even our 30 years less than a Fiftieth can draw the occasional “what’s your secret to a good marriage?” query.
To which I answer: we have . . .oh, sorry, school has started again, the sun just came out and we’re getting out of the house and away from the keyboard! Answers next week, or if you have your own tips, send ‘em in and I’ll post ‘em up here along with our own. Go ahead, write my column for me, I dare you! (Paging Tom Sawyer, Tom Sawyer to the front desk . . .)
Send your thoughts to disciple@voyager.net, and they’ll go in the knapsack until we get back from bike riding, when I can go back to bloviating beyond my word limit.
By Jeff Gill
Spring break right after Easter with heavy rain outside meant only one thing: Peeps in the microwave!
That’s right, put your Marshmallow Peeps (any color, bunny or bird shape) in the nuke chamber for ten seconds on low power, and watch them puff up to basketball size!
Eat after with a spoon; they deflate pretty quickly, but after the science lab stuff with six varieties of egg dye has worn out . . . or they are now 23 glasses of uniformly grey colored water . . . inflated peepery is pretty darn fun.
Then it’s 10 am, and the day looms ahead, with more rain.
But you may have no Peeps left by now. If you do, they could be getting very dry and hard, another reason for the microwave trick.
The Little Guy and I hit the Columbus Zoo (the aquarium could care less about precipitation), along with The Works, staffing the William Kraner Nature Center out Flint Ridge way for a volunteer afternoon with Licking Park District, and the bird viewing room at Dawes Arboretum.
We’ve been working on our card manufacturing, too, covering the dining room table (“so what’s new?” asks the Lovely Wife) with paper, early attempts, and triumphant works of festive greeting art. Hallmark quakes with fear in their Kansas City citadel, as we laugh away commercial sentiments in favor of colored pencils, crayon, marker, and watercolor vistas (can you say “mixed media”?) surrounding unrhymed truisms as direct as any display rack can provide.
St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, and First Day of Spring Break cards have all gone into production in Little Guy Studios, with Time Change cards our last project.
(We interrupt this homey meandering with a public service reminder: when you set clocks forward Saturday night, did you change your batteries in smoke detectors, testing them and your CO sensors with a quick “bzzzz”? We now return you to sentimentality, already in progress.)
First, a Fiftieth Anniversary card for my beloved’s parents, united in marriage on what was, this year, Easter day! The design for this salute is a bigger challenge, since no one the Little Cardguy knows well has hit this big 5-Oh. My own folks, currently basting and marinating in Rio Grande heat, are just a couple years off their own Golden Occasion, and of course we Loving Parents are only on the brink of their twentieth, not even worth a capitalization.
On the other hand, 20 years ain’t too shabby nowadays, and we might just celebrate it anyhow. Keeping a marriage in good repair is an art form that some say is fading, and even our 30 years less than a Fiftieth can draw the occasional “what’s your secret to a good marriage?” query.
To which I answer: we have . . .oh, sorry, school has started again, the sun just came out and we’re getting out of the house and away from the keyboard! Answers next week, or if you have your own tips, send ‘em in and I’ll post ‘em up here along with our own. Go ahead, write my column for me, I dare you! (Paging Tom Sawyer, Tom Sawyer to the front desk . . .)
Send your thoughts to disciple@voyager.net, and they’ll go in the knapsack until we get back from bike riding, when I can go back to bloviating beyond my word limit.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 04-03-05
By Jeff Gill
Spring break right after Easter with heavy rain outside can only mean one thing: Peeps in the microwave!
That’s right, put your Marshmallow Peeps (any color, bunny or bird shape) in the nuke chamber for ten seconds on low power, and watch them puff up to basketball size!
Eat after with a spoon; they deflate pretty quickly, but after the science lab stuff with six varieties of egg dye has worn out . . . or you now have 23 glasses of grey colored water . . . inflated peepery is pretty darn fun.
Then it’s 10 am, and the day looms ahead, with more rain.
So the Little Guy and I will likely hit the Columbus Zoo (the aquarium could care less about precipitation), along with The Works, staffing the William Kraner Nature Center out Flint Ridge way for a volunteer afternoon with Licking Park District, and the bird viewing room at Dawes Arboretum.
It’ll stop raining by the time we’ve finished all that, right?
We have been working on our card manufacturing, too, covering the dining room table (“so what’s new?” asks the Lovely Wife) with paper, early attempts, and triumphant works of festive greeting art. Hallmark quakes with fear in their Kansas City citadel, as we laugh away commercial sentiments in favor of colored pencils, crayon, marker, and watercolor vistas (can you say “mixed media”?) surrounding unrhymed truisms as direct as any display rack can provide.
St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, and First Day of Spring Break cards have all gone into production in Little Guy Studios, with Time Change cards our next project.
(We interrupt this homey meandering with a public service reminder: set clocks forward Saturday night, prepare coffee-maker for painful recurring darkness at wake-up, and change your batteries in smoke detectors, testing them and your CO sensors with a quick “bzzzz.” We now return you to the sentimentality, already in progress.)
But first, a Fiftieth Anniversary card for my beloved’s parents, united in marriage on what was, this year, Easter day! The design for this salute is a bigger challenge, since no one he knows well has hit this big 5-Oh. My own folks, currently basting and marinating in Rio Grande heat, are just a couple years off their own Golden Occasion, and of course we Loving Parents are only on the brink of their twentieth, not even worth a capitalization.
On the other hand, 20 years ain’t too shabby nowadays, and we might just celebrate it anyhow. Keeping a marriage in good repair is an art form that some say is fading, and even our 30 years less than a Fiftieth can draw the occasional “what’s your secret to a good marriage?” query.
To which I answer: we have . . .oh, sorry, the sun just came out and we’re getting out of the house and away from the keyboard! Answers next week, or if you have your own tips, send ‘em in and I’ll post ‘em up here along with our own. Go ahead, write my column for me, I dare you! (Paging Tom Sawyer, Tom Sawyer to the front desk . . .)
Send your thoughts to disciple@voyager.net, and they’ll go in the knapsack until we finish Spring Break and get this kid back into school, when I can go back to bloviating beyond my word limit.
And don’t forget to set your clocks forward.
By Jeff Gill
Spring break right after Easter with heavy rain outside can only mean one thing: Peeps in the microwave!
That’s right, put your Marshmallow Peeps (any color, bunny or bird shape) in the nuke chamber for ten seconds on low power, and watch them puff up to basketball size!
Eat after with a spoon; they deflate pretty quickly, but after the science lab stuff with six varieties of egg dye has worn out . . . or you now have 23 glasses of grey colored water . . . inflated peepery is pretty darn fun.
Then it’s 10 am, and the day looms ahead, with more rain.
So the Little Guy and I will likely hit the Columbus Zoo (the aquarium could care less about precipitation), along with The Works, staffing the William Kraner Nature Center out Flint Ridge way for a volunteer afternoon with Licking Park District, and the bird viewing room at Dawes Arboretum.
It’ll stop raining by the time we’ve finished all that, right?
We have been working on our card manufacturing, too, covering the dining room table (“so what’s new?” asks the Lovely Wife) with paper, early attempts, and triumphant works of festive greeting art. Hallmark quakes with fear in their Kansas City citadel, as we laugh away commercial sentiments in favor of colored pencils, crayon, marker, and watercolor vistas (can you say “mixed media”?) surrounding unrhymed truisms as direct as any display rack can provide.
St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, and First Day of Spring Break cards have all gone into production in Little Guy Studios, with Time Change cards our next project.
(We interrupt this homey meandering with a public service reminder: set clocks forward Saturday night, prepare coffee-maker for painful recurring darkness at wake-up, and change your batteries in smoke detectors, testing them and your CO sensors with a quick “bzzzz.” We now return you to the sentimentality, already in progress.)
But first, a Fiftieth Anniversary card for my beloved’s parents, united in marriage on what was, this year, Easter day! The design for this salute is a bigger challenge, since no one he knows well has hit this big 5-Oh. My own folks, currently basting and marinating in Rio Grande heat, are just a couple years off their own Golden Occasion, and of course we Loving Parents are only on the brink of their twentieth, not even worth a capitalization.
On the other hand, 20 years ain’t too shabby nowadays, and we might just celebrate it anyhow. Keeping a marriage in good repair is an art form that some say is fading, and even our 30 years less than a Fiftieth can draw the occasional “what’s your secret to a good marriage?” query.
To which I answer: we have . . .oh, sorry, the sun just came out and we’re getting out of the house and away from the keyboard! Answers next week, or if you have your own tips, send ‘em in and I’ll post ‘em up here along with our own. Go ahead, write my column for me, I dare you! (Paging Tom Sawyer, Tom Sawyer to the front desk . . .)
Send your thoughts to disciple@voyager.net, and they’ll go in the knapsack until we finish Spring Break and get this kid back into school, when I can go back to bloviating beyond my word limit.
And don’t forget to set your clocks forward.
Faith Works 04-02-05
By Jeff Gill
Got will?
Not as if that advertising joke hasn’t been beaten into the ground, with church groups in the lead to flog that poor old deceased equine: Got Purpose? Got Jesus? Got Worship?
So let me rephrase: hast thou a Last Will and Testament?
For anyone who started way early looking for Easter eggs under rocks, and just crawled out from under thereupon, a woman who went into a semi-conscious state in her 20’s has been in the news lately while her parents and husband have disputed what course her care should take. Right, that story.
By the time you read this, the woman in question will very likely have died. Much ink on the subject has been spilled on the sidewalks outside a hospice in Florida, governmental pavement in Tallahassee and Washington, and across front pages both far away and on your front doorstep.
My own sense of what can be understood at a distance is that, lacking clear and unmistakable grounds, we should not remove basic care like food and water from anyone, not only for that person’s sake, but before we start trimming other inconvenient lives from our profit margins and Medicaid deficits on such a basis.
But that’s not what I’m talking about today. I’m asking you, especially if you are a parent but really if you are simply over 18, “Do you have a will, or at least some written indication of your wishes when you can no longer speak for yourself, in death or disability?” Even if what you think you want is to be trundled straight to the hospital dumpster if you still can’t watch TV or perform other such worthwhile activities (if “a worthwhile life” was a good standard of care, how many of us earned medical treatment today, anyhow?), have you put it in writing?
Many of us have recently heard sermons, prayers, and various inspirational messages about life and death and our dispositions beyond the here and now to the hereafter. Many of us also have considered, but put off a serious contemplation of even the most prosaic issues around what happens when we die, like “who gets Grandma’s antique pie safe?”
The Lovely Wife and I began Lent with a full, formal, official lawyer oriented reflection on some of the most ghastly possibilities life can hold. It was not theological in essence, but you would have to be thicker than a law book to not catch the echoes.
We now have the real deal on file, something that provides for the ever-popular “simultaneous demise,” as well as various turns on “who precedes who” in death, even if in short order, and what happens to children, as yet hypothetical grandchildren, let alone property and assets. And we have talked about who makes which horrendous decisions in front of a sympathetic if ethically neutral witness, and have documentation for everything from who authorizes what to what gets done to or with the earthly remains thereof.
Talk about your solemn preparation for the Easter season.
Frankly, there is no excuse for a person of faith who owns any kind of property and has any sense of commitment to others, even just friends, not to have something written down to simplify funeral planning and distribution of obligations after you’ve left the stage. Once houses and children enter the picture, something lawyerly is necessary, but anyone can write down a basic plot outline of their final wishes and tuck it in a place easy to find (your Bible, a filing cabinet, safe deposit box). And if you feel uncomfortable discussing these things with anyone, you either need more or better friends, or your faith stance is not helping much and you’d better figure out why!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you want to offer a thought about how “faith works” for you, send it to disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Got will?
Not as if that advertising joke hasn’t been beaten into the ground, with church groups in the lead to flog that poor old deceased equine: Got Purpose? Got Jesus? Got Worship?
So let me rephrase: hast thou a Last Will and Testament?
For anyone who started way early looking for Easter eggs under rocks, and just crawled out from under thereupon, a woman who went into a semi-conscious state in her 20’s has been in the news lately while her parents and husband have disputed what course her care should take. Right, that story.
By the time you read this, the woman in question will very likely have died. Much ink on the subject has been spilled on the sidewalks outside a hospice in Florida, governmental pavement in Tallahassee and Washington, and across front pages both far away and on your front doorstep.
My own sense of what can be understood at a distance is that, lacking clear and unmistakable grounds, we should not remove basic care like food and water from anyone, not only for that person’s sake, but before we start trimming other inconvenient lives from our profit margins and Medicaid deficits on such a basis.
But that’s not what I’m talking about today. I’m asking you, especially if you are a parent but really if you are simply over 18, “Do you have a will, or at least some written indication of your wishes when you can no longer speak for yourself, in death or disability?” Even if what you think you want is to be trundled straight to the hospital dumpster if you still can’t watch TV or perform other such worthwhile activities (if “a worthwhile life” was a good standard of care, how many of us earned medical treatment today, anyhow?), have you put it in writing?
Many of us have recently heard sermons, prayers, and various inspirational messages about life and death and our dispositions beyond the here and now to the hereafter. Many of us also have considered, but put off a serious contemplation of even the most prosaic issues around what happens when we die, like “who gets Grandma’s antique pie safe?”
The Lovely Wife and I began Lent with a full, formal, official lawyer oriented reflection on some of the most ghastly possibilities life can hold. It was not theological in essence, but you would have to be thicker than a law book to not catch the echoes.
We now have the real deal on file, something that provides for the ever-popular “simultaneous demise,” as well as various turns on “who precedes who” in death, even if in short order, and what happens to children, as yet hypothetical grandchildren, let alone property and assets. And we have talked about who makes which horrendous decisions in front of a sympathetic if ethically neutral witness, and have documentation for everything from who authorizes what to what gets done to or with the earthly remains thereof.
Talk about your solemn preparation for the Easter season.
Frankly, there is no excuse for a person of faith who owns any kind of property and has any sense of commitment to others, even just friends, not to have something written down to simplify funeral planning and distribution of obligations after you’ve left the stage. Once houses and children enter the picture, something lawyerly is necessary, but anyone can write down a basic plot outline of their final wishes and tuck it in a place easy to find (your Bible, a filing cabinet, safe deposit box). And if you feel uncomfortable discussing these things with anyone, you either need more or better friends, or your faith stance is not helping much and you’d better figure out why!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you want to offer a thought about how “faith works” for you, send it to disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Faith Works 3-26-05
By Jeff Gill
Hosanna, Hallelujah, and Amen!
Much of Licking County is working through the events of what’s known to Christians as Holy Week, or Passiontide, or the Easter events.
Last Sunday, known as Palm Sunday, marks the entrance into Jerusalem by Jesus, greeted by palm waving crowds as a ruling monarch; Thursday past the institution, or “mandate” of communion for Maundy Thursday, and the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday.
Along with these ancient, but fairly simple and straightforward commemorations, are some old mysterious words with actually quite elementary meanings.
“Hosanna!” is the shout of acclamation associated with Palm Sunday. Found in the Psalms (118:26), the archaic Hebrew “hoshianna” is translated there as simply “save us,” or “O save!” Originally a plea shouted to a king in procession (like ‘hang in there’ or ‘keep it up’), it had become by the time of Christ a ritual phrase associated specifically with a king in public settings (like ‘hear ye, hear ye’ in court). Matthew 21:9, the lectionary reading for many churches last week, carries the evolved meaning into the Greek with an untranslated “Hosanna,” kept now in the English.
“Hallel” is just Hebrew for “praise,” and also a term referring to a section of the Psalms sung at the close of observances, like a Passover meal. This is the setting for the Maundy Thursday readings many will use, closing with Matthew 26: 30, “when they had sung the hymn (one of the Hallel Psalms), they went out to the Mount of Olives.” Hallelujah is praise to “Yah,” or the traditional abbreviation for the unnamed One, Yahweh. Yah is combined in many Hebrew names with an active verb, such as Yah-shua (remember our ho-shianna?) or “God-saves,” the meaning of the name we translate to English as Joshua, or out of Aramaic, Jesus.
Hallelujah is then just “praise God,” or “praise the Lord,” with an hint of ancient tradition in the older forms of the words.
And Amen? In Hebrew, “Omein” or some similar transliteration, since Hebrew letters, especially the more archaic roots, don’t translate precisely to the English sounds.
But it means no more and no less than “Yes.” Just “Yes.”
May your “Yes” to God’s love in whatever language ring out this Easter weekend!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have news from your faith community worth sharing around and abroad, contact him at disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Hosanna, Hallelujah, and Amen!
Much of Licking County is working through the events of what’s known to Christians as Holy Week, or Passiontide, or the Easter events.
Last Sunday, known as Palm Sunday, marks the entrance into Jerusalem by Jesus, greeted by palm waving crowds as a ruling monarch; Thursday past the institution, or “mandate” of communion for Maundy Thursday, and the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday.
Along with these ancient, but fairly simple and straightforward commemorations, are some old mysterious words with actually quite elementary meanings.
“Hosanna!” is the shout of acclamation associated with Palm Sunday. Found in the Psalms (118:26), the archaic Hebrew “hoshianna” is translated there as simply “save us,” or “O save!” Originally a plea shouted to a king in procession (like ‘hang in there’ or ‘keep it up’), it had become by the time of Christ a ritual phrase associated specifically with a king in public settings (like ‘hear ye, hear ye’ in court). Matthew 21:9, the lectionary reading for many churches last week, carries the evolved meaning into the Greek with an untranslated “Hosanna,” kept now in the English.
“Hallel” is just Hebrew for “praise,” and also a term referring to a section of the Psalms sung at the close of observances, like a Passover meal. This is the setting for the Maundy Thursday readings many will use, closing with Matthew 26: 30, “when they had sung the hymn (one of the Hallel Psalms), they went out to the Mount of Olives.” Hallelujah is praise to “Yah,” or the traditional abbreviation for the unnamed One, Yahweh. Yah is combined in many Hebrew names with an active verb, such as Yah-shua (remember our ho-shianna?) or “God-saves,” the meaning of the name we translate to English as Joshua, or out of Aramaic, Jesus.
Hallelujah is then just “praise God,” or “praise the Lord,” with an hint of ancient tradition in the older forms of the words.
And Amen? In Hebrew, “Omein” or some similar transliteration, since Hebrew letters, especially the more archaic roots, don’t translate precisely to the English sounds.
But it means no more and no less than “Yes.” Just “Yes.”
May your “Yes” to God’s love in whatever language ring out this Easter weekend!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have news from your faith community worth sharing around and abroad, contact him at disciple@voyager.net.
Notes From My Knapsack 03-27-05Jeff Gill
Sunrise!That is an astronomical event with (according to the Old Farmer's Almanac) a very precise time and orientation on the horizon. For Easter Sunday, call it 6:22 am.Of course, the pre-dawn twilight begins about 5 am, growing in illumination to the first appearance of the sun's rays directly shining over the horizon. So is it sunrise when the first light of day is visible? When you can read a headline from the Booster without a flashlight, closer to 6 am, or when the disc is visible of the ruddy orb o' dawn, which is you're on west side of a hill, could be more like 7 am?So sunrise is an elastic term, and the various Christian worship services tied to the celebration of Christ's rising from death "at sunrise" are equally various.While I find no evidence of any church holding a 5 am "Sonrise Service," there are congregations going with 6, 6:30, 7, and even 7:30 am.You probably did not pick your church by when they hold Easter sunrise observances (though some may be wishing they had checked that out before joining), but for those looking to attend a "community service," there are two open to their entire locality worth noting here in the knapsack.Around the Lakewood schools area, the Lakewood Area Ministerial Association is holding their Community Sunrise Service at 6:30 am just inside the gates of Dawes Arboretum at 6:30 am. Musicians from churches in Jacksontown, Hebron, and the surrounding area will set up in that aforementioned gathering light (and dew!), sharing their gifts with you and a chance to sing and pray together just as the sun rises over the hills to the east.In the greater Newark area, the Newark Area Ministerial Association in association with the Licking County Jail Ministry offers an Easter Sunrise Service at the Midland Theater, right on Counrthouse Square. Thanks to the support of Park National Bank, neither the time of sunrise nor the status of the weather is a big problem in that vast indoor space.A community chorus will sing and Rev. Barbara Sholis of First Methodist downtown will preach. Afterwards, a very tasty and cheap ($5!) breakfast in the Second Presbyterian fellowship hall benefits the ministry programming at the Licking County Justice Center. A mere short block away, you can't pass up the fellowship and food after getting up early to celebrate life and renewal in the first place.Most churches will be delighted to see visitors at any service on Easter morn, let alone at whatever time they observe the sunrise commemoration, but these two worship events are oriented around an invitation to the wider community.But wherever you go, at whatever time, remember to celebrate that Spring is here, Hope is born anew, and all Creation can rejoice . . . the ham and candy are just a fringe benefit. Now plant your lettuce and peas (you did that already, right?), set the turnips in the ground, and hold off on those flowers and tomatoes for a few weeks yet, because there's still some frost in an Ohio springtime well into April. Easter Monday is a good day to get up again at dawn (6:20 am) and turn over some soil, smelling the life already bursting out beneath your very feet.Next weekend, time change, and dawn really jumps around on us, so dig in now!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you want to share a story of renewal, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Sunrise!That is an astronomical event with (according to the Old Farmer's Almanac) a very precise time and orientation on the horizon. For Easter Sunday, call it 6:22 am.Of course, the pre-dawn twilight begins about 5 am, growing in illumination to the first appearance of the sun's rays directly shining over the horizon. So is it sunrise when the first light of day is visible? When you can read a headline from the Booster without a flashlight, closer to 6 am, or when the disc is visible of the ruddy orb o' dawn, which is you're on west side of a hill, could be more like 7 am?So sunrise is an elastic term, and the various Christian worship services tied to the celebration of Christ's rising from death "at sunrise" are equally various.While I find no evidence of any church holding a 5 am "Sonrise Service," there are congregations going with 6, 6:30, 7, and even 7:30 am.You probably did not pick your church by when they hold Easter sunrise observances (though some may be wishing they had checked that out before joining), but for those looking to attend a "community service," there are two open to their entire locality worth noting here in the knapsack.Around the Lakewood schools area, the Lakewood Area Ministerial Association is holding their Community Sunrise Service at 6:30 am just inside the gates of Dawes Arboretum at 6:30 am. Musicians from churches in Jacksontown, Hebron, and the surrounding area will set up in that aforementioned gathering light (and dew!), sharing their gifts with you and a chance to sing and pray together just as the sun rises over the hills to the east.In the greater Newark area, the Newark Area Ministerial Association in association with the Licking County Jail Ministry offers an Easter Sunrise Service at the Midland Theater, right on Counrthouse Square. Thanks to the support of Park National Bank, neither the time of sunrise nor the status of the weather is a big problem in that vast indoor space.A community chorus will sing and Rev. Barbara Sholis of First Methodist downtown will preach. Afterwards, a very tasty and cheap ($5!) breakfast in the Second Presbyterian fellowship hall benefits the ministry programming at the Licking County Justice Center. A mere short block away, you can't pass up the fellowship and food after getting up early to celebrate life and renewal in the first place.Most churches will be delighted to see visitors at any service on Easter morn, let alone at whatever time they observe the sunrise commemoration, but these two worship events are oriented around an invitation to the wider community.But wherever you go, at whatever time, remember to celebrate that Spring is here, Hope is born anew, and all Creation can rejoice . . . the ham and candy are just a fringe benefit. Now plant your lettuce and peas (you did that already, right?), set the turnips in the ground, and hold off on those flowers and tomatoes for a few weeks yet, because there's still some frost in an Ohio springtime well into April. Easter Monday is a good day to get up again at dawn (6:20 am) and turn over some soil, smelling the life already bursting out beneath your very feet.Next weekend, time change, and dawn really jumps around on us, so dig in now!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you want to share a story of renewal, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Monday, March 14, 2005
Faith Works column draft 2005 [note: this ran 3-19 in place of the St. Patrick story seen below]
The Purpose Driven Life Returns
Jeff Gill
Recent events overturn our own well-made plans; Ashley Smith knows this even better than Rick Warren, let alone yours truly.
Ashley Smith is the quietly heroic captive of the Atlanta courthouse shooter from just a few weeks back; she read aloud to her kidnaper a section she was reading that day from “The Purpose Driven Life,” a book written by Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren, a two year and still going strong bestseller (in hardback, no less), which her church was reading together through Lent, the worship season leading up to Easter.
Among regular Christian churchgoers, the question is not so much “have you read it” as “how is your church reading it?” Some congregations have done the “40 Days of Purpose” official program through Saddleback’s outreach ministry, others have done a less formal version of congregation-wide reading a day at a time together, and many churches have small groups reading the book for 40 days together.
The idea that your life has a purpose, set by God, and waiting for you to discover to achieve a truly fulfilled life, is not unique to Pastor Warren. But his material, written to give an entire faith community a context to ask this question of one another, and of their church life as well, has created a new opportunity in modern Christendom. The 100-plus weeks this volume has stayed on the New York Times bestseller list show that a chord across America was struck by this book.
So in one sense, the fact that Ashley Smith was reading “The Purpose Driven Life” when she was held captive is not surprising (although how she used it gives her credit beyond my ability to praise in a brief column).
What caught my attention in the coverage over the next two days after the capture and telling of the story was how most TV journalists were utterly unaware of this phenomenon. It started to get painful to me hearing on-air personalities, after segments of Ms. Smith’s narrative, say “This will sure put that book on the bestseller list!”
No, I’m not saying all reporters should know the top ten lists of all media at all times. But it was painfully indicative to me that there was clearly no one on TV who had heard of this book in the first blush of coverage, and mostly fairly stilted descriptions of what this “chapter 33” and who Warren was and what this book meant well into the new cycle.
I know a number of Christian pastors, actually, who have concerns and objections to “The Purpose Driven Life” or the 40 day program for churches. They think it oversold and overhyped. But I don’t know many active Christians who have never heard of it.
Of course, the idea that few media figures are committed religious people is not a new one. But the lack of awareness of such a widespread phenomenon did catch me a bit by surprise. If this were a pop cultural artifact like a hula hoop or pet rock, I’d bet most high profile reporters would know what the deal was, even if they didn’t own one.
Is religious life an aspect of the culture worth knowing about? Inquiring minds want to know . . .Ashley Smith has a story to tell that is of interest to both the culture and to Christians. Her faith is an absolutely necessary part of that narrative, if we’re to make sense of her heroism and strength in a situation of absolute weakness.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who has used “The Purpose Driven Life” with a congregation; if you have an opinion pro- or con- about this or other trends in church life, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Faith Works column draft [note: this has not yet run, and is "parked" here; it will move to the proper chronology when it sees the light of newsprint -- jbg]
Why do we pray in Licking County?
Jeff Gill
Christians pray. The Lord’s Prayer, morning prayers, bedtime prayers; we pray in worship services and we pray in private. We speak to God, addressing ourselves to the Creator of the Universe, with a sense of trust in the belief that God listens, and a sense of wonder that God might answer.
Moslems pray, offering their submission, or “Islam” (the literal meaning of that awkward transliteration from the Arabic) to Allah, five times a day at minimum, whether alone or in association with other believers.
Jews pray, both in corporate worship that calls for a “minyan,” the ten men needed for official services, or alone before the Lord Who is One, Adonai.
Hindus pray, to a variety of divine figures who embody manifestations of the Divine Nature, but prayers both “set” and spontaneous are part of their tradition as well, no matter how different their worship spaces look to Western eyes.
Native Americans, or members of the First Nations as the Canadians say, pray; they speak most often of what they do devotionally as “listening,” with much less emphasis on asking or requesting than what they hear Anglo-Europeans do in prayer. Those who happily accept the label “Pagan” or Wiccam say much the same about their prayers.
Buddhists . . . well, they are more comfortable, for the most part, with the word “meditate,” but there are many traditional petitions and praises to the embodiments of Buddha-nature that sound like nothing other than prayer.
And the profane speak the name of God in a variety of forms, most of which are rude and disrespectful . . . but often with a frustrated or helpless tone that almost makes you think they could even be . . . naaaahhh. But Jesus really doesn’t have a middle name as far as anyone can tell from the Bible, in case you wondered.
So what are we all doing when we pray? Of course, there are those who would say that if you are not praying to the real, actual God, you are moving your lips and wasting oxygen; there are also those militantly atheistic enough to say we’re all doing that.
Others, a fair number around these parts I would guess, believe that prayers not intended and aimed and shaped by the right or true or orthodox position are getting much less communion and communication out of their prayers than they might. There is more of an economy of efficiency than an assertion of accuracy among Licking County believers of all faiths. Even very conservative Christians around here would agree that prayers of the monotheistic faiths, Jewish, Christian, and Moslem are spoken to the same one God, but with less efficacy depending on one’s spiritual disciplines and personal faithfulness. Most would even say God hears the misuse of divine labels by the profane; they just would not want to be in their shoes when the answer comes back.
Do those who pray think they talk to God? Almost without exception, yes. Do they think they change God? Generally, no. Serious pray-ers mostly see their prayers as having effects on those who offer the prayers, opening a channel for God’s grace and peace to work in them through a powerful non-verbal communication in response; they also understand their prayers as having an effect on others by being the vehicle for allowing that grace-filled power to flow more freely in a world often intent on blocking God’s intention. While free will, in this post-Calvinistic world, is widely understood by believers as the autonomy God respects in human persons, those who freely choose prayer can give an appropriate and effective nudge to events in the world by opening doors for God to work. And such openness allows our will to be aligned with the will of God, a source of power for those who believe.
Prayer is . . . how would you answer that?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. Share your story of prayer at work with him at disciple@voyager.net.
The Purpose Driven Life Returns
Jeff Gill
Recent events overturn our own well-made plans; Ashley Smith knows this even better than Rick Warren, let alone yours truly.
Ashley Smith is the quietly heroic captive of the Atlanta courthouse shooter from just a few weeks back; she read aloud to her kidnaper a section she was reading that day from “The Purpose Driven Life,” a book written by Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren, a two year and still going strong bestseller (in hardback, no less), which her church was reading together through Lent, the worship season leading up to Easter.
Among regular Christian churchgoers, the question is not so much “have you read it” as “how is your church reading it?” Some congregations have done the “40 Days of Purpose” official program through Saddleback’s outreach ministry, others have done a less formal version of congregation-wide reading a day at a time together, and many churches have small groups reading the book for 40 days together.
The idea that your life has a purpose, set by God, and waiting for you to discover to achieve a truly fulfilled life, is not unique to Pastor Warren. But his material, written to give an entire faith community a context to ask this question of one another, and of their church life as well, has created a new opportunity in modern Christendom. The 100-plus weeks this volume has stayed on the New York Times bestseller list show that a chord across America was struck by this book.
So in one sense, the fact that Ashley Smith was reading “The Purpose Driven Life” when she was held captive is not surprising (although how she used it gives her credit beyond my ability to praise in a brief column).
What caught my attention in the coverage over the next two days after the capture and telling of the story was how most TV journalists were utterly unaware of this phenomenon. It started to get painful to me hearing on-air personalities, after segments of Ms. Smith’s narrative, say “This will sure put that book on the bestseller list!”
No, I’m not saying all reporters should know the top ten lists of all media at all times. But it was painfully indicative to me that there was clearly no one on TV who had heard of this book in the first blush of coverage, and mostly fairly stilted descriptions of what this “chapter 33” and who Warren was and what this book meant well into the new cycle.
I know a number of Christian pastors, actually, who have concerns and objections to “The Purpose Driven Life” or the 40 day program for churches. They think it oversold and overhyped. But I don’t know many active Christians who have never heard of it.
Of course, the idea that few media figures are committed religious people is not a new one. But the lack of awareness of such a widespread phenomenon did catch me a bit by surprise. If this were a pop cultural artifact like a hula hoop or pet rock, I’d bet most high profile reporters would know what the deal was, even if they didn’t own one.
Is religious life an aspect of the culture worth knowing about? Inquiring minds want to know . . .Ashley Smith has a story to tell that is of interest to both the culture and to Christians. Her faith is an absolutely necessary part of that narrative, if we’re to make sense of her heroism and strength in a situation of absolute weakness.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who has used “The Purpose Driven Life” with a congregation; if you have an opinion pro- or con- about this or other trends in church life, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Faith Works column draft [note: this has not yet run, and is "parked" here; it will move to the proper chronology when it sees the light of newsprint -- jbg]
Why do we pray in Licking County?
Jeff Gill
Christians pray. The Lord’s Prayer, morning prayers, bedtime prayers; we pray in worship services and we pray in private. We speak to God, addressing ourselves to the Creator of the Universe, with a sense of trust in the belief that God listens, and a sense of wonder that God might answer.
Moslems pray, offering their submission, or “Islam” (the literal meaning of that awkward transliteration from the Arabic) to Allah, five times a day at minimum, whether alone or in association with other believers.
Jews pray, both in corporate worship that calls for a “minyan,” the ten men needed for official services, or alone before the Lord Who is One, Adonai.
Hindus pray, to a variety of divine figures who embody manifestations of the Divine Nature, but prayers both “set” and spontaneous are part of their tradition as well, no matter how different their worship spaces look to Western eyes.
Native Americans, or members of the First Nations as the Canadians say, pray; they speak most often of what they do devotionally as “listening,” with much less emphasis on asking or requesting than what they hear Anglo-Europeans do in prayer. Those who happily accept the label “Pagan” or Wiccam say much the same about their prayers.
Buddhists . . . well, they are more comfortable, for the most part, with the word “meditate,” but there are many traditional petitions and praises to the embodiments of Buddha-nature that sound like nothing other than prayer.
And the profane speak the name of God in a variety of forms, most of which are rude and disrespectful . . . but often with a frustrated or helpless tone that almost makes you think they could even be . . . naaaahhh. But Jesus really doesn’t have a middle name as far as anyone can tell from the Bible, in case you wondered.
So what are we all doing when we pray? Of course, there are those who would say that if you are not praying to the real, actual God, you are moving your lips and wasting oxygen; there are also those militantly atheistic enough to say we’re all doing that.
Others, a fair number around these parts I would guess, believe that prayers not intended and aimed and shaped by the right or true or orthodox position are getting much less communion and communication out of their prayers than they might. There is more of an economy of efficiency than an assertion of accuracy among Licking County believers of all faiths. Even very conservative Christians around here would agree that prayers of the monotheistic faiths, Jewish, Christian, and Moslem are spoken to the same one God, but with less efficacy depending on one’s spiritual disciplines and personal faithfulness. Most would even say God hears the misuse of divine labels by the profane; they just would not want to be in their shoes when the answer comes back.
Do those who pray think they talk to God? Almost without exception, yes. Do they think they change God? Generally, no. Serious pray-ers mostly see their prayers as having effects on those who offer the prayers, opening a channel for God’s grace and peace to work in them through a powerful non-verbal communication in response; they also understand their prayers as having an effect on others by being the vehicle for allowing that grace-filled power to flow more freely in a world often intent on blocking God’s intention. While free will, in this post-Calvinistic world, is widely understood by believers as the autonomy God respects in human persons, those who freely choose prayer can give an appropriate and effective nudge to events in the world by opening doors for God to work. And such openness allows our will to be aligned with the will of God, a source of power for those who believe.
Prayer is . . . how would you answer that?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. Share your story of prayer at work with him at disciple@voyager.net.
“Think Ability First”
The Community Booster 3-14-05
Jeff Gill
Ability. We rarely think about the everyday actions we perform, from walking across a room to driving a car. We just do.
Disability is more vivid in our minds, whether a temporary loss of capacity like a broken leg or sprained wrist, or the prospect of something larger and long-lasting.
If some one is described as “having a disability,” that kind of thinking leads to our defining a person by that lack, or absence of ability.
Ashley and Danielle and Stephanie and David don’t see their world as a list of what they can’t do, or at least no more than any other high schooler does. Thanks to Rhonda and Dorothy and Raydelle and Molly and dozens of others, children as well as adults with special needs see themselves as people with abilities. Do we?
MRDD Awareness Day and Month is designed by the Licking County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (you can see why they go by MRDD, can’t you?) as one of many efforts they take on to help the wider community “Think Ability First.”
How can you stop from seeing what someone can’t do as their defining characteristic? Well, one way is to put yourself in their shoes, by working a wheelchair through doors and down hallways, or wearing vision-limiting goggles. At first you are all about what you can’t do, but the gentle hints of those who live with these situations and a little persistence can show how you “do different” what you’re used to doing another way.
Or you can simply walk alongside, and learn that from adaptive technology to dogged persistence to a whole lotta love, there’s always a way.
Think ability first, says the MRDD Board, and you see a thousand Licking County residents in a very different way.
Awareness Day was an event involving some 40 community members invited to start a morning at the E.S. Weiant Center (formerly known as the “Starlight School”) with breakfast together and a brief orientation, followed by breaking into teams of 2 to 6 members visiting various locations where special needs students, young adults working on the transition to independent living, and working people with disabilities at the LICCO workshop and other sites through Community Employment Services. They ended their experience with lunch back at Weiant where participants shared what they did and saw with each other.
MRDD also works very closely with the Licking County Schools and their Educational Service Center, which provides appropriate education experiences for children from kindergarten through age 22. While many are able to graduate in one form or another, some need special services to get ready for as much independent living as they can.
This writer was with a group that went to one of three high school based multi-handicap units, or a “MH room.” Every child needing such services through their individual education plan, or IEP, has access, but not every school has their own program and intervention specialist with aides.
Children from five different districts in the county were beginning a series of exercises when our Awareness Day group arrived. The roomful was grouped by skill level rather than by grade or simple age divisions, but the exercises were done by everyone, including visitors, who were considerably less flexible than the 14 to 19 year olds.
Rhonda Taylor, the room coordinator and intervention specialist at the Granville High MH room, explained that these were exercises designed not so much to stretch the muscles as the mind, working left and right limbs over to the opposite sides, which forces the two sides of the brain to work together. This is one “stretch” that most of us could probably use to start a day, but is particularly useful for many of the students in the MH room.
We saw how each child has their own “objectives list” for the day and week, tailored to their own unique situation. When they reach 10th grade level, they also take an alternative assessment version of the Ohio Graduation Test, just their peers all across the state this week.
After some time for individual work, most of the group was scheduled for a field trip to Newark and “The Citadel,” formerly the YWCA building. Licking County School ESC has a program there for transitioning to independent living, where life skills are sharpened and aimed at their goals for their later years. Raydelle Matthews, the specialist there, was cooking a lunch that tempted us all to veer off our plan, but she invited us to just walk around the room with our escorts and join the activities.
Playing ball with young adults who are legally blind, like Robin, seeing crafts prettier than anything their guests knew they were capable of making, or getting whooped on at cards by almost anyone there (who had the disability at that table?) were some of the experiences to be had while other students worked to set up for lunch.
Here, as throughout the system, MRDD caseworkers are in close consultation with the school staff, but particularly as the emphasis shifts from the more academic to primarily vocational after age 19 or post-graduation. Adult services, with CES and the LICCO workshop, create a safety net for these able, but vulnerable members of our community.
Licking County MRDD is funded largely through our own local tax levy, some federal and state funding, and small amount of revenue. Their activities go “around the clock and around the county” in the words of Sherry Steinman, MRDD’s public relations director.
At the closing luncheon, participants like John Gard of Park National Bank noted their amazement at “how vast a transportation system it takes to do this work.”
Nancy Neely, the superintendent of MRDD, spoke of their “huge responsibility to connect with the various service programs around the county.” That kind of co-ordination, between a variety of organizations and structures, is something that is often beyond the skills of the “regularly abled,” let alone those who need assistance. From the preschool at the Weiant Center, the ten ESC school-based programs around the county, and through the work-based settings all the way to the Licking County Aging Program, people with special needs are all around us, aided and served well by the staff and volunteers of LCMRDD. Your purchases may have been made or wrapped by their clients, you may have eaten off of dishes they wash, or a bed you slept in during the ice storm was likely made by a CES worker. They are a vital part of our economy as well as our community.
Together, they invite us all to “think ability first.”
The Community Booster 3-14-05
Jeff Gill
Ability. We rarely think about the everyday actions we perform, from walking across a room to driving a car. We just do.
Disability is more vivid in our minds, whether a temporary loss of capacity like a broken leg or sprained wrist, or the prospect of something larger and long-lasting.
If some one is described as “having a disability,” that kind of thinking leads to our defining a person by that lack, or absence of ability.
Ashley and Danielle and Stephanie and David don’t see their world as a list of what they can’t do, or at least no more than any other high schooler does. Thanks to Rhonda and Dorothy and Raydelle and Molly and dozens of others, children as well as adults with special needs see themselves as people with abilities. Do we?
MRDD Awareness Day and Month is designed by the Licking County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (you can see why they go by MRDD, can’t you?) as one of many efforts they take on to help the wider community “Think Ability First.”
How can you stop from seeing what someone can’t do as their defining characteristic? Well, one way is to put yourself in their shoes, by working a wheelchair through doors and down hallways, or wearing vision-limiting goggles. At first you are all about what you can’t do, but the gentle hints of those who live with these situations and a little persistence can show how you “do different” what you’re used to doing another way.
Or you can simply walk alongside, and learn that from adaptive technology to dogged persistence to a whole lotta love, there’s always a way.
Think ability first, says the MRDD Board, and you see a thousand Licking County residents in a very different way.
Awareness Day was an event involving some 40 community members invited to start a morning at the E.S. Weiant Center (formerly known as the “Starlight School”) with breakfast together and a brief orientation, followed by breaking into teams of 2 to 6 members visiting various locations where special needs students, young adults working on the transition to independent living, and working people with disabilities at the LICCO workshop and other sites through Community Employment Services. They ended their experience with lunch back at Weiant where participants shared what they did and saw with each other.
MRDD also works very closely with the Licking County Schools and their Educational Service Center, which provides appropriate education experiences for children from kindergarten through age 22. While many are able to graduate in one form or another, some need special services to get ready for as much independent living as they can.
This writer was with a group that went to one of three high school based multi-handicap units, or a “MH room.” Every child needing such services through their individual education plan, or IEP, has access, but not every school has their own program and intervention specialist with aides.
Children from five different districts in the county were beginning a series of exercises when our Awareness Day group arrived. The roomful was grouped by skill level rather than by grade or simple age divisions, but the exercises were done by everyone, including visitors, who were considerably less flexible than the 14 to 19 year olds.
Rhonda Taylor, the room coordinator and intervention specialist at the Granville High MH room, explained that these were exercises designed not so much to stretch the muscles as the mind, working left and right limbs over to the opposite sides, which forces the two sides of the brain to work together. This is one “stretch” that most of us could probably use to start a day, but is particularly useful for many of the students in the MH room.
We saw how each child has their own “objectives list” for the day and week, tailored to their own unique situation. When they reach 10th grade level, they also take an alternative assessment version of the Ohio Graduation Test, just their peers all across the state this week.
After some time for individual work, most of the group was scheduled for a field trip to Newark and “The Citadel,” formerly the YWCA building. Licking County School ESC has a program there for transitioning to independent living, where life skills are sharpened and aimed at their goals for their later years. Raydelle Matthews, the specialist there, was cooking a lunch that tempted us all to veer off our plan, but she invited us to just walk around the room with our escorts and join the activities.
Playing ball with young adults who are legally blind, like Robin, seeing crafts prettier than anything their guests knew they were capable of making, or getting whooped on at cards by almost anyone there (who had the disability at that table?) were some of the experiences to be had while other students worked to set up for lunch.
Here, as throughout the system, MRDD caseworkers are in close consultation with the school staff, but particularly as the emphasis shifts from the more academic to primarily vocational after age 19 or post-graduation. Adult services, with CES and the LICCO workshop, create a safety net for these able, but vulnerable members of our community.
Licking County MRDD is funded largely through our own local tax levy, some federal and state funding, and small amount of revenue. Their activities go “around the clock and around the county” in the words of Sherry Steinman, MRDD’s public relations director.
At the closing luncheon, participants like John Gard of Park National Bank noted their amazement at “how vast a transportation system it takes to do this work.”
Nancy Neely, the superintendent of MRDD, spoke of their “huge responsibility to connect with the various service programs around the county.” That kind of co-ordination, between a variety of organizations and structures, is something that is often beyond the skills of the “regularly abled,” let alone those who need assistance. From the preschool at the Weiant Center, the ten ESC school-based programs around the county, and through the work-based settings all the way to the Licking County Aging Program, people with special needs are all around us, aided and served well by the staff and volunteers of LCMRDD. Your purchases may have been made or wrapped by their clients, you may have eaten off of dishes they wash, or a bed you slept in during the ice storm was likely made by a CES worker. They are a vital part of our economy as well as our community.
Together, they invite us all to “think ability first.”
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 03-20-05
By Jeff Gill
Local school districts, and educators all over Ohio, are having to take a very serious look at their projections for funding and student counts for the next five years.
Almost without exception, school boards and superintendents have done this for decades just in the course of providing good leadership. What is a little bit different is that they now are required by the state to present these projections and proposed budgets for five years out, and that they are not, by state law, allowed to present an intentional deficit.
What is a whole lot different is that, for the most part, district treasurers are legally obligated to create these budgets for which they will be held accountable, while the lawmakers themselves are playing fruit-basket-upset with the sources of revenue.
From the futzing around with the millage rollback (perish the thought that education might benefit from increasing property values, which they likely contributed to!) on through the slow bleed of eliminating what’s known as “inventory taxes” to myriad other complex intricacies of the tax code that result in simple reductions to local school districts, education in Ohio is taking it on the chin. Big time.
So be aware, and be supportive of what school boards and the professional staffs of districts are going through, as the Statehouse hints and winks at what they may or may not do with funding formulas and tax reform, fiddling ‘til June while responsible officials close to where the hard work of citizenship happens are having to produce figures right now. They’re not supposed to guess, they can’t overspend, and they have no idea what they’ll be allowed to receive. Sound fair to you?
Oh, there in the third row: you want to know why they spend so much more, per capita, even adjusted for inflation? Thank you for raising your hand, and I’m delighted to answer that question. The reason is not a “problem,” but it is a new factor which we should celebrate and support, along with taking into account as we hold (as we should) our schools accountable.
Not so very long ago, within the personal experience of many of us who are old enough to read, most developmentally disabled, handicapped, and chronically ill students were told “Sorry.” If you couldn’t run up a flight of stairs, use a restroom on your own, or hang upside down on the monkey bars by your knees, you didn’t go to school.
That was it.
A few motivated districts and caring teachers might have gone out of their way to bring schooling to children in such situations, and institutionalized kids may or may not have gotten some kind of education wherever they were warehoused, but that wasn’t the school district’s expectation, by either the law or in the minds of local residents.
What has changed, and costs more, and what we should be very, very thankful for, is that the law now clearly says there aren’t any kids we can spare. No child is “someone else’s problem.” Every school district is required – and who wants to say this is a bad idea? – to educate every child in their care, no matter what the obstacles.
The law does not require football or baseball, or band, or busing for older youth. It does require that, if it takes an aide or special equipment or assisting devices to get a child on the road to the three R’s and beyond, that’s gotta be done. I like sports and music and science fairs, but that legal distinction makes sense to me, it really does.
Add to that the fact that graduation rates 50 years ago were close to 50% in most school districts (calculated as the number of ninth graders who got diplomas four years later), with the social assumption that the “other” 50% would be educated on the job, in the military, or along the railroad tracks catching a westbound freight, and that was just fine, you can see why education costs more, head-for-head, than it did.
I’m open to any good idea about the best mechanism for levying the taxes to support schools without harming business. Abso-bloomin-lutely. But let’s not blame kids in wheelchairs, or castigate treasurers and board members who are playing a perverse game of “Wheel” with your host Pat Housemember and the lovely Vanna Senatechamber changing the rules in mid-game.
Got an idea? E-mail me at disciple@voyager.net and I’ll give you room in this column to propose your plan. Give me three weeks worth of material, OK? This random roulette with kids’ futures has to stop.
By Jeff Gill
Local school districts, and educators all over Ohio, are having to take a very serious look at their projections for funding and student counts for the next five years.
Almost without exception, school boards and superintendents have done this for decades just in the course of providing good leadership. What is a little bit different is that they now are required by the state to present these projections and proposed budgets for five years out, and that they are not, by state law, allowed to present an intentional deficit.
What is a whole lot different is that, for the most part, district treasurers are legally obligated to create these budgets for which they will be held accountable, while the lawmakers themselves are playing fruit-basket-upset with the sources of revenue.
From the futzing around with the millage rollback (perish the thought that education might benefit from increasing property values, which they likely contributed to!) on through the slow bleed of eliminating what’s known as “inventory taxes” to myriad other complex intricacies of the tax code that result in simple reductions to local school districts, education in Ohio is taking it on the chin. Big time.
So be aware, and be supportive of what school boards and the professional staffs of districts are going through, as the Statehouse hints and winks at what they may or may not do with funding formulas and tax reform, fiddling ‘til June while responsible officials close to where the hard work of citizenship happens are having to produce figures right now. They’re not supposed to guess, they can’t overspend, and they have no idea what they’ll be allowed to receive. Sound fair to you?
Oh, there in the third row: you want to know why they spend so much more, per capita, even adjusted for inflation? Thank you for raising your hand, and I’m delighted to answer that question. The reason is not a “problem,” but it is a new factor which we should celebrate and support, along with taking into account as we hold (as we should) our schools accountable.
Not so very long ago, within the personal experience of many of us who are old enough to read, most developmentally disabled, handicapped, and chronically ill students were told “Sorry.” If you couldn’t run up a flight of stairs, use a restroom on your own, or hang upside down on the monkey bars by your knees, you didn’t go to school.
That was it.
A few motivated districts and caring teachers might have gone out of their way to bring schooling to children in such situations, and institutionalized kids may or may not have gotten some kind of education wherever they were warehoused, but that wasn’t the school district’s expectation, by either the law or in the minds of local residents.
What has changed, and costs more, and what we should be very, very thankful for, is that the law now clearly says there aren’t any kids we can spare. No child is “someone else’s problem.” Every school district is required – and who wants to say this is a bad idea? – to educate every child in their care, no matter what the obstacles.
The law does not require football or baseball, or band, or busing for older youth. It does require that, if it takes an aide or special equipment or assisting devices to get a child on the road to the three R’s and beyond, that’s gotta be done. I like sports and music and science fairs, but that legal distinction makes sense to me, it really does.
Add to that the fact that graduation rates 50 years ago were close to 50% in most school districts (calculated as the number of ninth graders who got diplomas four years later), with the social assumption that the “other” 50% would be educated on the job, in the military, or along the railroad tracks catching a westbound freight, and that was just fine, you can see why education costs more, head-for-head, than it did.
I’m open to any good idea about the best mechanism for levying the taxes to support schools without harming business. Abso-bloomin-lutely. But let’s not blame kids in wheelchairs, or castigate treasurers and board members who are playing a perverse game of “Wheel” with your host Pat Housemember and the lovely Vanna Senatechamber changing the rules in mid-game.
Got an idea? E-mail me at disciple@voyager.net and I’ll give you room in this column to propose your plan. Give me three weeks worth of material, OK? This random roulette with kids’ futures has to stop.
Faith Works 03-19-05
By Jeff Gill
[note: this did not appear in print, since the Atlanta hostage incident with Ashley Smith and the Purpose Driven Life story kind of overrode events; i wrote a new column seen above, and this exists only here...but enjoy anyhow! jbg]
A Children’s Sermon For Grown-ups
Now that the flood of green beer has crested, and the “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons put back at the bottom of the sweater drawer, we can talk about Saint Patrick. Not the winkin’ wee feller of St. Paddy’s Day, but the good missionary bishop himself, and that hunk of Emerald Isle landscape in his hand.
“The Wearin’ o’ the Green,” with or without the pinch penalty (hope you checked workplace guidelines on sexual harassment before you tried that on anyone last week) is part of the adoptive Irishness that has trickled down to the wholesale embrace of “Celtic spirituality,” a broad table with an assortment of dishes set out, not many of which would Bishop Patrick recognize a millennium and a half ago.
Shamrock symbolism for the day and place and person is a good quick identifier, like pumpkins for Hallowe’en and fireworks for the Fourth of July. We’ve come to associate it with Ireland as a whole, in tourism ads or decorating the margins of our family tree from County Sligo.
What Patrick first plucked a shamrock for was to make a point, and a difficult one at that, one that has challenged Christian teachers and preachers for many an age. He held up the lowly green ground cover to make three points, or maybe three points in one.
What the good bishop was trying to get across to his pagan and Druid listeners was what Christians meant when they said they believed in “One God, not many” but could also call Jesus “truly God and truly human,” and, oh yes, there was this “Holy Spirit” authentically divine as well.
OK, said the Irish. So you worship three gods, which is fine by us; many do. No, no, answered Patrick, we worship God in three persons, a blessed Trinity, where the eternal Oneness of God is manifested in three. . .
And then Patrick saw the shamrock.
Aside from general theological illiteracy, a big reason for folks here and now not knowing the religious roots of the shamrock symbol is that we point at our common clover as the closest analogy (and look for luck in the four leaf variety, just as they did in the Auld Sod for four leaf shamrocks).
But clover is three distinct leaflets off of a central stem. Shamrocks were a, well, God-send for Patrick because they look like three leaves until you consider them up close and personal. A true shamrock is actually one leaf, with divisions between the three lobes so deep that they look like three different sections. Careful observation, instead of a casual glance, shows that the shamrock is in fact one coherent, connected, unified leaf.
Thus, Patrick to-be-saint would have said, is our understanding of the inner relationships of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From a distance, three distinct forms and roles; draw near, and see and feel the oneness.
Town after town, county after county, king after king heard Patrick’s shamrock theology talk about Christianity, and asked for baptism. This way of understanding the doctrine of the Trinity became so attached to the Irish Church that the shamrock became the symbol of the whole island.
And may the road rise to meet all those preparing for baptism this Easter season, and may the gentle wind be at everyone’s back, Irish or not.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. If you have other ethnic faith traditions to share, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
[note: this did not appear in print, since the Atlanta hostage incident with Ashley Smith and the Purpose Driven Life story kind of overrode events; i wrote a new column seen above, and this exists only here...but enjoy anyhow! jbg]
A Children’s Sermon For Grown-ups
Now that the flood of green beer has crested, and the “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons put back at the bottom of the sweater drawer, we can talk about Saint Patrick. Not the winkin’ wee feller of St. Paddy’s Day, but the good missionary bishop himself, and that hunk of Emerald Isle landscape in his hand.
“The Wearin’ o’ the Green,” with or without the pinch penalty (hope you checked workplace guidelines on sexual harassment before you tried that on anyone last week) is part of the adoptive Irishness that has trickled down to the wholesale embrace of “Celtic spirituality,” a broad table with an assortment of dishes set out, not many of which would Bishop Patrick recognize a millennium and a half ago.
Shamrock symbolism for the day and place and person is a good quick identifier, like pumpkins for Hallowe’en and fireworks for the Fourth of July. We’ve come to associate it with Ireland as a whole, in tourism ads or decorating the margins of our family tree from County Sligo.
What Patrick first plucked a shamrock for was to make a point, and a difficult one at that, one that has challenged Christian teachers and preachers for many an age. He held up the lowly green ground cover to make three points, or maybe three points in one.
What the good bishop was trying to get across to his pagan and Druid listeners was what Christians meant when they said they believed in “One God, not many” but could also call Jesus “truly God and truly human,” and, oh yes, there was this “Holy Spirit” authentically divine as well.
OK, said the Irish. So you worship three gods, which is fine by us; many do. No, no, answered Patrick, we worship God in three persons, a blessed Trinity, where the eternal Oneness of God is manifested in three. . .
And then Patrick saw the shamrock.
Aside from general theological illiteracy, a big reason for folks here and now not knowing the religious roots of the shamrock symbol is that we point at our common clover as the closest analogy (and look for luck in the four leaf variety, just as they did in the Auld Sod for four leaf shamrocks).
But clover is three distinct leaflets off of a central stem. Shamrocks were a, well, God-send for Patrick because they look like three leaves until you consider them up close and personal. A true shamrock is actually one leaf, with divisions between the three lobes so deep that they look like three different sections. Careful observation, instead of a casual glance, shows that the shamrock is in fact one coherent, connected, unified leaf.
Thus, Patrick to-be-saint would have said, is our understanding of the inner relationships of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From a distance, three distinct forms and roles; draw near, and see and feel the oneness.
Town after town, county after county, king after king heard Patrick’s shamrock theology talk about Christianity, and asked for baptism. This way of understanding the doctrine of the Trinity became so attached to the Irish Church that the shamrock became the symbol of the whole island.
And may the road rise to meet all those preparing for baptism this Easter season, and may the gentle wind be at everyone’s back, Irish or not.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. If you have other ethnic faith traditions to share, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Faith Works 03-12-05
By Jeff Gill
Contemporary and Traditional Worship
One of the more vexed questions in today’s congregational life is how to approach the widespread move to what’s called “contemporary worship.”
Actually, there’s no more a contemporary style than there is a single “traditional worship” style. Variations from religious body to religious body, between geographic and cultural regions, and out of ethnic backgrounds as well make any use of standard terminology tricky.
For central Ohio, mostly among Protestant Christian bodies, the distinction is largely one of music, at least on the surface. Traditional worship is marked by hymnals, music mostly 40 years old or older, often a bulletin with an “order of worship” built around regularly recurring songs and prayers or acts that stay pretty much the same from week to week.
Traditional worship is orderly, generally more formal, with mostly professional leadership in front of the congregation, and from the worshipers there is less active involvement in the service, with clapping or applause less welcome.
Contemporary worship is marked by music presented by a “praise team” usually made up of mostly volunteers, playing guitars, drums, and keyboards or synthesizers to offer music written in the last few decades. Hymnals are all but invisible, as words are projected before the congregation, freeing the hands to clap, applaud, or even raise up during prayer and praise. While contemporary worship isn’t necessarily “charismatic” in the Pentecostal sense, a freedom for individual expression and spontaneous flow in the elements of the service are similar to what has been found in charismatic fellowships for many years.
Obviously, these styles resist blending in one service. Some churches, such as Jacksontown United Methodist Church, have been able to do this successfully, but more common is either having two (or more) services clearly presented as “contemporary” at blank o’clock and “traditional” at other o’clock.
One concern raised with this approach is the question “aren’t we going to have two separate congregations under one roof if we do that?” Actually, the results in churches doing this are pretty much what happens anywhere there are multiple services. Even in places which have chosen to stick with traditional as their style across the board, the “early” and “late” services have their own set of regular attenders, and a different feel between the experiences of worship.
To have multiple services for worship means taking on an extra obligation to have a variety of fellowship experiences that can cut across generational boundaries and issues of musical taste. It can be done, and two or three healthy services will always total more worshipers than the most crowded single service over time, anyhow.
My wife loves being part of a praise team ensemble, working out harmonies and accompaniment for new pieces of music (which often are Biblical texts or phrases from ancient music: it ain’t all new!), and seeing the active involvement of an entire sanctuary in the entire experience of worship. My mom can’t stand contemporary worship of any sort, period. My dad is, to quote “baffled by why anyone would enjoy all this noise in church,” but also says “if you can get all these people to church who weren’t coming before, there must be something to it.”
Me? Well, like any good columnist, I have an assortment of feelings about all this. But I keep coming back to a keepsake I have on a shelf in my office, a hymnal from the roots of my own background, whose proceeds built Bethany College, churches across the US in the 19th century, and funded missionary efforts all around the world. My great-great-grandmother, her daughter, and her daughter sang from this hymn book.
It has over 600 hymns in it. There are precisely two – “Amazing Grace” & “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” – that anyone still sings.
Will we still sing much of contemporary praise music a hundred years from now? Probably not. But it’s worth giving it a try today. I’ll bet my great-grandmother thought “Old Rugged Cross” didn’t sound right the first time she heard it, either.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have a favorite hymn you’d like to read more about, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Contemporary and Traditional Worship
One of the more vexed questions in today’s congregational life is how to approach the widespread move to what’s called “contemporary worship.”
Actually, there’s no more a contemporary style than there is a single “traditional worship” style. Variations from religious body to religious body, between geographic and cultural regions, and out of ethnic backgrounds as well make any use of standard terminology tricky.
For central Ohio, mostly among Protestant Christian bodies, the distinction is largely one of music, at least on the surface. Traditional worship is marked by hymnals, music mostly 40 years old or older, often a bulletin with an “order of worship” built around regularly recurring songs and prayers or acts that stay pretty much the same from week to week.
Traditional worship is orderly, generally more formal, with mostly professional leadership in front of the congregation, and from the worshipers there is less active involvement in the service, with clapping or applause less welcome.
Contemporary worship is marked by music presented by a “praise team” usually made up of mostly volunteers, playing guitars, drums, and keyboards or synthesizers to offer music written in the last few decades. Hymnals are all but invisible, as words are projected before the congregation, freeing the hands to clap, applaud, or even raise up during prayer and praise. While contemporary worship isn’t necessarily “charismatic” in the Pentecostal sense, a freedom for individual expression and spontaneous flow in the elements of the service are similar to what has been found in charismatic fellowships for many years.
Obviously, these styles resist blending in one service. Some churches, such as Jacksontown United Methodist Church, have been able to do this successfully, but more common is either having two (or more) services clearly presented as “contemporary” at blank o’clock and “traditional” at other o’clock.
One concern raised with this approach is the question “aren’t we going to have two separate congregations under one roof if we do that?” Actually, the results in churches doing this are pretty much what happens anywhere there are multiple services. Even in places which have chosen to stick with traditional as their style across the board, the “early” and “late” services have their own set of regular attenders, and a different feel between the experiences of worship.
To have multiple services for worship means taking on an extra obligation to have a variety of fellowship experiences that can cut across generational boundaries and issues of musical taste. It can be done, and two or three healthy services will always total more worshipers than the most crowded single service over time, anyhow.
My wife loves being part of a praise team ensemble, working out harmonies and accompaniment for new pieces of music (which often are Biblical texts or phrases from ancient music: it ain’t all new!), and seeing the active involvement of an entire sanctuary in the entire experience of worship. My mom can’t stand contemporary worship of any sort, period. My dad is, to quote “baffled by why anyone would enjoy all this noise in church,” but also says “if you can get all these people to church who weren’t coming before, there must be something to it.”
Me? Well, like any good columnist, I have an assortment of feelings about all this. But I keep coming back to a keepsake I have on a shelf in my office, a hymnal from the roots of my own background, whose proceeds built Bethany College, churches across the US in the 19th century, and funded missionary efforts all around the world. My great-great-grandmother, her daughter, and her daughter sang from this hymn book.
It has over 600 hymns in it. There are precisely two – “Amazing Grace” & “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” – that anyone still sings.
Will we still sing much of contemporary praise music a hundred years from now? Probably not. But it’s worth giving it a try today. I’ll bet my great-grandmother thought “Old Rugged Cross” didn’t sound right the first time she heard it, either.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have a favorite hymn you’d like to read more about, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 3-13-05
By Jeff Gill
Calvinists from Wales, landless Anglican prone to the Arminian heresy (said the Calvinists), German Dunkards and Congregational New Englanders – religious refugees, sectarian churches, and pilgrim colonists are not just the story of the settling of the East Coast of North America.
We know the legends of Plymouth Rock (Myles Standish and John Alden) and the Hudson Valley (Rip VanWinkle and Sleepy Hollow) or even Revolutionary Piedmonters (Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox) from the far edge of America, but what about our story? The narrative of Licking County and her European pioneers is all too little known, but with dramatic characters and startling scenes all its own.
John Jones, Elias Ratliff, Lucius Mower, or Billy Dragoo deserve to be known to a wider audience in this area, and the religious underpinnings of migrant bands ending up along Raccoon Creek are vital to understanding their story.
Dick Shiels may not get to Billy Dragoo, but he will talk this Tuesday about how churches and colonists created the core of Licking County in the Granville area in the early 1800’s. Dick is a popular teacher of history at OSU-Newark both of events long ago and far away, as well as the history just at our feet.
7:30 pm on March 15 at the Granville Inn is your chance to come hear about the creation of a tale that is not only still being re-told, but re-edited as well!
Quite a few congregations in Licking County are celebrating their bicentennials over the next few years: White Chapel United Methodist Church off Hog Run west of Rt. 13, Licking Baptist Church on Beaver Run Road near Hebron, and both First Presbyterians in Newark and Granville. A number of sesqui’s are coming up, too: Perryton’s Church of Christ, Johnstown Baptist Church, Croton and Hebron United Methodist Churches soon and Denison University this next year. Please send me news of any anniversary events you know about, and what will be a public portion of the commemorations.
Most of our local school systems didn’t come into being as organized entities until after 1838 with state legislation helping put the pieces together, and many (like Newark’s) didn’t get going until 1850 or so. Civic affairs were in log structures and based on infrequent meetings until about the same time.
Church buildings and the congregational life in them was often the only structure outside of family life for much of the early history in Ohio, as in most of this country. It can be fairly assumed that the structures of church life also shaped the still developing social and cultural life around them, simply by being first and in having a shape and solidity to copy.
Were all our pioneer forebearers active and faithful members of the churches they attended? A close reading of history says they were individually less so than you might think, but that same careful observation shows how unique and idiosyncratic elements of the denominations found on the frontier created much of the foundation for civil government. I’m looking forward to hearing Dick Shiels trace the marks of these formative influences on the community we continue to build.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have a story to add to the files of historic Licking County or for tomorrow’s tale, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Calvinists from Wales, landless Anglican prone to the Arminian heresy (said the Calvinists), German Dunkards and Congregational New Englanders – religious refugees, sectarian churches, and pilgrim colonists are not just the story of the settling of the East Coast of North America.
We know the legends of Plymouth Rock (Myles Standish and John Alden) and the Hudson Valley (Rip VanWinkle and Sleepy Hollow) or even Revolutionary Piedmonters (Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox) from the far edge of America, but what about our story? The narrative of Licking County and her European pioneers is all too little known, but with dramatic characters and startling scenes all its own.
John Jones, Elias Ratliff, Lucius Mower, or Billy Dragoo deserve to be known to a wider audience in this area, and the religious underpinnings of migrant bands ending up along Raccoon Creek are vital to understanding their story.
Dick Shiels may not get to Billy Dragoo, but he will talk this Tuesday about how churches and colonists created the core of Licking County in the Granville area in the early 1800’s. Dick is a popular teacher of history at OSU-Newark both of events long ago and far away, as well as the history just at our feet.
7:30 pm on March 15 at the Granville Inn is your chance to come hear about the creation of a tale that is not only still being re-told, but re-edited as well!
Quite a few congregations in Licking County are celebrating their bicentennials over the next few years: White Chapel United Methodist Church off Hog Run west of Rt. 13, Licking Baptist Church on Beaver Run Road near Hebron, and both First Presbyterians in Newark and Granville. A number of sesqui’s are coming up, too: Perryton’s Church of Christ, Johnstown Baptist Church, Croton and Hebron United Methodist Churches soon and Denison University this next year. Please send me news of any anniversary events you know about, and what will be a public portion of the commemorations.
Most of our local school systems didn’t come into being as organized entities until after 1838 with state legislation helping put the pieces together, and many (like Newark’s) didn’t get going until 1850 or so. Civic affairs were in log structures and based on infrequent meetings until about the same time.
Church buildings and the congregational life in them was often the only structure outside of family life for much of the early history in Ohio, as in most of this country. It can be fairly assumed that the structures of church life also shaped the still developing social and cultural life around them, simply by being first and in having a shape and solidity to copy.
Were all our pioneer forebearers active and faithful members of the churches they attended? A close reading of history says they were individually less so than you might think, but that same careful observation shows how unique and idiosyncratic elements of the denominations found on the frontier created much of the foundation for civil government. I’m looking forward to hearing Dick Shiels trace the marks of these formative influences on the community we continue to build.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have a story to add to the files of historic Licking County or for tomorrow’s tale, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Faith Works 03-05-05
By Jeff Gill
One of my little personal treasures is a carefully laminated newspaper photograph of Jim Short going in to vote. His wife, Virginia, is holding his arm, and a neighbor is holding the door of their local school where the polling place was set up.
Jim died not very long after this picture was taken, with the effects of Parkinson’s disease finally overwhelming his ability to breath. He knew he was likely to not see those he voted for sworn in, let alone serve out their terms, but this veteran of World War II knew where his place and duty lay, and his family and friends were going to help him fulfill his calling.
I think of Jim when I watch Pope John Paul II on television, a man I’ve never met but whose service, like Jim’s in the Marine Corps, has touched my life and for the better. My freedom and confidence in the world my family lives in is due to the steadfastness and faithfulness of those who have stood against Nazism and Communism.
And I laugh, and think of Jim again when I hear people ask, “will the Pope step down?” The former archbishop of Krakow has often said “Jesus did not step down from the cross” in answer to that question, a response which says volumes to those of us who have known individuals who put the greater good over personal comfort. Whether in combat, in ministry, or simply in getting out of their home for one of the last times to cast a vote for candidates they respected, there are heroes all around us, and John Paul, bishop of Rome, knows he represents many such lesser known folk even as he is also “the vicar of Christ.”
Parkinson’s is a disease, and like breathing, it will lead to death if given enough time. It does not carry away brain cells, or rewire your thoughts, but it does mask the emotions you still feel just as strongly behind a frozen set of facial muscles. The mask, the tremors, and the slow debilitation of walking and working leads far too many to assume it has mental effects. (Ask a blind person how tired they get of people talking slowly and too loudly to them!)
Recently, two movies won Academy Awards for best film and best foreign language film that affirm what some call the “right to die,” but many others would call the “right to assisted suicide.” One disability rights activist said the next morning after the Oscars: “Good thing there wasn’t an animated feature about putting us out of everyone else’s misery, or it would have been a clean sweep.”
I think the Pope would agree. He is aware and active and ready to serve, whether for a month or a year or possibly another decade. Whose misery is he needing to sooth: his own, or that of those who see a once vital man weighed down by illness and see possibilities for themselves they’d rather not confront?
May God bless John Paul for his faithful example before the world, and in another of the marvels of this modern age, if you’d like to say thank you this Lent, just drop “Il Papa” an e-mail through john_paul_II@vatican.va.
He can’t type anymore, but he can hear a “thank you” as well as any of us. Maybe even better.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. You can e-mail him at a less impressive address, disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
One of my little personal treasures is a carefully laminated newspaper photograph of Jim Short going in to vote. His wife, Virginia, is holding his arm, and a neighbor is holding the door of their local school where the polling place was set up.
Jim died not very long after this picture was taken, with the effects of Parkinson’s disease finally overwhelming his ability to breath. He knew he was likely to not see those he voted for sworn in, let alone serve out their terms, but this veteran of World War II knew where his place and duty lay, and his family and friends were going to help him fulfill his calling.
I think of Jim when I watch Pope John Paul II on television, a man I’ve never met but whose service, like Jim’s in the Marine Corps, has touched my life and for the better. My freedom and confidence in the world my family lives in is due to the steadfastness and faithfulness of those who have stood against Nazism and Communism.
And I laugh, and think of Jim again when I hear people ask, “will the Pope step down?” The former archbishop of Krakow has often said “Jesus did not step down from the cross” in answer to that question, a response which says volumes to those of us who have known individuals who put the greater good over personal comfort. Whether in combat, in ministry, or simply in getting out of their home for one of the last times to cast a vote for candidates they respected, there are heroes all around us, and John Paul, bishop of Rome, knows he represents many such lesser known folk even as he is also “the vicar of Christ.”
Parkinson’s is a disease, and like breathing, it will lead to death if given enough time. It does not carry away brain cells, or rewire your thoughts, but it does mask the emotions you still feel just as strongly behind a frozen set of facial muscles. The mask, the tremors, and the slow debilitation of walking and working leads far too many to assume it has mental effects. (Ask a blind person how tired they get of people talking slowly and too loudly to them!)
Recently, two movies won Academy Awards for best film and best foreign language film that affirm what some call the “right to die,” but many others would call the “right to assisted suicide.” One disability rights activist said the next morning after the Oscars: “Good thing there wasn’t an animated feature about putting us out of everyone else’s misery, or it would have been a clean sweep.”
I think the Pope would agree. He is aware and active and ready to serve, whether for a month or a year or possibly another decade. Whose misery is he needing to sooth: his own, or that of those who see a once vital man weighed down by illness and see possibilities for themselves they’d rather not confront?
May God bless John Paul for his faithful example before the world, and in another of the marvels of this modern age, if you’d like to say thank you this Lent, just drop “Il Papa” an e-mail through john_paul_II@vatican.va.
He can’t type anymore, but he can hear a “thank you” as well as any of us. Maybe even better.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. You can e-mail him at a less impressive address, disciple@voyager.net.
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