Faith Works 10-22-05
Jeff Gill
Understanding May Come After Respect
Rick Steeves was talking in my car the other day. Granted, he was on a public radio pledge drive, talking about the books that were incentives for the fund pitch, telling you how to travel around Europe cheaply and well.
Travel is one of those lifestyles to which I’d like to be accustomed, but some of what good travel writing – even in a guidebook! – can teach you is how to live closer to home. Finding the romance of the everyday, as well as a good deal for dinner, is useful just down the road and not just in a small Romanian village.
What caught my attention in Rick’s talk was a set of suggestions about respect when observing events that are strange to you: parades and processions, ceremonies and celebrations, whether on Sicily on down the Danube River.
Americans, Mr. Steeves gently suggested, are a bit "respect challenged" (my phrase, not his) in that we often can see the world as a very large version of the Main Street Parade in Disneyworld or the March of the Nations at EPCOT. Assuming that any spectacle is there first and foremost to take pictures of (yes, the Japanese have some issues here as travelers also), and even for us to plant our children in the midst of, we can be ruder than stink without quite meaning to.
Tonight’s Moonrise observance (weather willing, or perhaps Sunday night if clouds press in before 10 pm), starting from the parking lots of OSU-N and shuttling out to the Octagon Earthworks, is one such challenge right here in Licking County. For all the flyers and brochures and trained volunteers and staff all about, we worry that some will, almost out of reflex, start snapping flash pictures as the Native American spiritual leaders begin the procession into the viewing area.
For Native Americans, the simple hand drum and cluster of singers is what a crucifix or monstrance are to many others. Even those whose belief or theology isn’t oriented the same way have some sense that you don’t jump out into the aisle and blind the acolytes and priest holding sacred objects, but let’s not even talk about weddings . . .
Why is the singing around the steady beat of a drum sacred? Candidly, I can’t really explain it very well, even if I had a whole page and your full attention to do it. It isn’t my belief, either.
But we don’t need full understanding to understand that respect for small simple things is right and proper, whether in the old city of Kyoto, Japan or just off 33rd Street in Newark. And I firmly believe that our respect in such situations can carry back into our own worship with a deeper appreciation of what and why we hold certain moments or objects in reverence, whether it’s Grandma’s Bible on the hall table or the table in the front of our sanctuary.
See you when you get off the shuttle bus from OSU-N!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s been working hard for months on arrangements for the events described at www.octagonmoonrise.org. Or suggest column ideas for after this long-awaited weekend to disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 10-23-05
Jeff Gill
Whistling Past the Graveyard
This is a good time of year to visit a cemetery.
No, really. Not just for the Hallowe’en ambiance, but because this is the right time, according to many cultures around the world, to pay our respects and teach that same respect to the young for those who "rest in peace."
Of course, one of the tragedies of our modern era is how little peace so many cemeteries get, even those in churchyards or honored with historic monuments. Some tombstones are toppled by age and frost and the steady western winds of this landscape. Many more are tipped by the indifferent and malicious, some youthful and others less so, but united in a strange urge to strike out at those least able to defend themselves.
Folks often say that a society can best be measured by how well it cares for the weakest and most vulnerable. Certainly children and the elderly should top that list, but what about the dead? A community that tends their memorial plots well, in summer and in winter, year after year, is likely a healthy and decent place. Towns with neglected and vandalized graveyards are often one foot in the hole themselves.
And I believe that teaching the young (and old) about the significance and meaningfulness of the records carved in stone about our ancestors and forebearers, and affirming the importance even of markers no longer legible, can have a community building effect that reaches far past the work of Memorial Day and All Saints or All Souls Days, Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 on many Christian calendars.
In Mexico, as is becoming better known, this season of remembrance wraps up with the "Day of the Dead," an outright celebration where tombstones are cleaned, including those adjoining your own family plot if there’s no one left about to tend them. Meals are shared, sometimes even in the graveyard itself, and children are told stories of family and friends who lay at rest there.
Cedar Hill Cemetery is getting visibly better attention these days than I recall from not too long ago (thanks, Kaye!), and Newark’s civic leadership behind Israel Dille, my best friend from the 19th century, built the place as a restful scene for the living to visit as well as for the dead to rest.
Granville has worked very hard on the Old Colony Burying Ground since well before the current bicentennial of the village, and the play "Stones Falling Westward" told a small part of that honorable story of care and responsibility.
Hebron has made their very visible town cemetery much more attractive over the last decade, and Licking Township deserves credit for their attention to and attractive signage for the graveyards under their care.
How has your area taken care of the most vulnerable residents? Who might take a role in tending and tidying and recording the stories in stone of your locale?
The ancient earthworks of Newark represent the mix of success and work yet to be done in Licking County; the "necropolis" or central burying area has long since been destroyed by canal and railroad and commercial development, while we still have some of the majestic monuments that looked across that place toward the rising sun. Still, the question of how to properly handle human remains from that period of local prehistory remains. Whether you join the observance and salute to those long-ago but still visible residents this Saturday night (see www.octagonmoonrise.org for last-minute details), there is surely someplace near you where in this "All Hallows" season you can go one better than a simple candy tribute on "Hallow’s Eve" and respect the honored dead.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; don’t e-mail this week – just check out www.octagonmoonrise.org!
Jeff Gill
Whistling Past the Graveyard
This is a good time of year to visit a cemetery.
No, really. Not just for the Hallowe’en ambiance, but because this is the right time, according to many cultures around the world, to pay our respects and teach that same respect to the young for those who "rest in peace."
Of course, one of the tragedies of our modern era is how little peace so many cemeteries get, even those in churchyards or honored with historic monuments. Some tombstones are toppled by age and frost and the steady western winds of this landscape. Many more are tipped by the indifferent and malicious, some youthful and others less so, but united in a strange urge to strike out at those least able to defend themselves.
Folks often say that a society can best be measured by how well it cares for the weakest and most vulnerable. Certainly children and the elderly should top that list, but what about the dead? A community that tends their memorial plots well, in summer and in winter, year after year, is likely a healthy and decent place. Towns with neglected and vandalized graveyards are often one foot in the hole themselves.
And I believe that teaching the young (and old) about the significance and meaningfulness of the records carved in stone about our ancestors and forebearers, and affirming the importance even of markers no longer legible, can have a community building effect that reaches far past the work of Memorial Day and All Saints or All Souls Days, Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 on many Christian calendars.
In Mexico, as is becoming better known, this season of remembrance wraps up with the "Day of the Dead," an outright celebration where tombstones are cleaned, including those adjoining your own family plot if there’s no one left about to tend them. Meals are shared, sometimes even in the graveyard itself, and children are told stories of family and friends who lay at rest there.
Cedar Hill Cemetery is getting visibly better attention these days than I recall from not too long ago (thanks, Kaye!), and Newark’s civic leadership behind Israel Dille, my best friend from the 19th century, built the place as a restful scene for the living to visit as well as for the dead to rest.
Granville has worked very hard on the Old Colony Burying Ground since well before the current bicentennial of the village, and the play "Stones Falling Westward" told a small part of that honorable story of care and responsibility.
Hebron has made their very visible town cemetery much more attractive over the last decade, and Licking Township deserves credit for their attention to and attractive signage for the graveyards under their care.
How has your area taken care of the most vulnerable residents? Who might take a role in tending and tidying and recording the stories in stone of your locale?
The ancient earthworks of Newark represent the mix of success and work yet to be done in Licking County; the "necropolis" or central burying area has long since been destroyed by canal and railroad and commercial development, while we still have some of the majestic monuments that looked across that place toward the rising sun. Still, the question of how to properly handle human remains from that period of local prehistory remains. Whether you join the observance and salute to those long-ago but still visible residents this Saturday night (see www.octagonmoonrise.org for last-minute details), there is surely someplace near you where in this "All Hallows" season you can go one better than a simple candy tribute on "Hallow’s Eve" and respect the honored dead.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; don’t e-mail this week – just check out www.octagonmoonrise.org!
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Faith Works 10-15-05
Jeff Gill
So, Did They Worship Nature?
"So, Did They Worship Nature?" That was the question one person asked me after I gave a tour of the Octagon Earthworks not long ago, as a volunteer for the Ohio Historical Society, owners of the site.
I had shared the remarkable story of how recent research had rediscovered a fact hidden in plain sight by the builders 2000 years ago, the Native Americans known archaeologically as "Hopewell." The main axis of the geometric earthworks there, a circle almost as big as the "Great Circle" down by Heath, connected by double walls to a vast, 55 acre octagon, open at the corners with small barrier mounds at the breaks, points to the northwest horizon.
At that spot, the moon rises as far north as it ever does in an 18.6 year cycle. The other openings and walls of the figure point out the other main lunar rise and set points through that cycle. Millions of cubit feet of earth, moved by hand, placed with a modern engineer’s precision to orient earth to sky, for purposes we know no better than we know the name they called themselves two millenia ago.
Which made the visitor’s question a reasonable one, in a way. If there was no seasonal purpose for planting and crops involved (as we suspect for the Great Circle, a story in itself), then was this a religious thing entirely?
Perhaps, but that still wouldn’t make for "nature worship." My daily planner notes that Yom Kippur began at sundown a few days ago, ten days after Rosh Hashanah or "Head of the Year" in Hebrew. Those High Holy Days for the Jewish Faith move about a bit, because the ritual calendar is tied to lunar months. The great observance of the "Day of Atonement" Thursday closes a period marked by solar and lunar periods, but no one would argue that Yom Kippur is nature worship.
Right after Judaism marked 5766 in their new year, Islam began the month of fasting called Ramadan. In my calendar, that began Oct. 4, but it said "tentative," as does the close of the sunrise to sunset fasting Nov. 2. Tentative, because Ramadan does not begin until the new moon appears as a sliver (the crescent you see on so many Islamic flags and symbols), which varies from place to place on the globe. The local imam or ayatollah or leader will actually have to see the arc of moon in the sky to declare the beginning and conclusion of the fast, and the feasting which follows.
And the time of Ramadan moves about through the western 12 month calendar, because Islam uses a ritual calendar based on . . . yep, the moon.
What did the spiritual practice of Native Americans consist of 2000 years ago? We simply don’t know. In western cultures, the role of the world and the relationship of the visible world to spirits and higher powers has been complicated even within Christendom, and "tree hugger" now is the equivalent of the cheap critique of "nature worshipper" in another age. All faith traditions that I’m aware of point out the responsibility of believers to respect creation and the divine purposes behind the gift of life, and like most aspects of faith could stand to honored more in practice than in the breach.
We do not worship the moon or nature to want to mark our lives within the cycles drawn across the vastness of the night sky or across the natural landscape. Chartres Cathedral in France, a monument of medieval faith, has a special set of windows and plates in the floor to track the progress of solstices and equinoxes. Did they worship nature, or Nature’s God, by honoring the faithfulness of the heavenly bodies circling ‘round them?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he has been working for the last six months on helping plan the events around www.octagonmoonrise.org and hopes to see you next Sat., Oct. 22! Or just offer regrets at disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
So, Did They Worship Nature?
"So, Did They Worship Nature?" That was the question one person asked me after I gave a tour of the Octagon Earthworks not long ago, as a volunteer for the Ohio Historical Society, owners of the site.
I had shared the remarkable story of how recent research had rediscovered a fact hidden in plain sight by the builders 2000 years ago, the Native Americans known archaeologically as "Hopewell." The main axis of the geometric earthworks there, a circle almost as big as the "Great Circle" down by Heath, connected by double walls to a vast, 55 acre octagon, open at the corners with small barrier mounds at the breaks, points to the northwest horizon.
At that spot, the moon rises as far north as it ever does in an 18.6 year cycle. The other openings and walls of the figure point out the other main lunar rise and set points through that cycle. Millions of cubit feet of earth, moved by hand, placed with a modern engineer’s precision to orient earth to sky, for purposes we know no better than we know the name they called themselves two millenia ago.
Which made the visitor’s question a reasonable one, in a way. If there was no seasonal purpose for planting and crops involved (as we suspect for the Great Circle, a story in itself), then was this a religious thing entirely?
Perhaps, but that still wouldn’t make for "nature worship." My daily planner notes that Yom Kippur began at sundown a few days ago, ten days after Rosh Hashanah or "Head of the Year" in Hebrew. Those High Holy Days for the Jewish Faith move about a bit, because the ritual calendar is tied to lunar months. The great observance of the "Day of Atonement" Thursday closes a period marked by solar and lunar periods, but no one would argue that Yom Kippur is nature worship.
Right after Judaism marked 5766 in their new year, Islam began the month of fasting called Ramadan. In my calendar, that began Oct. 4, but it said "tentative," as does the close of the sunrise to sunset fasting Nov. 2. Tentative, because Ramadan does not begin until the new moon appears as a sliver (the crescent you see on so many Islamic flags and symbols), which varies from place to place on the globe. The local imam or ayatollah or leader will actually have to see the arc of moon in the sky to declare the beginning and conclusion of the fast, and the feasting which follows.
And the time of Ramadan moves about through the western 12 month calendar, because Islam uses a ritual calendar based on . . . yep, the moon.
What did the spiritual practice of Native Americans consist of 2000 years ago? We simply don’t know. In western cultures, the role of the world and the relationship of the visible world to spirits and higher powers has been complicated even within Christendom, and "tree hugger" now is the equivalent of the cheap critique of "nature worshipper" in another age. All faith traditions that I’m aware of point out the responsibility of believers to respect creation and the divine purposes behind the gift of life, and like most aspects of faith could stand to honored more in practice than in the breach.
We do not worship the moon or nature to want to mark our lives within the cycles drawn across the vastness of the night sky or across the natural landscape. Chartres Cathedral in France, a monument of medieval faith, has a special set of windows and plates in the floor to track the progress of solstices and equinoxes. Did they worship nature, or Nature’s God, by honoring the faithfulness of the heavenly bodies circling ‘round them?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he has been working for the last six months on helping plan the events around www.octagonmoonrise.org and hopes to see you next Sat., Oct. 22! Or just offer regrets at disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 10-16-05
Jeff Gill
Get Used To Agrotourism
Agrotourism is one of those fancy words that can slip into everyday conversation before you know it.
Maybe you haven’t used it yet, but I have a feeling Licking County will get used to it before long.
Tourism that looks at agriculture has quite a pedigree here. Lynd’s Fruit Farm has been hosting tours and greeting school groups in the fall for many years. I enjoyed being a chaperone with the Little Guy’s class last year, seeing the cider presses and selection conveyors and all the rows of trees narrowing together along the horizon. Other orchards have found that a tour, a chance to pick a bag o’ apples, and a cup of cider can, at a modest admission fee, help to cover the steadily rising costs of being in the agriculture business without being in the corporate orbit.
This summer we went back to visit my old hometown in northwest Indiana, and my folks said "Let’s go to Fair Oaks Dairy." OK, we said, since they sounded like they had enjoyed a recent visit to . . . whatever it was.
After a drive down into prairie country south of the Kankakee River, we started to see large clusters of huge new barns dotting the expansive landscape. Soon we saw signs that made it clear we were already in "Fair Oaks" territory.
What this operation is, a hundred miles south of Chicago and less than two hundred north of Indianapolis, is a giant milk cow operation, with tens of thousands of cows (bulls? Don’t need ‘em when you have syringes and a schedule) regularly climbing onto a vast 72 stall circular carousel.
The turntable was where they got milked, all under our gaze from a disease-controlled gallery only accessible from the bus bay, where we had heard a rolling tour from an area farmer who moonlighted (as so many farmers do all over) as a driver-guide, answering questions and steering us through the buildings and along the roads.
What’s so amazing here is that, on modest reflection, the inquiring mind realizes that a large business, wanting into a good market (Chicago-Indy) near a good range of forage crops and a near endless supply of sand for bedding (think Great Lakes shoreline), saw that their arrival could make for problems. Lots of acres (thousands) and lots of manure (tons) makes for a bigfoot presence in a small farming area. How do we show that we’re god neighbors and help folks see what we’re doing in a positive light?
This is America: the answer is charge admission. Oh, and put in a gift shop (lots of cheese) and a café (mostly ice cream and cheese sandwiches) with a museum only a PR staff could love, but skillfully done. My hat is off to them, and you can check them out along I-65 on the way to Chicago if you want, Buy the Colby and bring me a brick, too.
Have you been to Devine Farms or Pigeon Roost Farm for a pumpkin and a day o’ fun? Agrotourism. Stopped at a corn maze or haunted trail around central Ohio? Also agrotourism of a sort, if we’re talking about a farmer paying some of his bills by adding value to a farm visit with a few stray ghouls and sudden chain saw behind the crowd.
Even the amazing ancient history of the Newark Earthworks can participate. Here’s another fun word: paleoethnobotany. Those who study ancient plant utilization in archaeological settings, or paleoethnobotanists, have shown that this area was one of only a handful of places around the world (six, maybe eight tops) where agriculture began independently.
The selection and cultivation of specific seeds to increase yield and ensure nutrition and storage quality is what makes for beginning agriculture. The odd seed crops along with better known local plants like sunflower and squash are a unique gift of the folks who also left us the Octagon Earthworks, which we’ll celebrate next weekend on Saturday at OSU-N. We see the vast geometric shapes on the land that are left, but their microscopic heritage is no less worth of honor, and someone’s museum display or presentation.
More agrotourism.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is but an indifferent gardener, sadly. Tell of your sunflowers, squash, and other local produce at disciple@voyager.net, or see what’s happening at Newark Earthworks Day at www.octagonmoonrise.org.
Jeff Gill
Get Used To Agrotourism
Agrotourism is one of those fancy words that can slip into everyday conversation before you know it.
Maybe you haven’t used it yet, but I have a feeling Licking County will get used to it before long.
Tourism that looks at agriculture has quite a pedigree here. Lynd’s Fruit Farm has been hosting tours and greeting school groups in the fall for many years. I enjoyed being a chaperone with the Little Guy’s class last year, seeing the cider presses and selection conveyors and all the rows of trees narrowing together along the horizon. Other orchards have found that a tour, a chance to pick a bag o’ apples, and a cup of cider can, at a modest admission fee, help to cover the steadily rising costs of being in the agriculture business without being in the corporate orbit.
This summer we went back to visit my old hometown in northwest Indiana, and my folks said "Let’s go to Fair Oaks Dairy." OK, we said, since they sounded like they had enjoyed a recent visit to . . . whatever it was.
After a drive down into prairie country south of the Kankakee River, we started to see large clusters of huge new barns dotting the expansive landscape. Soon we saw signs that made it clear we were already in "Fair Oaks" territory.
What this operation is, a hundred miles south of Chicago and less than two hundred north of Indianapolis, is a giant milk cow operation, with tens of thousands of cows (bulls? Don’t need ‘em when you have syringes and a schedule) regularly climbing onto a vast 72 stall circular carousel.
The turntable was where they got milked, all under our gaze from a disease-controlled gallery only accessible from the bus bay, where we had heard a rolling tour from an area farmer who moonlighted (as so many farmers do all over) as a driver-guide, answering questions and steering us through the buildings and along the roads.
What’s so amazing here is that, on modest reflection, the inquiring mind realizes that a large business, wanting into a good market (Chicago-Indy) near a good range of forage crops and a near endless supply of sand for bedding (think Great Lakes shoreline), saw that their arrival could make for problems. Lots of acres (thousands) and lots of manure (tons) makes for a bigfoot presence in a small farming area. How do we show that we’re god neighbors and help folks see what we’re doing in a positive light?
This is America: the answer is charge admission. Oh, and put in a gift shop (lots of cheese) and a café (mostly ice cream and cheese sandwiches) with a museum only a PR staff could love, but skillfully done. My hat is off to them, and you can check them out along I-65 on the way to Chicago if you want, Buy the Colby and bring me a brick, too.
Have you been to Devine Farms or Pigeon Roost Farm for a pumpkin and a day o’ fun? Agrotourism. Stopped at a corn maze or haunted trail around central Ohio? Also agrotourism of a sort, if we’re talking about a farmer paying some of his bills by adding value to a farm visit with a few stray ghouls and sudden chain saw behind the crowd.
Even the amazing ancient history of the Newark Earthworks can participate. Here’s another fun word: paleoethnobotany. Those who study ancient plant utilization in archaeological settings, or paleoethnobotanists, have shown that this area was one of only a handful of places around the world (six, maybe eight tops) where agriculture began independently.
The selection and cultivation of specific seeds to increase yield and ensure nutrition and storage quality is what makes for beginning agriculture. The odd seed crops along with better known local plants like sunflower and squash are a unique gift of the folks who also left us the Octagon Earthworks, which we’ll celebrate next weekend on Saturday at OSU-N. We see the vast geometric shapes on the land that are left, but their microscopic heritage is no less worth of honor, and someone’s museum display or presentation.
More agrotourism.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is but an indifferent gardener, sadly. Tell of your sunflowers, squash, and other local produce at disciple@voyager.net, or see what’s happening at Newark Earthworks Day at www.octagonmoonrise.org.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Faith Works 10-8-05
Jeff Gill
Someone’s Doing Evangelism: Is It You?
"Unbinding the Gospel" is Martha Grace "Gay" Reese’s book that I told you about last week, which will be published by Chalice Press next year (www.cbp21.com).
This is the result of years of study under a grant from the Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis. They are nationally the No. 1 foundation for working with the health of American religious institutions and their leadership, so a proposal to examine evangelism in congregations got a warm reception.
When Gay wanted to look at how mainline/oldline Protestant churches did evangelism, specifically to the unchurched, she took seven faith groups (Methodist, Presby, Lutheran (ELCA), etc.). She then crunched their data to find the one concrete indicator that might point her to churches to look at closely. She decided to use five adult baptisms per year over three years, or fifteen over those three years total, as the benchmark. Starting with 30,000 congregations that were non-Southern and non-ethnic, she and her team "drilled down" through the various record keeping methods to find churches that met the "five adult baptisms a year for three years" criteria.
They found less than 150. That’s the bad news.
The good news is almost as surprising. When Gay and the gang analyzed the age of congregations who were doing effective outreach to the unchurched, we all expected the results to be skewed to new church starts. Makes sense, right?
But the median age of the church (not of the members, but since the congregation’s founding) that had those adult baptisms was 96. Not five, or ten (or one!), but 96. Since many Protestant churches in areas like Licking County are 100 and 200 years old, that’s an encouraging dispatch from the front lines. You DON’T have to be a new church start to reach the unchurched with the Gospel.
So what do you have to do? Well, Gay has seven criteria laid out neatly, but you’ll have to get the book to read the tidy version. Let me mush together some of the priorities as I’ve heard her describe them from her site visits and extended interviews with pastors and leaders of these churches.
BOOM: what difference does it make to be a Christian? 150 points off if you need a few moments to answer. Churches and leaders who are reaching the unchurched have an answer, right now. There are different ways to express an answer, but you better have one.
Another image Gay uses: Bandwidth. Churches that do evangelism see everything as evangelism, and they can explain how it’s evangelism, from selecting lighting for the nursery to how to train greeters to teachers for ministry. Narrow bandwidth is seeing just a few things you do as evangelistic.
And relationships are key – how the congregation builds relationships between believers and God, between each other, and with their mission community.
That’s just three points, and the others are pretty important (keeping focus, removing barriers, starting at the right point, support for pastors). Gay wraps up her talks by saying "Evangelism in the mainline context is impossible; it can only happen with miracles." Prayer is the open secret of evangelism, and the key to the door that matters.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher in central Ohio; reactions to these two stories can be sent to disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
Someone’s Doing Evangelism: Is It You?
"Unbinding the Gospel" is Martha Grace "Gay" Reese’s book that I told you about last week, which will be published by Chalice Press next year (www.cbp21.com).
This is the result of years of study under a grant from the Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis. They are nationally the No. 1 foundation for working with the health of American religious institutions and their leadership, so a proposal to examine evangelism in congregations got a warm reception.
When Gay wanted to look at how mainline/oldline Protestant churches did evangelism, specifically to the unchurched, she took seven faith groups (Methodist, Presby, Lutheran (ELCA), etc.). She then crunched their data to find the one concrete indicator that might point her to churches to look at closely. She decided to use five adult baptisms per year over three years, or fifteen over those three years total, as the benchmark. Starting with 30,000 congregations that were non-Southern and non-ethnic, she and her team "drilled down" through the various record keeping methods to find churches that met the "five adult baptisms a year for three years" criteria.
They found less than 150. That’s the bad news.
The good news is almost as surprising. When Gay and the gang analyzed the age of congregations who were doing effective outreach to the unchurched, we all expected the results to be skewed to new church starts. Makes sense, right?
But the median age of the church (not of the members, but since the congregation’s founding) that had those adult baptisms was 96. Not five, or ten (or one!), but 96. Since many Protestant churches in areas like Licking County are 100 and 200 years old, that’s an encouraging dispatch from the front lines. You DON’T have to be a new church start to reach the unchurched with the Gospel.
So what do you have to do? Well, Gay has seven criteria laid out neatly, but you’ll have to get the book to read the tidy version. Let me mush together some of the priorities as I’ve heard her describe them from her site visits and extended interviews with pastors and leaders of these churches.
BOOM: what difference does it make to be a Christian? 150 points off if you need a few moments to answer. Churches and leaders who are reaching the unchurched have an answer, right now. There are different ways to express an answer, but you better have one.
Another image Gay uses: Bandwidth. Churches that do evangelism see everything as evangelism, and they can explain how it’s evangelism, from selecting lighting for the nursery to how to train greeters to teachers for ministry. Narrow bandwidth is seeing just a few things you do as evangelistic.
And relationships are key – how the congregation builds relationships between believers and God, between each other, and with their mission community.
That’s just three points, and the others are pretty important (keeping focus, removing barriers, starting at the right point, support for pastors). Gay wraps up her talks by saying "Evangelism in the mainline context is impossible; it can only happen with miracles." Prayer is the open secret of evangelism, and the key to the door that matters.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher in central Ohio; reactions to these two stories can be sent to disciple@voyager.net.
Notes From My Knapsack 10-9-05
Jeff Gill
Mushrooms and Pumpkins
John Aristotle Phillips was an undergrad C student in physics at Princeton in the mid-1970’s. Sure, he had Freeman Dyson of the Manhattan Project as his advisor, but he was more interested in his pizza delivery business aborning than quantum mechanics.
Then he had a major project due that needed to make a big splash to overshadow his otherwise lackluster acdemic record, so he decided to design an atomic bomb using public record documents.
When John finished his design, Professor Dyson widened his eyes and was vague about whether it would work or not, but the project passed . . . and the government classified it shortly afterwards, which sounds like the Nuclear Housekeeping Seal of Disapproval to me.
Oh, and after some publicity got out about what he’d done, he kept getting late night phone calls from Pakistanis.
I’ve never forgotten that last fact, and how the otherwise ebullient Phillips was unnerved by the interest from a small, poor, hungry country for the design of a superior killing machine. His book, "Mushroom", came out in 1978 and reviewing it was my first paying piece of writing for print. The book is, sadly, out of print, but the reality remains: an average physics major can, with a little diligence and desperation, design an atomic bomb.
Getting the fissile material requires desperation of a different sort, but fellows with guns or box-cutters have proven remarkable adaptable in the last 25 years.
Speaking this Thursday night at Denison’s Swasey Chapel is Sen. Sam Nunn. With the still serving Sen. Richard Lugar (a graduate of DU), they worked hard at creating a program to secure Russian nuclear materials, an effort that is shamefully underfunded and generally unsupported. Since starting in 1991, the program is only half done.
8:00 pm on Oct. 13 you can hear Sen. Nunn, introduced by his friend and colleague Sen. Lugar, talking about this state of affairs and his movie . . . yes, and it stars another former senator, Fred Thompson of "Law & Order" and Watergate fame . . . a movie made by Nunn’s "Nuclear Threat Initiative" organization called "Last Best Chance." It will be shown repeatedly on HBO from Oct. 17, and the more people who watch it, the more public pressure that can be brought to bear on Congress and the Bush administration to secure ourselves from the threat of nuclear terrorism.
If you can get some of the Soviet surplus stuff in your homebuilt bomb, a nuclear reaction may be almost as easy as ordering a mushroom pizza. Let’s make sure we’re not making it that simple. And don’t even ask about dirty bombs. Come hear the senators, watch the movie, and let’s get this nailed down; a Princeton kid showed us the problem in 1978, and I’m thinking we should have it solved by now.
If you want a scare of a more transitory sort, head down to Devine Farms just east of Rt. 37 and US 40, right there on the National Road west of Hebron. The Lakewood Drama and Fine Arts club is running concessions for the weekends through Oct. 30, and they’re getting ready to put on "Meet Me in St. Louis" Nov. 18 & 19 (and I love their new logo with the knight’s helmets in a comic smile and dramatic frown).
Ralph and Charla have the barrel train rolling, plus plenty of other activities especially for small children, and the prices for both pumpkins and other stuff is great – the Little Guy goes for the armband every time, and runs amuck.
And after the children are put to a sound sleep after running around at Devine Farms, you can write a letter to your Congressfolk and tell them the only mushrooms you want to see are on your pizza.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have news or notes to pass along in this space, send them to disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
Mushrooms and Pumpkins
John Aristotle Phillips was an undergrad C student in physics at Princeton in the mid-1970’s. Sure, he had Freeman Dyson of the Manhattan Project as his advisor, but he was more interested in his pizza delivery business aborning than quantum mechanics.
Then he had a major project due that needed to make a big splash to overshadow his otherwise lackluster acdemic record, so he decided to design an atomic bomb using public record documents.
When John finished his design, Professor Dyson widened his eyes and was vague about whether it would work or not, but the project passed . . . and the government classified it shortly afterwards, which sounds like the Nuclear Housekeeping Seal of Disapproval to me.
Oh, and after some publicity got out about what he’d done, he kept getting late night phone calls from Pakistanis.
I’ve never forgotten that last fact, and how the otherwise ebullient Phillips was unnerved by the interest from a small, poor, hungry country for the design of a superior killing machine. His book, "Mushroom", came out in 1978 and reviewing it was my first paying piece of writing for print. The book is, sadly, out of print, but the reality remains: an average physics major can, with a little diligence and desperation, design an atomic bomb.
Getting the fissile material requires desperation of a different sort, but fellows with guns or box-cutters have proven remarkable adaptable in the last 25 years.
Speaking this Thursday night at Denison’s Swasey Chapel is Sen. Sam Nunn. With the still serving Sen. Richard Lugar (a graduate of DU), they worked hard at creating a program to secure Russian nuclear materials, an effort that is shamefully underfunded and generally unsupported. Since starting in 1991, the program is only half done.
8:00 pm on Oct. 13 you can hear Sen. Nunn, introduced by his friend and colleague Sen. Lugar, talking about this state of affairs and his movie . . . yes, and it stars another former senator, Fred Thompson of "Law & Order" and Watergate fame . . . a movie made by Nunn’s "Nuclear Threat Initiative" organization called "Last Best Chance." It will be shown repeatedly on HBO from Oct. 17, and the more people who watch it, the more public pressure that can be brought to bear on Congress and the Bush administration to secure ourselves from the threat of nuclear terrorism.
If you can get some of the Soviet surplus stuff in your homebuilt bomb, a nuclear reaction may be almost as easy as ordering a mushroom pizza. Let’s make sure we’re not making it that simple. And don’t even ask about dirty bombs. Come hear the senators, watch the movie, and let’s get this nailed down; a Princeton kid showed us the problem in 1978, and I’m thinking we should have it solved by now.
If you want a scare of a more transitory sort, head down to Devine Farms just east of Rt. 37 and US 40, right there on the National Road west of Hebron. The Lakewood Drama and Fine Arts club is running concessions for the weekends through Oct. 30, and they’re getting ready to put on "Meet Me in St. Louis" Nov. 18 & 19 (and I love their new logo with the knight’s helmets in a comic smile and dramatic frown).
Ralph and Charla have the barrel train rolling, plus plenty of other activities especially for small children, and the prices for both pumpkins and other stuff is great – the Little Guy goes for the armband every time, and runs amuck.
And after the children are put to a sound sleep after running around at Devine Farms, you can write a letter to your Congressfolk and tell them the only mushrooms you want to see are on your pizza.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have news or notes to pass along in this space, send them to disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Faith Works 10-1-05
Jeff Gill
Who’s Doing Evangelism?
Is anyone doing evangelism? That can sound like a silly question,
when door to door visitors, outreach ministries with Bibles and
tracts, and major media campaigns from a variety of groups, mostly Christian, are all over the place.
But among mainline/oldline Protestant Christian denominations
(Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, etc.) this is a
very real question. The gospels of the New Testament encourage
sharing the good news of Jesus as a primary mark of a faithful
body of believers, while showing in Acts and the letters following in Christian scripture many different ways of doing evangelism (an evangel, in Greek, is a messenger who brings . . . good news!).
Martha Grace "Gay" Reese is one of my best friends from seminary who has gone on to do some amazing work not only in parish ministry, but with studies and projects through the Lilly Endowment, a Midwest foundation interested in congregational vitality and religious leadership. She’s from Licking County originally (and I believe she still has some family in the area), but I would have wanted to share her most recent research even if she was from Outer Mongolia. She has a book coming out this spring, called "Unbinding the Gospel", but you get to see a preview right here.
Gay went to seven mainline/oldline denominations and gathered
data to look at churches that are doing effective evangelism.
Having been a lawyer before experiencing a call to ministry, she
was able to organize the very challenging work of taking data from seven totally different church structures and making some sense of it.
To prepare her study and have it be of use to the average
congregation, she wanted to focus down first on non-Southern
churches (where there is growth as much from population
pressure as any other reason) and non-ethnic congregations
(Hispanic and Asian-American bodies are exploding in size
across the 50 states). This gave her 30,000 churches to examine.
Then, given the variation in data reported, to find where evangelism was being done so she could visit there, Gay established a simple criteria. Over a three year period, if a church had an average of five adult baptisms a year, or fifteen over the three years, they could be considered. You can nitpick the definition all day, but this was the one that could be cross-compared and verified from the data available –
and sounds solid to me. When Gay met with a pastors' group, she asked them what they guessed were the number of faith communities that met these marks among the 30,000. "Oh, perhaps a third," said some, "right, about 10,000, but no more," agreed others. A few were more pessimistic, saying "it might be just a few thousand. Some were more skeptical: "Five percent, that’s, uh, 1,500."
Her study found no more than 150. 50 were confirmed, and she’s visited 37 of ‘em, and talked on the phone to many, many more. The fact that this came as a complete shock to the chiefs of the denominations is perhaps a clear sign of where the problem has reached, but not the root of the issue. The clergy gathering spent some time trying to figure out how this simply couldn’t be correct, even though the data around us, let alone in Gay’s study, is abundant.
Good news, which is what the old English term gospel or "god-spell" means, is also close at hand. There are 50 to 150 churches very like the congregations that are abundant across the Licking County landscape, and what they do to generate effective evangelism is not terribly complicated. Gay is curious to see how churches might respond to the positive part of her research.
Next week, I’ll let this Licking County product share her good news with you; for now, let’s mull over how we got to no more than 150 out of 30,000 churches managing five adult baptisms a year.
Reactions? E-mail me at disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
Who’s Doing Evangelism?
Is anyone doing evangelism? That can sound like a silly question,
when door to door visitors, outreach ministries with Bibles and
tracts, and major media campaigns from a variety of groups, mostly Christian, are all over the place.
But among mainline/oldline Protestant Christian denominations
(Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, etc.) this is a
very real question. The gospels of the New Testament encourage
sharing the good news of Jesus as a primary mark of a faithful
body of believers, while showing in Acts and the letters following in Christian scripture many different ways of doing evangelism (an evangel, in Greek, is a messenger who brings . . . good news!).
Martha Grace "Gay" Reese is one of my best friends from seminary who has gone on to do some amazing work not only in parish ministry, but with studies and projects through the Lilly Endowment, a Midwest foundation interested in congregational vitality and religious leadership. She’s from Licking County originally (and I believe she still has some family in the area), but I would have wanted to share her most recent research even if she was from Outer Mongolia. She has a book coming out this spring, called "Unbinding the Gospel", but you get to see a preview right here.
Gay went to seven mainline/oldline denominations and gathered
data to look at churches that are doing effective evangelism.
Having been a lawyer before experiencing a call to ministry, she
was able to organize the very challenging work of taking data from seven totally different church structures and making some sense of it.
To prepare her study and have it be of use to the average
congregation, she wanted to focus down first on non-Southern
churches (where there is growth as much from population
pressure as any other reason) and non-ethnic congregations
(Hispanic and Asian-American bodies are exploding in size
across the 50 states). This gave her 30,000 churches to examine.
Then, given the variation in data reported, to find where evangelism was being done so she could visit there, Gay established a simple criteria. Over a three year period, if a church had an average of five adult baptisms a year, or fifteen over the three years, they could be considered. You can nitpick the definition all day, but this was the one that could be cross-compared and verified from the data available –
and sounds solid to me. When Gay met with a pastors' group, she asked them what they guessed were the number of faith communities that met these marks among the 30,000. "Oh, perhaps a third," said some, "right, about 10,000, but no more," agreed others. A few were more pessimistic, saying "it might be just a few thousand. Some were more skeptical: "Five percent, that’s, uh, 1,500."
Her study found no more than 150. 50 were confirmed, and she’s visited 37 of ‘em, and talked on the phone to many, many more. The fact that this came as a complete shock to the chiefs of the denominations is perhaps a clear sign of where the problem has reached, but not the root of the issue. The clergy gathering spent some time trying to figure out how this simply couldn’t be correct, even though the data around us, let alone in Gay’s study, is abundant.
Good news, which is what the old English term gospel or "god-spell" means, is also close at hand. There are 50 to 150 churches very like the congregations that are abundant across the Licking County landscape, and what they do to generate effective evangelism is not terribly complicated. Gay is curious to see how churches might respond to the positive part of her research.
Next week, I’ll let this Licking County product share her good news with you; for now, let’s mull over how we got to no more than 150 out of 30,000 churches managing five adult baptisms a year.
Reactions? E-mail me at disciple@voyager.net.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 10-02-05
Jeff Gill
October is very nearly my favorite month of the year, among many other reasons because it means September is over.
And September is, in my mind, a challenging month because you spend it recovering from August. Yes, August.
December is the time when everyone talks about the financial drain, incessant eating opportunities (whether you’re looking for them or not, all high calorie), and the brutal schedule. All of which are true, but I think August can be harder because it’s the stealth December. We know and expect December to be jampacked frenetic stress-filled activity, but every year August lolls into sight, showing up in the distance as a slight figure obscured by heat ripples. Then it suddenly slams into you like an 18 wheeler out of control leaning across the shoulder throwing gravel even as you dive away.
At least for parents, and all those who work with children, August is not dress rehearsal or prep month: August is show time, baby. Back-to-school sales are July, because retail knows this too. The buildings are open, the letters are going out, the lists are posted, the supply sheet (check the back for more items) is out.
Sure, the Christmas season is often an assault on the credit card for the unwary or profligate, but what about school clothes, new lunch boxes, fees, shoes, doctor visits for getting back into the educational system?
And you’re doing the round of "end of summer" picnics, with all the expense implied by a meal meant to be rustic and simple. Hah, again I say, hah. You can eat at a fine restaurant in Columbus (gas cost included) for what you can end up laying out for picnic supplies, equipage, the items for a dish you rarely make other than picnics (one good side to a rush of them in a row; less waste of partially used ingredients you throw out next spring), and all the little extras you might need to bring or have in reserve.
Then look at what you can spend in a day at Hartford Fair (didn’t we still have a $20 left? No? Do you have any cash?), the Ohio State Fair, and the right true end of August (ignore the calendar) at Millersport for the Sweet Corn Festival. When the elephant ear booth starts taking debit card swipes, we’re all gonna be in trouble.
Fats and carbohydrates? Atkins’ last revenge comes with the usual spread at a potluck or pitch-in, let alone along a midway. Folks always worry – and indulge anyhow – about Holiday Season weight gain. I always feel like I add the most penalty weight right as I’m trying to enter the gate for the Autumnal Sweepstakes; ice cream socials to wrap the summer, the aforementioned picnics, receptions and galas beginning a new school year.
Then fall sports, Scouts both Girl and Boy, a range of activities starting and re-starting in and around school; churches having fall kick-offs, Rally Days, and big pushes to get back into the Sunday School round.
Labor Day would be a respite, except it becomes a straggling, hanging-on part of the August slog that won’t end, with a final flurry of yes, picnics, and other events to mark the end of let’s-get-on-with-it summer.
So to October, cooler air, turning leaves, and a schedule for children and families that has found a groove, of sorts. Homework is restored to a place of honor, if not dinner, and we all know which night of the week is which program or activity, and which one we set the trash out after, before closing the garage door.
Which leads me in a roundabout way to this: one actual delight in October is that you can start the path to an enjoyable December right now. In fact, you gotta do it now.
Wait until mid-November, and you’re just jumping on the treadmill of traditional tedium. The "Holidays," as the culture is calling the period from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, can be paced and controlled and managed, but you have to plan ahead, budget both time and money, and set limits now so you can enjoy the contents then.
Those who know me will not be surprised to hear the suggestion that you first prioritize religious observances, whatever yours are. Put them on the calendar (trust me, your faith community has their planning done through December) are work out from there.
Set an amount after looking at your income, outgo, and budget (don’t have a budget? Drop all of this paper and go make a rough one right away, or you really will hate the Holidays in January), and figure out how you have to stick with it. Cash in envelopes, one card in your wallet when you go shopping, lists, whatever works for you.
And put family time on that calendar before the shopping expeditions. Mark the day you’ll put the tree up and decorate it, mark the wrapping party with the kids, schedule the Hanukkah gathering with family, and then get the school and Scouts and sewing club schedule and mark them on, too.
December looks much more peaceful from an October vantage point, and using that perspective is how you keep it a season of peace. As to going overboard for Hallowe’en, we’ll talk about that later!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share your ideas for a peaceful preparation for the Christmas season at disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
October is very nearly my favorite month of the year, among many other reasons because it means September is over.
And September is, in my mind, a challenging month because you spend it recovering from August. Yes, August.
December is the time when everyone talks about the financial drain, incessant eating opportunities (whether you’re looking for them or not, all high calorie), and the brutal schedule. All of which are true, but I think August can be harder because it’s the stealth December. We know and expect December to be jampacked frenetic stress-filled activity, but every year August lolls into sight, showing up in the distance as a slight figure obscured by heat ripples. Then it suddenly slams into you like an 18 wheeler out of control leaning across the shoulder throwing gravel even as you dive away.
At least for parents, and all those who work with children, August is not dress rehearsal or prep month: August is show time, baby. Back-to-school sales are July, because retail knows this too. The buildings are open, the letters are going out, the lists are posted, the supply sheet (check the back for more items) is out.
Sure, the Christmas season is often an assault on the credit card for the unwary or profligate, but what about school clothes, new lunch boxes, fees, shoes, doctor visits for getting back into the educational system?
And you’re doing the round of "end of summer" picnics, with all the expense implied by a meal meant to be rustic and simple. Hah, again I say, hah. You can eat at a fine restaurant in Columbus (gas cost included) for what you can end up laying out for picnic supplies, equipage, the items for a dish you rarely make other than picnics (one good side to a rush of them in a row; less waste of partially used ingredients you throw out next spring), and all the little extras you might need to bring or have in reserve.
Then look at what you can spend in a day at Hartford Fair (didn’t we still have a $20 left? No? Do you have any cash?), the Ohio State Fair, and the right true end of August (ignore the calendar) at Millersport for the Sweet Corn Festival. When the elephant ear booth starts taking debit card swipes, we’re all gonna be in trouble.
Fats and carbohydrates? Atkins’ last revenge comes with the usual spread at a potluck or pitch-in, let alone along a midway. Folks always worry – and indulge anyhow – about Holiday Season weight gain. I always feel like I add the most penalty weight right as I’m trying to enter the gate for the Autumnal Sweepstakes; ice cream socials to wrap the summer, the aforementioned picnics, receptions and galas beginning a new school year.
Then fall sports, Scouts both Girl and Boy, a range of activities starting and re-starting in and around school; churches having fall kick-offs, Rally Days, and big pushes to get back into the Sunday School round.
Labor Day would be a respite, except it becomes a straggling, hanging-on part of the August slog that won’t end, with a final flurry of yes, picnics, and other events to mark the end of let’s-get-on-with-it summer.
So to October, cooler air, turning leaves, and a schedule for children and families that has found a groove, of sorts. Homework is restored to a place of honor, if not dinner, and we all know which night of the week is which program or activity, and which one we set the trash out after, before closing the garage door.
Which leads me in a roundabout way to this: one actual delight in October is that you can start the path to an enjoyable December right now. In fact, you gotta do it now.
Wait until mid-November, and you’re just jumping on the treadmill of traditional tedium. The "Holidays," as the culture is calling the period from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, can be paced and controlled and managed, but you have to plan ahead, budget both time and money, and set limits now so you can enjoy the contents then.
Those who know me will not be surprised to hear the suggestion that you first prioritize religious observances, whatever yours are. Put them on the calendar (trust me, your faith community has their planning done through December) are work out from there.
Set an amount after looking at your income, outgo, and budget (don’t have a budget? Drop all of this paper and go make a rough one right away, or you really will hate the Holidays in January), and figure out how you have to stick with it. Cash in envelopes, one card in your wallet when you go shopping, lists, whatever works for you.
And put family time on that calendar before the shopping expeditions. Mark the day you’ll put the tree up and decorate it, mark the wrapping party with the kids, schedule the Hanukkah gathering with family, and then get the school and Scouts and sewing club schedule and mark them on, too.
December looks much more peaceful from an October vantage point, and using that perspective is how you keep it a season of peace. As to going overboard for Hallowe’en, we’ll talk about that later!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share your ideas for a peaceful preparation for the Christmas season at disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Faith Works 9-24-05
Jeff Gill
Time and Timelessness in Worship
England’s vast and towering cathedrals have just under a thousand years of history and tradition built into them. This can be a challenge as well as a delight, for both today’s worshipers and historians, let alone tour guides.
In the 1100’s and 1200’s when most were dedicated and begun, the Anglican world was part of Roman Christendom, what we now call the Catholic Church. In the 1500’s the Church of England chose a different course than the Lutheran Reformation sweeping Europe, but still decisively split with the Bishop of Rome (aka "the Pope," or "il Papa" as father of the church on earth as vicar of Christ in heaven).
Today the Anglican Communion, represented in America by the Episcopal Church, is the tradition holding services in these cathedrals. Occasionally, sometimes with humor and infrequently with a touch of bitterness, an English Catholic will speak of "wanting our churches back," but with 500 years on either side of the usage, which is the right way to worship in a British cathedral?
We have an interesting and even more complicated challenge here in Licking County. While Canterbury and Westminster have not yet reached their 1000 mark, the ceremonial sites of the Newark Earthworks, the Great Circle by Heath and Octagon State Memorial off 33rd St., are acknowledged by scientists to be at or beyond 2000 years of age.
What is the proper way to acknowledge the worship dimension of sites built before written language in this area? We know the descendants of the builders, modern American Indians (some like that label, others Native American, most prefer a tribal name like Shawnee or Miami) still live in the Ohio Valley.
But like the Church of England over just a quarter of the two millennia represented by the Newark Earthworks, the modern version of ceremony and ritual may not accurately image what was accepted practice in the beginning.
For the organizers of the events taking place this fall around the Newark Earthworks, and the moonrise cycle of 18.6 years pointed out by the main axis of the octagon, the answer has been humility.
Humility is really the only reasonable approach to a structure of such age and significance, and humility is certainly called for in welcoming faithful people of so many traditions to a common event.
We know so little for certain about the valley between Raccoon Creek and the Licking River 2000 years ago, but we know that the movement of the moon and sun and stars were of crucial importance for life itself, in farming and harvest and surviving the winter. Rituals that kept the people together, and brought hope for the future, even simply the hope of another spring, had to be at their heart.
Beyond that is speculation, and the hints from living traditions around us still.
October 22 will give the public a chance to share, with humility, in a quiet simple observance of the moon rising at a predictable but irregular spot on the horizon, defined by earthen walls built by hand. Moonrises before and after that date will give Native Americans and scholars a chance to expand their circle of understanding of this monumental site, and of each other.
And if you are humbly interested in learning more, check out www.octagonmoonrise.org!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; you can offer to volunteer to help with the Oct. 22 events during the day or at the Octagon that night by e-mailing him at disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
Time and Timelessness in Worship
England’s vast and towering cathedrals have just under a thousand years of history and tradition built into them. This can be a challenge as well as a delight, for both today’s worshipers and historians, let alone tour guides.
In the 1100’s and 1200’s when most were dedicated and begun, the Anglican world was part of Roman Christendom, what we now call the Catholic Church. In the 1500’s the Church of England chose a different course than the Lutheran Reformation sweeping Europe, but still decisively split with the Bishop of Rome (aka "the Pope," or "il Papa" as father of the church on earth as vicar of Christ in heaven).
Today the Anglican Communion, represented in America by the Episcopal Church, is the tradition holding services in these cathedrals. Occasionally, sometimes with humor and infrequently with a touch of bitterness, an English Catholic will speak of "wanting our churches back," but with 500 years on either side of the usage, which is the right way to worship in a British cathedral?
We have an interesting and even more complicated challenge here in Licking County. While Canterbury and Westminster have not yet reached their 1000 mark, the ceremonial sites of the Newark Earthworks, the Great Circle by Heath and Octagon State Memorial off 33rd St., are acknowledged by scientists to be at or beyond 2000 years of age.
What is the proper way to acknowledge the worship dimension of sites built before written language in this area? We know the descendants of the builders, modern American Indians (some like that label, others Native American, most prefer a tribal name like Shawnee or Miami) still live in the Ohio Valley.
But like the Church of England over just a quarter of the two millennia represented by the Newark Earthworks, the modern version of ceremony and ritual may not accurately image what was accepted practice in the beginning.
For the organizers of the events taking place this fall around the Newark Earthworks, and the moonrise cycle of 18.6 years pointed out by the main axis of the octagon, the answer has been humility.
Humility is really the only reasonable approach to a structure of such age and significance, and humility is certainly called for in welcoming faithful people of so many traditions to a common event.
We know so little for certain about the valley between Raccoon Creek and the Licking River 2000 years ago, but we know that the movement of the moon and sun and stars were of crucial importance for life itself, in farming and harvest and surviving the winter. Rituals that kept the people together, and brought hope for the future, even simply the hope of another spring, had to be at their heart.
Beyond that is speculation, and the hints from living traditions around us still.
October 22 will give the public a chance to share, with humility, in a quiet simple observance of the moon rising at a predictable but irregular spot on the horizon, defined by earthen walls built by hand. Moonrises before and after that date will give Native Americans and scholars a chance to expand their circle of understanding of this monumental site, and of each other.
And if you are humbly interested in learning more, check out www.octagonmoonrise.org!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; you can offer to volunteer to help with the Oct. 22 events during the day or at the Octagon that night by e-mailing him at disciple@voyager.net.
Notes From My Knapsack 9-24-05
Jeff Gill
Politicians May Not Like Labels, But…
Civics in high school has a reputation for being a less than interesting class, but I’ve been lucky to have some great teachers. Mr. Ciciora was one of them, with a vivid taste for examples that, whether they were his own or borrowed, were told with such flair that they stuck with this student, at least, for 25 years and more.
He was explaining one day the political spectrum to us, from reactionary to conservative to liberal to radical, and told us this story I pass along to you.
Four people were walking through the desert, survivors of a plane crash, one each of the four ideologies I just mentioned. They are hot, tired, thirsty, and uncertain of where they are. Upon cresting a dune, they see before them a spring in an oasis, with a dam creating a small pond.
The radical runs down the slope, and dives straight into the water, paddling about with delight. The liberal is a bit more cautious, walking to the water’s edge, removing shoes and rolling up pants to wade about in the shallows, looking for hazards.
The conservative sits on the bank, and after a bit takes off shoes and socks to place one foot at a time in the water, commenting that no one knows what the water quality or inhabitants of the pond really are, and that caution is in order.
And the reactionary? The reactionary is over by the dam, trying to figure out how to tear it down and restore things to how they were.
Does that make political groups more understandable? I’ve long found myself thinking about the oasis and four walkers in trying to make sense of what political leaders are getting at on particular issues.
One stance more popular than sensible these days is the disavowal of all party labels, claiming that one is an "independent," which covers a multitude of sins.
With all due respect to true independents, Greens, Socialists, and the like, there is a current debate that shows how useful the two major party "labels" can be in understanding political assumptions.
The county commissioners are split right now over the sales tax issue. Some have expressed surprise that the two Republicans, Tim Bubb and Doug Smith, would support the direct application of the increase versus the Democrat plea from Marcia Phelps to let the voters decide directly.
Tax policy aside, this all makes sense to me. Republican is a term derived from the Latin, "res publica," or "things pertaining to the public good." A republican form of government is one where the voters select representatives to handle the "public matters" for them, as trustees, and if they do not like the handling (tax increases or what have you) they vote them out, but don’t vote on specific public things themselves.
Democrats derive from the Greek "demos," or "the people." A democrat wants the people to vote on just about everything they reasonably can – while good people can disagree as fellow democrats on what is reasonable (should we vote on whether or not there’s fire protection, for instance).
As Americans, we live in a democratic republic, combining the best (we trust) of Greece and Rome. For the Republicans to take responsibility for handling a complex question of the public good, and run the risk of losing the next election, they are acting in line with their core principles; for the Democrats to want a plebiscite (Greek, "plebs," or everyday folks like youse and meese) makes equal sense.
Now, I’d like the Dems to explain just what they’d cut if they don’t get to increase revenue for the county, but that’s moving from etymology to hardball, and I’ll leave that to the front pages!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your civics class experience at disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
Politicians May Not Like Labels, But…
Civics in high school has a reputation for being a less than interesting class, but I’ve been lucky to have some great teachers. Mr. Ciciora was one of them, with a vivid taste for examples that, whether they were his own or borrowed, were told with such flair that they stuck with this student, at least, for 25 years and more.
He was explaining one day the political spectrum to us, from reactionary to conservative to liberal to radical, and told us this story I pass along to you.
Four people were walking through the desert, survivors of a plane crash, one each of the four ideologies I just mentioned. They are hot, tired, thirsty, and uncertain of where they are. Upon cresting a dune, they see before them a spring in an oasis, with a dam creating a small pond.
The radical runs down the slope, and dives straight into the water, paddling about with delight. The liberal is a bit more cautious, walking to the water’s edge, removing shoes and rolling up pants to wade about in the shallows, looking for hazards.
The conservative sits on the bank, and after a bit takes off shoes and socks to place one foot at a time in the water, commenting that no one knows what the water quality or inhabitants of the pond really are, and that caution is in order.
And the reactionary? The reactionary is over by the dam, trying to figure out how to tear it down and restore things to how they were.
Does that make political groups more understandable? I’ve long found myself thinking about the oasis and four walkers in trying to make sense of what political leaders are getting at on particular issues.
One stance more popular than sensible these days is the disavowal of all party labels, claiming that one is an "independent," which covers a multitude of sins.
With all due respect to true independents, Greens, Socialists, and the like, there is a current debate that shows how useful the two major party "labels" can be in understanding political assumptions.
The county commissioners are split right now over the sales tax issue. Some have expressed surprise that the two Republicans, Tim Bubb and Doug Smith, would support the direct application of the increase versus the Democrat plea from Marcia Phelps to let the voters decide directly.
Tax policy aside, this all makes sense to me. Republican is a term derived from the Latin, "res publica," or "things pertaining to the public good." A republican form of government is one where the voters select representatives to handle the "public matters" for them, as trustees, and if they do not like the handling (tax increases or what have you) they vote them out, but don’t vote on specific public things themselves.
Democrats derive from the Greek "demos," or "the people." A democrat wants the people to vote on just about everything they reasonably can – while good people can disagree as fellow democrats on what is reasonable (should we vote on whether or not there’s fire protection, for instance).
As Americans, we live in a democratic republic, combining the best (we trust) of Greece and Rome. For the Republicans to take responsibility for handling a complex question of the public good, and run the risk of losing the next election, they are acting in line with their core principles; for the Democrats to want a plebiscite (Greek, "plebs," or everyday folks like youse and meese) makes equal sense.
Now, I’d like the Dems to explain just what they’d cut if they don’t get to increase revenue for the county, but that’s moving from etymology to hardball, and I’ll leave that to the front pages!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your civics class experience at disciple@voyager.net.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 9-18-05
Jeff Gill
Easier than You Think
Can you really help people a thousand miles away, who have literally lost everything of earthly value they’ve ever owned?
So far, Licking County seems to have answered with a resounding "Yes," loading trailers with vital necessities, sending those irreplaceable checks, and eating spaghetti at Cherry Valley Lodge (and hooray for all those Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts helping out for that delightful fundraiser).
Church groups are working their usual disaster relief networks, and the American Red Cross is doing their usual great job arriving the usual five minutes behind the Salvation Army, which knows how to get hot coffee into the darndest places right after the storm breaks. (PS – Did you know that the Salvation Army had a truck at 9/11 so fast it got largely demolished when the towers went down?)
Commentators have started to hint at the usual concerns of "compassion fatigue," that Americans will "grow weary with well doing," even though all indicators point to the contrary. Now, if you accuse us as a nation of having a short attention span, maybe so.
It can get a little tiring, though, when the stories pile up of tragedy and loss as hopelessness, and you look at that fifty dollar check and think, "is this just a tiny drop into a deep chasm of need?"
Well of course it is. Just a drop. Like the rains of Hurricane Katrina, made up of tiny drops, too. Put enough little drops together and blow on it, and you get a levee breaching storm surge leaving destruction and devastation in its wake; put enough little drops of compassion together, and you get a countersurge that is already leaving construction and redevelopment in its wake.
What we definitely don’t want to weary of, on the other hand, is the recollection that what we are doing right here in Licking County is actually part of making a difference in the Gulf Coast region. I’ve no doubt told this story too often as it is, but here we go again: when a number of us were working towards the effort that turned into the Licking County Coalition for Housing, and things were going slow and hard, I was part of a youth trip to Washington DC.
Our group, as a church fellowship program, visited one of the largest homeless shelters in the city, smack between the White House and the Capitol, right along our way just a block north. We saw the signs reminding us that most of the residents had jobs, and heard the residents tell us a little of their stories that were temporarily leading through this bleak, but hope-tinged building.
Then we went to the staff quarters, where many of the workers there lived as part of the shelter itself. Carol, the head of the place, told us the story in tones that said she’d run this tape many times before.
And in the Q&A, after a bunch of the kids had asked the usual questions, I asked her, thinking of collection drives and fundraisers, "what can we do to help you folks out?"
Her answer was immediate. "Go home and take care of your own homeless there so they don’t think they have to come here!"
Which is what we did.
And the point for Katrina is: if we support our local Red Cross and Salvation Army and food pantries and that Housing Coalition that did get off the ground, thank you very much, we are reducing the load in other parts of the country, which is just what they need.
So send checks and flood buckets and health kits, but also walk in the CROP Walk Oct. 16, and go to the Phil Dirt and the Dozers concert for the Housing Coalition Nov. 11. When we take care of our own, we are also helping in the recovery nationwide.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tale at disciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Faith Works 9-17-05
Jeff Gill
Can a Hurricane Blow Away God?
It is certainly possible that consciousness is just an echo effect of memory and reactions bouncing around inside my cranium. I am perfectly aware of the case to be made for how protein chains are chasing each other in chemical tag teams, spiraling into cells and organelles and larger forms from slime molds to humans. And there are some people, like looters of nursing homes while the patients are still in the beds, who embody a good argument for the basic infrequency of goodness and the non-existence of altruism, other than as a cover for protecting the survival of one’s own DNA.
Yep, I know all of that, and have assessed the various narratives that claim to account for the universe as it is, and have chosen to believe in a storyline that includes higher purposes, lasting meaning, and enduring values. That story includes a person named Jesus, who embodies what I think that story says to us. That is where my certainty rests.
I am very aware of, and am respectful of other narratives that present answers to who we are and what we’re here to do. Where I’ve placed my confidence is not where others choose to, and all I can do is live out my understandings and share them when the opportunity arises.
Which comes up because of e-mails I’ve gotten asking "how can you believe in God (OK, in fairness, they typed "god") when he allows something like what happened in New Orleans?" A fair question, but without meaning to be difficult, I think they’re asking what kind of God I believe in, given that this hypothetical "god" must have the power at least to allow hurricanes if the questioner thinks this "god" could have prevented it. Do I believe in a powerful God who is good, but allows evil? Or a loving God who is impotent in the face of nature? (or "Nature"?)
"Stones Falling Westward" helps me answer this question with a question, in the Biblical tradition of the Book of Job. This historical pageant, which I hope gets repeated, was put on in the Old Colony Burying Ground as part of Granville’s bicentennial observances. Nine players and many more supporting crew told the story of Charles Webster Bryant in the last summer before his death in 1886.
He transcribed the tombstones as they faded and fell, even then, and helped create both the Granville Historical Society and was a charter member of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, now OHS. His interest in preserving the past is embodied by those who lay under those stones, talking to him as a friend whether he had known them in life or not.
And he is our friend today as well, having pressed urgently for clean water and effective sewerage long before such causes were popular; he died of a water-borne illness just as the public system came "on line."
Is this story simple grinning-skull irony, despairing hopeless tragedy, or simply the duty of the present to respect a past which still lives within us, accountable to a future we can barely imagine? Do we have duties to both past and future, or shall we live only for the moment as all that we can know and experience?
"Stones Falling Westward" had no sectarian or denominational purpose, but it told Bryant’s story in a way that reminded me of where my certainty rests. No storm or flood or disease can topple that faith to the ground.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tale at disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
Easier than You Think
Can you really help people a thousand miles away, who have literally lost everything of earthly value they’ve ever owned?
So far, Licking County seems to have answered with a resounding "Yes," loading trailers with vital necessities, sending those irreplaceable checks, and eating spaghetti at Cherry Valley Lodge (and hooray for all those Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts helping out for that delightful fundraiser).
Church groups are working their usual disaster relief networks, and the American Red Cross is doing their usual great job arriving the usual five minutes behind the Salvation Army, which knows how to get hot coffee into the darndest places right after the storm breaks. (PS – Did you know that the Salvation Army had a truck at 9/11 so fast it got largely demolished when the towers went down?)
Commentators have started to hint at the usual concerns of "compassion fatigue," that Americans will "grow weary with well doing," even though all indicators point to the contrary. Now, if you accuse us as a nation of having a short attention span, maybe so.
It can get a little tiring, though, when the stories pile up of tragedy and loss as hopelessness, and you look at that fifty dollar check and think, "is this just a tiny drop into a deep chasm of need?"
Well of course it is. Just a drop. Like the rains of Hurricane Katrina, made up of tiny drops, too. Put enough little drops together and blow on it, and you get a levee breaching storm surge leaving destruction and devastation in its wake; put enough little drops of compassion together, and you get a countersurge that is already leaving construction and redevelopment in its wake.
What we definitely don’t want to weary of, on the other hand, is the recollection that what we are doing right here in Licking County is actually part of making a difference in the Gulf Coast region. I’ve no doubt told this story too often as it is, but here we go again: when a number of us were working towards the effort that turned into the Licking County Coalition for Housing, and things were going slow and hard, I was part of a youth trip to Washington DC.
Our group, as a church fellowship program, visited one of the largest homeless shelters in the city, smack between the White House and the Capitol, right along our way just a block north. We saw the signs reminding us that most of the residents had jobs, and heard the residents tell us a little of their stories that were temporarily leading through this bleak, but hope-tinged building.
Then we went to the staff quarters, where many of the workers there lived as part of the shelter itself. Carol, the head of the place, told us the story in tones that said she’d run this tape many times before.
And in the Q&A, after a bunch of the kids had asked the usual questions, I asked her, thinking of collection drives and fundraisers, "what can we do to help you folks out?"
Her answer was immediate. "Go home and take care of your own homeless there so they don’t think they have to come here!"
Which is what we did.
And the point for Katrina is: if we support our local Red Cross and Salvation Army and food pantries and that Housing Coalition that did get off the ground, thank you very much, we are reducing the load in other parts of the country, which is just what they need.
So send checks and flood buckets and health kits, but also walk in the CROP Walk Oct. 16, and go to the Phil Dirt and the Dozers concert for the Housing Coalition Nov. 11. When we take care of our own, we are also helping in the recovery nationwide.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tale at disciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Faith Works 9-17-05
Jeff Gill
Can a Hurricane Blow Away God?
It is certainly possible that consciousness is just an echo effect of memory and reactions bouncing around inside my cranium. I am perfectly aware of the case to be made for how protein chains are chasing each other in chemical tag teams, spiraling into cells and organelles and larger forms from slime molds to humans. And there are some people, like looters of nursing homes while the patients are still in the beds, who embody a good argument for the basic infrequency of goodness and the non-existence of altruism, other than as a cover for protecting the survival of one’s own DNA.
Yep, I know all of that, and have assessed the various narratives that claim to account for the universe as it is, and have chosen to believe in a storyline that includes higher purposes, lasting meaning, and enduring values. That story includes a person named Jesus, who embodies what I think that story says to us. That is where my certainty rests.
I am very aware of, and am respectful of other narratives that present answers to who we are and what we’re here to do. Where I’ve placed my confidence is not where others choose to, and all I can do is live out my understandings and share them when the opportunity arises.
Which comes up because of e-mails I’ve gotten asking "how can you believe in God (OK, in fairness, they typed "god") when he allows something like what happened in New Orleans?" A fair question, but without meaning to be difficult, I think they’re asking what kind of God I believe in, given that this hypothetical "god" must have the power at least to allow hurricanes if the questioner thinks this "god" could have prevented it. Do I believe in a powerful God who is good, but allows evil? Or a loving God who is impotent in the face of nature? (or "Nature"?)
"Stones Falling Westward" helps me answer this question with a question, in the Biblical tradition of the Book of Job. This historical pageant, which I hope gets repeated, was put on in the Old Colony Burying Ground as part of Granville’s bicentennial observances. Nine players and many more supporting crew told the story of Charles Webster Bryant in the last summer before his death in 1886.
He transcribed the tombstones as they faded and fell, even then, and helped create both the Granville Historical Society and was a charter member of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, now OHS. His interest in preserving the past is embodied by those who lay under those stones, talking to him as a friend whether he had known them in life or not.
And he is our friend today as well, having pressed urgently for clean water and effective sewerage long before such causes were popular; he died of a water-borne illness just as the public system came "on line."
Is this story simple grinning-skull irony, despairing hopeless tragedy, or simply the duty of the present to respect a past which still lives within us, accountable to a future we can barely imagine? Do we have duties to both past and future, or shall we live only for the moment as all that we can know and experience?
"Stones Falling Westward" had no sectarian or denominational purpose, but it told Bryant’s story in a way that reminded me of where my certainty rests. No storm or flood or disease can topple that faith to the ground.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tale at disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Faith Works 9-10-05
Jeff Gill
A Stitch in Time
Louis Armstrong Airport, the gateway from above for New Orleans. I once did a number of clergy spiritual life retreats down in those parts, and remember an airy, well-lit, but cramped terminal with plenty of the usual terrazzo and tile, but not enough room to maneuver when just two planes came in at the same time.
Now the airport is a giant triage ward, the staging area for amazing numbers of helicopters and outbound planes evacuating people who just minutes before had been clinging to chimneys, staring down into dark waters. Some, many of them said they hadn’t been on a plane before. Now they were above the flood, but heading into the surge of uncertainty: where they are going, and when (or if) they will return.
That kind of social and personal dislocation, more than the material losses, is what church groups of all faiths and denominations are well situated to handle. Granted, most congregations are, like the local and state governments it turns out, better at fires and bankruptcies and narrower swaths of loss.
But the very thing that a new job or a new set of clothes or even a new house can’t deal with is what faith communities know they have to be to talk about. What just happened to me? Am I going to be OK? Where is my future heading? Does anyone care about my kids, my grandkids?
Plenty of religious leaders have already taken on the sheer fact of Katrina, the killer hurricane itself; we talk about why God would allow such evil, natural or out of human hearts as we saw in the storm’s wake, and what kind of cosmos we’re living in, anyhow. Our answers may not be entirely satisfying, but we establish early on, along with our fellow sufferer Job, that it is absolutely all right to ask "Why?"
For the shock of dislocation (break that word down, and think about it the next time you use it), a sense of place is re-established when worshipers gather on a scoured concrete pad, marked by one lone altar rail, and re-invoke sacred space. It also is established when people arrive somewhere for the first time, and see religious symbols or hear familiar words of hope, and against all expectations start to feel at home.
And then we add the sacks of crisp, clean shirts, bins full of shoes, and most miraculously of all, a hand reaching out with a duplicate set of house keys, saying "Welcome to our home."
We send our money, and a fortunate few represent us in truck cabs or behind chain saws down in the heart of former darkness. Our contributions do make a difference, not so much on a tote board to reach a fiscal goal, but as parts of a rewoven social fabric that got blown into shreds. The southern border of our national quilt got torn, but none of us is so far away as to not be able to hold fast, balance the frame, while hands closer to the task tack the edges back together.
There will be plenty of finishing work as we go along.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send your tales of relief and recovery to disciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Notes From My Knapsack 9-11-05
Jeff Gill
9-11, Again
A national disaster, catching us all unawares, but looking almost obvious in retrospect.
There will be plenty (plenty!) of time for recriminations in the interminable hearings and investigations to come. I hope the necessary autopsy work doesn’t too quickly overshadow the absolutely amazing job the United States Coast Guard, US Navy, and Marine Corps has done all along the Gulf Coast and into the heart of New Orleans.
Something like 10,000 people were picked off of rooftops and out of trees by helicopter by those folks, with over 6,000 flight operations starting when Hurricane Katrina’s winds dropped to 45 mph. 45 mph? I don’t want to be on a 747 in 45 mph winds, let alone a helo hovering over snaggled tree limbs and (mostly) dead electrical wires.
So we know someone was set and ready to go, and many lives in danger were saved. More could and should have been, and we’ll all get to talk about that.
We should also not forget to tell each other the tales of relief and restoration that our own citizens will be involved in; I know some made it down to Memphis and Jackson MS in the last weekend, and their stories and our opportunities for being involved in the long struggle ahead shouldn’t be forgotten. I promise to have some of those bits and pieces of good news out of the heart of darkness very soon; but . . .
Call me Little Mary Sunshine, but I want to take our central Ohio attention into the eye of that storm again, or rather, our own storm to come.
Yep, tornadoes pass through here from time to time. And I recall helping heave sodden furniture out of homes in Marne not all that long ago (OK, 15 years, but still). But does anyone remember 1811?
The New Madrid, Missouri earthquakes took place over three months, ending only in February of 1812, and shook buildings as far away as Washington DC where it is said to have broken windows in the White House. The Mississippi River actually flowed backwards for a time. Hundred were killed, and thousands were left homeless in the dead of winter.
Geoscientists say we’re overdue for another quake across the center of the US.
So while this is all fresh on our mind, can we ask ourselves: if we were to a new New Madrid disaster like Jackson MS is to this one, how would we handle it? Are we ready?
Or tighten the focus knob down a little more, while this is a topic of conversation. Does your church, your activity group, wherever you hang out with numbers of others, have a plan for what to do and who does it when there’s a medical emergency? If someone grabs their chest and slumps to the floor, are there some folks who know what to do in that particular place?
And to click down to the smallest level: when you go into a public place, do you look around for where the exits are? At home, does your family have an escape plan if the steps are on fire; a meeting place outside to count heads? How are your flashlight batteries these days? Got spares? Do they work in the radio; you know, the emergency radio you keep handy for a major power outage? Next to the first aid kit, right?
The end of year ice storm helped many in Licking County realize that even in our tidy pocket of the Midwest, where tornadoes are relatively infrequent, hurricanes are downgraded hundreds of miles before they rain on us, and most nasty flooding is closer to the Ohio River – disaster that lasts days and weeks can hit us here, too.
But have we translated that closer awareness into a plan, a preparedness for action? Let’s not wait to blame some higher authority for not doing our part. Make sure that you, your home, your organizations have their disaster plan in place; when we do that, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put together our response plan for housing half of St. Louis one of these days.
There, you feel better now, don’tcha?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send your tales of relief and recovery to disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
A Stitch in Time
Louis Armstrong Airport, the gateway from above for New Orleans. I once did a number of clergy spiritual life retreats down in those parts, and remember an airy, well-lit, but cramped terminal with plenty of the usual terrazzo and tile, but not enough room to maneuver when just two planes came in at the same time.
Now the airport is a giant triage ward, the staging area for amazing numbers of helicopters and outbound planes evacuating people who just minutes before had been clinging to chimneys, staring down into dark waters. Some, many of them said they hadn’t been on a plane before. Now they were above the flood, but heading into the surge of uncertainty: where they are going, and when (or if) they will return.
That kind of social and personal dislocation, more than the material losses, is what church groups of all faiths and denominations are well situated to handle. Granted, most congregations are, like the local and state governments it turns out, better at fires and bankruptcies and narrower swaths of loss.
But the very thing that a new job or a new set of clothes or even a new house can’t deal with is what faith communities know they have to be to talk about. What just happened to me? Am I going to be OK? Where is my future heading? Does anyone care about my kids, my grandkids?
Plenty of religious leaders have already taken on the sheer fact of Katrina, the killer hurricane itself; we talk about why God would allow such evil, natural or out of human hearts as we saw in the storm’s wake, and what kind of cosmos we’re living in, anyhow. Our answers may not be entirely satisfying, but we establish early on, along with our fellow sufferer Job, that it is absolutely all right to ask "Why?"
For the shock of dislocation (break that word down, and think about it the next time you use it), a sense of place is re-established when worshipers gather on a scoured concrete pad, marked by one lone altar rail, and re-invoke sacred space. It also is established when people arrive somewhere for the first time, and see religious symbols or hear familiar words of hope, and against all expectations start to feel at home.
And then we add the sacks of crisp, clean shirts, bins full of shoes, and most miraculously of all, a hand reaching out with a duplicate set of house keys, saying "Welcome to our home."
We send our money, and a fortunate few represent us in truck cabs or behind chain saws down in the heart of former darkness. Our contributions do make a difference, not so much on a tote board to reach a fiscal goal, but as parts of a rewoven social fabric that got blown into shreds. The southern border of our national quilt got torn, but none of us is so far away as to not be able to hold fast, balance the frame, while hands closer to the task tack the edges back together.
There will be plenty of finishing work as we go along.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send your tales of relief and recovery to disciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Notes From My Knapsack 9-11-05
Jeff Gill
9-11, Again
A national disaster, catching us all unawares, but looking almost obvious in retrospect.
There will be plenty (plenty!) of time for recriminations in the interminable hearings and investigations to come. I hope the necessary autopsy work doesn’t too quickly overshadow the absolutely amazing job the United States Coast Guard, US Navy, and Marine Corps has done all along the Gulf Coast and into the heart of New Orleans.
Something like 10,000 people were picked off of rooftops and out of trees by helicopter by those folks, with over 6,000 flight operations starting when Hurricane Katrina’s winds dropped to 45 mph. 45 mph? I don’t want to be on a 747 in 45 mph winds, let alone a helo hovering over snaggled tree limbs and (mostly) dead electrical wires.
So we know someone was set and ready to go, and many lives in danger were saved. More could and should have been, and we’ll all get to talk about that.
We should also not forget to tell each other the tales of relief and restoration that our own citizens will be involved in; I know some made it down to Memphis and Jackson MS in the last weekend, and their stories and our opportunities for being involved in the long struggle ahead shouldn’t be forgotten. I promise to have some of those bits and pieces of good news out of the heart of darkness very soon; but . . .
Call me Little Mary Sunshine, but I want to take our central Ohio attention into the eye of that storm again, or rather, our own storm to come.
Yep, tornadoes pass through here from time to time. And I recall helping heave sodden furniture out of homes in Marne not all that long ago (OK, 15 years, but still). But does anyone remember 1811?
The New Madrid, Missouri earthquakes took place over three months, ending only in February of 1812, and shook buildings as far away as Washington DC where it is said to have broken windows in the White House. The Mississippi River actually flowed backwards for a time. Hundred were killed, and thousands were left homeless in the dead of winter.
Geoscientists say we’re overdue for another quake across the center of the US.
So while this is all fresh on our mind, can we ask ourselves: if we were to a new New Madrid disaster like Jackson MS is to this one, how would we handle it? Are we ready?
Or tighten the focus knob down a little more, while this is a topic of conversation. Does your church, your activity group, wherever you hang out with numbers of others, have a plan for what to do and who does it when there’s a medical emergency? If someone grabs their chest and slumps to the floor, are there some folks who know what to do in that particular place?
And to click down to the smallest level: when you go into a public place, do you look around for where the exits are? At home, does your family have an escape plan if the steps are on fire; a meeting place outside to count heads? How are your flashlight batteries these days? Got spares? Do they work in the radio; you know, the emergency radio you keep handy for a major power outage? Next to the first aid kit, right?
The end of year ice storm helped many in Licking County realize that even in our tidy pocket of the Midwest, where tornadoes are relatively infrequent, hurricanes are downgraded hundreds of miles before they rain on us, and most nasty flooding is closer to the Ohio River – disaster that lasts days and weeks can hit us here, too.
But have we translated that closer awareness into a plan, a preparedness for action? Let’s not wait to blame some higher authority for not doing our part. Make sure that you, your home, your organizations have their disaster plan in place; when we do that, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put together our response plan for housing half of St. Louis one of these days.
There, you feel better now, don’tcha?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send your tales of relief and recovery to disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Faith Works 9-03-05
Jeff Gill
Are local churches doing anything for relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina?
That's an important question, and the amazing thing is that the answer is yes.
First, many churches have relief agencies they support through the year that are part of the first "boots on the ground" response, of money and material and sometimes trained personnel. Catholic Relief Services, all of the One Great Hour of Sharing or Week of Compassion related Protestant groups, Lutheran Disaster Response, Latter Day Saints’ Relief Society, and the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board’s disaster relief teams.
And the Salvation Army is a church first, a social service agency second; you know they have fleets of trained responders and equipment on the way.
Almost any faith community in Licking County has direct ties to work that is already begun in and around New Orleans and from there to Mobile.
Now, are there people from Licking County heading to the Gulf Coast? As soon as we hear about anyone doing so, the Advocate will be ready to tell their story. But most emergency services folk are saying quickly and firmly: wait. If you aren’t well trained and have a specialty task you’ve been asked to provide, you could end up being part of the problem, not any kind of solution.
Where church folk from many different backgrounds and traditions often are most important in disaster relief is long after the story is capped by national media, and the FEMA trucks have rumbled off to the next crisis. The basic clean-up, the low end rebuilding, and human reconstruction: that’s where the large accumulation of small simple steps is crucial, and that’s often where we in Ohio can be the real heroes.
Local UCC churches know that a major mission program of their Ohio Conference churches is called "Back Bay Mission" in Biloxi, MS, and I’ve heard people tell me about returning in recent years from work trips where they were still repairing home damage from Hurricane Camille – you know, the one they keep mentioning as the last worst storm through this area, and it was decades ago.
I have a feeling that UCCers and other church groups will be doing carpentry and clean up and counseling in the wake of Hurricane Katrina for decades to come as well; tell us those stories, too, in the months ahead.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have participated in any disaster relief efforts through your faith community, send your story to disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
Are local churches doing anything for relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina?
That's an important question, and the amazing thing is that the answer is yes.
First, many churches have relief agencies they support through the year that are part of the first "boots on the ground" response, of money and material and sometimes trained personnel. Catholic Relief Services, all of the One Great Hour of Sharing or Week of Compassion related Protestant groups, Lutheran Disaster Response, Latter Day Saints’ Relief Society, and the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board’s disaster relief teams.
And the Salvation Army is a church first, a social service agency second; you know they have fleets of trained responders and equipment on the way.
Almost any faith community in Licking County has direct ties to work that is already begun in and around New Orleans and from there to Mobile.
Now, are there people from Licking County heading to the Gulf Coast? As soon as we hear about anyone doing so, the Advocate will be ready to tell their story. But most emergency services folk are saying quickly and firmly: wait. If you aren’t well trained and have a specialty task you’ve been asked to provide, you could end up being part of the problem, not any kind of solution.
Where church folk from many different backgrounds and traditions often are most important in disaster relief is long after the story is capped by national media, and the FEMA trucks have rumbled off to the next crisis. The basic clean-up, the low end rebuilding, and human reconstruction: that’s where the large accumulation of small simple steps is crucial, and that’s often where we in Ohio can be the real heroes.
Local UCC churches know that a major mission program of their Ohio Conference churches is called "Back Bay Mission" in Biloxi, MS, and I’ve heard people tell me about returning in recent years from work trips where they were still repairing home damage from Hurricane Camille – you know, the one they keep mentioning as the last worst storm through this area, and it was decades ago.
I have a feeling that UCCers and other church groups will be doing carpentry and clean up and counseling in the wake of Hurricane Katrina for decades to come as well; tell us those stories, too, in the months ahead.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have participated in any disaster relief efforts through your faith community, send your story to disciple@voyager.net.
Notes From My Knapsack 9-04-05
Jeff Gill
"History Detectives" is a public television program that ranges from seeking the true story of anything from Wyatt Earp’s watch to Hermann Goering’s shotgun. They look into old documents, refurbished houses, and recently, a prehistoric artifact.
Part of the tracing and re-enacting they did was to let one of the winsome co-hosts demonstrate an ancient piece of technology, an "atlatl."
The question was, could a spear be thrown at a bison 5000 years ago with enough force to embed a flint point into a skull? By hand, no. With the arm extension and leverage of a throwing stick, or atlatl, even a slight young lady could with a bit of practice.
Long before bow and arrow came into the Native American tool kit, atlatls and flint "projectile points" were the hunting tool of choice. Fine flint as you can find to this day in southeastern Licking County made sharp edges with attractive appearance, from almost 12,000 years ago to . . .
Well, how about this weekend? Friday through Sunday, Sept. 2, 3, and 4, from 10 am to 5 pm, you can drive out Brownsville Road or Flint Ridge Road to where they meet. Flint Ridge State Memorial is hosting a "Knap-In" by the Flint Ridge Lithic Society.
If you would like to see, or even learn how to knap raw nodules of flint into useful tools, dozens of experts at flint and stone tool making will be "on the ridge" through the weekend.
The Ohio Atlatl Association (yes, they have an association) is working with the Lithic Society to hold long dart competitions, where experts in atlatl throwing will demostrate their skills. Like any skilled craftspeople, they will gladly share their craft with other men and women, girls and boys, all who come out to see a piece of Licking County’s most ancient history.
With the lunar alignment of the Newark Earthworks coming up for a public event October 22, the Flint Ridge Knap-In is a great preparation for spending this fall understanding the Indian heritage of central Ohio. There will be some food and souvenirs for sale, so you get the family fun part in the package.
Call 800-600-7178 for more info, or 740-344-1919, or just drop in to the knap-in. The clink and chink of stone on stone will greet your ear when you first get out of your car, and as you walk the grounds, modern technology will fall away enough for you to see more clearly the technological achievements that we inadequately label as "stone age."
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who also volunteers at Flint Ridge for the Ohio Historical Society, the site managers; if you have a prehistoric tale to tell, send it to disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
"History Detectives" is a public television program that ranges from seeking the true story of anything from Wyatt Earp’s watch to Hermann Goering’s shotgun. They look into old documents, refurbished houses, and recently, a prehistoric artifact.
Part of the tracing and re-enacting they did was to let one of the winsome co-hosts demonstrate an ancient piece of technology, an "atlatl."
The question was, could a spear be thrown at a bison 5000 years ago with enough force to embed a flint point into a skull? By hand, no. With the arm extension and leverage of a throwing stick, or atlatl, even a slight young lady could with a bit of practice.
Long before bow and arrow came into the Native American tool kit, atlatls and flint "projectile points" were the hunting tool of choice. Fine flint as you can find to this day in southeastern Licking County made sharp edges with attractive appearance, from almost 12,000 years ago to . . .
Well, how about this weekend? Friday through Sunday, Sept. 2, 3, and 4, from 10 am to 5 pm, you can drive out Brownsville Road or Flint Ridge Road to where they meet. Flint Ridge State Memorial is hosting a "Knap-In" by the Flint Ridge Lithic Society.
If you would like to see, or even learn how to knap raw nodules of flint into useful tools, dozens of experts at flint and stone tool making will be "on the ridge" through the weekend.
The Ohio Atlatl Association (yes, they have an association) is working with the Lithic Society to hold long dart competitions, where experts in atlatl throwing will demostrate their skills. Like any skilled craftspeople, they will gladly share their craft with other men and women, girls and boys, all who come out to see a piece of Licking County’s most ancient history.
With the lunar alignment of the Newark Earthworks coming up for a public event October 22, the Flint Ridge Knap-In is a great preparation for spending this fall understanding the Indian heritage of central Ohio. There will be some food and souvenirs for sale, so you get the family fun part in the package.
Call 800-600-7178 for more info, or 740-344-1919, or just drop in to the knap-in. The clink and chink of stone on stone will greet your ear when you first get out of your car, and as you walk the grounds, modern technology will fall away enough for you to see more clearly the technological achievements that we inadequately label as "stone age."
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who also volunteers at Flint Ridge for the Ohio Historical Society, the site managers; if you have a prehistoric tale to tell, send it to disciple@voyager.net.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Greetings, good readers of Amy's (or should i say "Ave!"?); this is actually much less of a blog than a weekly dumping ground of the raw text of my two weekly print columns. And local readers note once again: i don't write the headlines. What shows up here usually isn't what's in the paper -- not to mention what may happen to the text when last minute ads come in . . .
But the point is "unintentional pro-life writing," or am i right to suspect that there is some intentionality here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/books/review/28WILLIAMS.html
. . . much akin to the Michael Caine "Alfie," which if it wasn't making a point in the last thirty minutes -- and jabbing it into your heart -- i don't know what i think they thought they were doing.
And the Jude Law version's ellipsis was making its own point by leaving all that out after echoing the rest of the script so well.
But read the NYTBR piece and see for yourself.
Vale!
Jeff Gill
Granville, Ohio
But the point is "unintentional pro-life writing," or am i right to suspect that there is some intentionality here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/books/review/28WILLIAMS.html
. . . much akin to the Michael Caine "Alfie," which if it wasn't making a point in the last thirty minutes -- and jabbing it into your heart -- i don't know what i think they thought they were doing.
And the Jude Law version's ellipsis was making its own point by leaving all that out after echoing the rest of the script so well.
But read the NYTBR piece and see for yourself.
Vale!
Jeff Gill
Granville, Ohio
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Faith Works 8-27-05
Jeff Gill
A Short Walk To a Better Place
If you were walking to get a drink of fresh, clean water, something would be wrong.
Even in the heart of the ice storm around year’s turn eight months back, we never quite lost our water supply. But the warnings began towards the end of the emergency: can we keep the tanks filled? How fast are they draining? Could we run out of water?
And in fact there were some in outlying areas who rely on electricity to pump their own water from the earth, who were forced to melting snow on fires for basic needs.
In much of the developing world, getting a drink of clean, pure water means a walk. Not infrequently, it means what we would call a lengthy walk. Maybe two or three kilometers to the wellhead, even ten kilometers at least to get new water jugs to carry supplies back to your home and family.
Church World Service (CWS), a joint effort of Christian relief agencies in the United States, works to provide development assistance and increase awareness of need in what used to be called "the Third World," and before that the "rural overseas" where wells and markets and basic infrastructure was lacking or absent. They started a program after the Marshall Plan got started for "the Second World," or Europe, mainly, called the "Christian Rural Overseas Project," or CROP.
The tie between fundraising and education is summed up by their motto, "We walk because they walk," and a ten kilometer fundraising walk draws visibility in the community and awareness among the participants, along with giving church groups a chance to work together for a good cause.
Local servant leaders like Dick Burgie and Tom Mackey have been with this program in Licking County for many years, and a diverse committee puts each new CROP Walk together. Each church that wishes to participate is encouraged to send a "recruiter" to a training event at St. Paul’s Lutheran on N. Fifth St. in Newark, starting at 9 am on Saturday, Sept. 10.
The Licking County CROP Walk is on Sunday, October 16, beginning at the parking lots of OSU-N and following the bike path to the YMCA and back. They will have a registration celebration at 1 pm and the "celebrity walker," principal Jessie Truit of Newark High School, will lead the start at 1:30 pm.
If you have more questions, you can call Dick Burgie at 344-1620 or call St. Paul’s at 345-6115. The recruiter training is a very helpful first step where the pledge forms are explained and the best ways to recruit walkers young and old are shared. As the first organization to hold "pledge walks" nationwide, the CROP Walk of CWS has seen many imitators, but the point of why we walk to fight world hunger and disease can’t be copied.
This year is also a special anniversary for those interested in global relief efforts. Ten years ago this week, CWS was one of what is now 126 national ecumenical religious relief agencies to form ACT, or Action by Churches Together. They began in response to the horrible crisis in Rwanda of that year, which we were reminded of by the recent movie "Hotel Rwanda." This joint effort was so successful that the coalition built simply grew and gathered steam, and was a key element in the swift and efficient response to the Tsunami disaster last year in southeast Asia.
Global co-operation through ACT, national co-ordination through CWS (which works with global Catholic Relief Services in ACT), and our own proud tradition of ecumencial service in Licking County. There’s a message in all of this about how people of faith are called to embody the unity they profess.
And I’ll just let you reflect on that message while we all mark our calendars for Oct. 16, and another great CROP Walk!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who has been on CROP Walk committees in three states; if you have a walking story from years past or your church’s effort this fall, send it to disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
A Short Walk To a Better Place
If you were walking to get a drink of fresh, clean water, something would be wrong.
Even in the heart of the ice storm around year’s turn eight months back, we never quite lost our water supply. But the warnings began towards the end of the emergency: can we keep the tanks filled? How fast are they draining? Could we run out of water?
And in fact there were some in outlying areas who rely on electricity to pump their own water from the earth, who were forced to melting snow on fires for basic needs.
In much of the developing world, getting a drink of clean, pure water means a walk. Not infrequently, it means what we would call a lengthy walk. Maybe two or three kilometers to the wellhead, even ten kilometers at least to get new water jugs to carry supplies back to your home and family.
Church World Service (CWS), a joint effort of Christian relief agencies in the United States, works to provide development assistance and increase awareness of need in what used to be called "the Third World," and before that the "rural overseas" where wells and markets and basic infrastructure was lacking or absent. They started a program after the Marshall Plan got started for "the Second World," or Europe, mainly, called the "Christian Rural Overseas Project," or CROP.
The tie between fundraising and education is summed up by their motto, "We walk because they walk," and a ten kilometer fundraising walk draws visibility in the community and awareness among the participants, along with giving church groups a chance to work together for a good cause.
Local servant leaders like Dick Burgie and Tom Mackey have been with this program in Licking County for many years, and a diverse committee puts each new CROP Walk together. Each church that wishes to participate is encouraged to send a "recruiter" to a training event at St. Paul’s Lutheran on N. Fifth St. in Newark, starting at 9 am on Saturday, Sept. 10.
The Licking County CROP Walk is on Sunday, October 16, beginning at the parking lots of OSU-N and following the bike path to the YMCA and back. They will have a registration celebration at 1 pm and the "celebrity walker," principal Jessie Truit of Newark High School, will lead the start at 1:30 pm.
If you have more questions, you can call Dick Burgie at 344-1620 or call St. Paul’s at 345-6115. The recruiter training is a very helpful first step where the pledge forms are explained and the best ways to recruit walkers young and old are shared. As the first organization to hold "pledge walks" nationwide, the CROP Walk of CWS has seen many imitators, but the point of why we walk to fight world hunger and disease can’t be copied.
This year is also a special anniversary for those interested in global relief efforts. Ten years ago this week, CWS was one of what is now 126 national ecumenical religious relief agencies to form ACT, or Action by Churches Together. They began in response to the horrible crisis in Rwanda of that year, which we were reminded of by the recent movie "Hotel Rwanda." This joint effort was so successful that the coalition built simply grew and gathered steam, and was a key element in the swift and efficient response to the Tsunami disaster last year in southeast Asia.
Global co-operation through ACT, national co-ordination through CWS (which works with global Catholic Relief Services in ACT), and our own proud tradition of ecumencial service in Licking County. There’s a message in all of this about how people of faith are called to embody the unity they profess.
And I’ll just let you reflect on that message while we all mark our calendars for Oct. 16, and another great CROP Walk!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who has been on CROP Walk committees in three states; if you have a walking story from years past or your church’s effort this fall, send it to disciple@voyager.net.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 8-28-05
Criminal Stupidity?
Summer’s end is a good time for one last foolish, reckless fling at good sense. Haven’t eaten two elephant ears in a row? Now or never…Ride the spinning deathtrap that always makes you nauseous, but might not this time…why not?
And those two words fraught with potential and peril: road trip.
Even if you don’t have kids in school, Labor Day weekend marks a watershed and closes a chapter, which makes some of us scribble hurriedly to enter a few more episodes in the Book o’ Life before the Great Pageturner moves on to a slower paced period.
All Nature shows the signs of weariness, though, with all this growth and life and energy. Leaves begin to crinkle around the edges, yellow starts to tint the greens from skyline to lawn’s edge, and the grass itself is browning and going dormant. Plants and tree limbs sag with the damp weight of overgrowth, and the tomato vine, neatly plucked of fruit by the ever-helpful deer (who actually ate pieces out of the Irish Spring bars of soap around the edge), are twining into incomprehensible snarls of foliage.
Flashlight beams are looking tan and amber (replace ‘em soon, before winter!), toys with batteries are winding down into slo-mo, and even the Little Guy’s flashing red light sandals only flicker on one foot, the other having frozen on and then faded to black after three days of steady shining. Broken handled toy shovels and cracked pails and jagged-edged pieces of once beloved plastic have quietly slid into the trashcan the night before pickup.
For media and politics, where fun in the water and play on the sidewalks rarely enters the equation – which may be what ails them, come to think on it – the month of August is famously or infamously a prime "silly season." Filling the front page, writing a compelling editorial, or getting voters to listen without handing out free fans are all big challenges, which can be met in a variety of goofy ways.
Regular readers of this column know that your scrivener is no fan of Bob Taft. I’ve been long underwhelmed, and since his turn of phrase "Medicaid monster" in a State of the State address, I’ve been actively disgusted by him. Medicaid as a budget item is certainly a problem, and a public servant needs to help us understand who these fellow citizens are, that we care for and heal at an ever growing percentage of the state budget. Literally demonizing them and the situation is demagoguery of the worst sort. ‘Nuff said on that.
So having established that I think our governor is deeply and sadly unfit for office, may I ask, in the spirit of summer hyperbole, what was he doing in court?
This may just further point out my own unfitness for public office, but why is an ethics violation a criminal matter? Really, is that what we want judges and the court system tied up with?
Again, I heartily agree with Sen. Jay Hottinger and his call for Taft’s resignation; but criminal charges? Who wrote that as a law, a legal matter, anyhow?
Ethics guidelines, reporting, and broad disclosure of the sort that was a gift from the heavens for news starved metro editors: Taft playing golf frequently in the toniest surroundings with developers and, um, coin dealers etc. Embarrass the man no end, make it easy for you and me to see the details, and let the political process work. In other words, vote da bums out.
But I didn’t see why Martha Stewart went to lockup and is still wearing an ankle bracelet, or why the Watergate clowns went to prison either (it just made martyrs out of some of them, which a few are still riding to this day), and I can’t understand why a judge had to spend time on this. Serious it was, as Yoda would say, but criminal it is not.
If we’re gonna make stupidity criminal, the jails will be a’buildin’ right through the next millenium, and they still won’t be big enough to hold all the convicts.
I want judges and the court system prosecuting crime and fraud and corruption (stay tuned, Taft may yet make it into court for perfectly sound reasons at the rate he’s going), and I want us to vote goofs out of office or party leaders to show some leadership when a good looking candidate turns out to be a crummy officeholder.
And that’s my overheated summertime rant for the day! Next, back to school follies and everyday foibles. See you in a week…
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; get your last overheated rant in to disciple@voyager.net.
Criminal Stupidity?
Summer’s end is a good time for one last foolish, reckless fling at good sense. Haven’t eaten two elephant ears in a row? Now or never…Ride the spinning deathtrap that always makes you nauseous, but might not this time…why not?
And those two words fraught with potential and peril: road trip.
Even if you don’t have kids in school, Labor Day weekend marks a watershed and closes a chapter, which makes some of us scribble hurriedly to enter a few more episodes in the Book o’ Life before the Great Pageturner moves on to a slower paced period.
All Nature shows the signs of weariness, though, with all this growth and life and energy. Leaves begin to crinkle around the edges, yellow starts to tint the greens from skyline to lawn’s edge, and the grass itself is browning and going dormant. Plants and tree limbs sag with the damp weight of overgrowth, and the tomato vine, neatly plucked of fruit by the ever-helpful deer (who actually ate pieces out of the Irish Spring bars of soap around the edge), are twining into incomprehensible snarls of foliage.
Flashlight beams are looking tan and amber (replace ‘em soon, before winter!), toys with batteries are winding down into slo-mo, and even the Little Guy’s flashing red light sandals only flicker on one foot, the other having frozen on and then faded to black after three days of steady shining. Broken handled toy shovels and cracked pails and jagged-edged pieces of once beloved plastic have quietly slid into the trashcan the night before pickup.
For media and politics, where fun in the water and play on the sidewalks rarely enters the equation – which may be what ails them, come to think on it – the month of August is famously or infamously a prime "silly season." Filling the front page, writing a compelling editorial, or getting voters to listen without handing out free fans are all big challenges, which can be met in a variety of goofy ways.
Regular readers of this column know that your scrivener is no fan of Bob Taft. I’ve been long underwhelmed, and since his turn of phrase "Medicaid monster" in a State of the State address, I’ve been actively disgusted by him. Medicaid as a budget item is certainly a problem, and a public servant needs to help us understand who these fellow citizens are, that we care for and heal at an ever growing percentage of the state budget. Literally demonizing them and the situation is demagoguery of the worst sort. ‘Nuff said on that.
So having established that I think our governor is deeply and sadly unfit for office, may I ask, in the spirit of summer hyperbole, what was he doing in court?
This may just further point out my own unfitness for public office, but why is an ethics violation a criminal matter? Really, is that what we want judges and the court system tied up with?
Again, I heartily agree with Sen. Jay Hottinger and his call for Taft’s resignation; but criminal charges? Who wrote that as a law, a legal matter, anyhow?
Ethics guidelines, reporting, and broad disclosure of the sort that was a gift from the heavens for news starved metro editors: Taft playing golf frequently in the toniest surroundings with developers and, um, coin dealers etc. Embarrass the man no end, make it easy for you and me to see the details, and let the political process work. In other words, vote da bums out.
But I didn’t see why Martha Stewart went to lockup and is still wearing an ankle bracelet, or why the Watergate clowns went to prison either (it just made martyrs out of some of them, which a few are still riding to this day), and I can’t understand why a judge had to spend time on this. Serious it was, as Yoda would say, but criminal it is not.
If we’re gonna make stupidity criminal, the jails will be a’buildin’ right through the next millenium, and they still won’t be big enough to hold all the convicts.
I want judges and the court system prosecuting crime and fraud and corruption (stay tuned, Taft may yet make it into court for perfectly sound reasons at the rate he’s going), and I want us to vote goofs out of office or party leaders to show some leadership when a good looking candidate turns out to be a crummy officeholder.
And that’s my overheated summertime rant for the day! Next, back to school follies and everyday foibles. See you in a week…
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; get your last overheated rant in to disciple@voyager.net.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Faith Works 8-20-05
Jeff Gill
If This Is August, It Must Be Time To…
Would you believe that your pastor is working on planning Advent and Christmas services right now? Have you noticed that the children’s musical folks are already collecting costume materials for the shepherds?
September is almost too late to get started for all of the Christian liturgical and traditional folderol that packs December tighter than a seven year old’s stocking on the chimney. If your church or faith community is going to do all of the things they intend between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, they are already hard at work.
Actually, this phenomena is widely noted and well understood. Less well known is work that probably began months ago for the annual fall stewardship campaign. Church treasurers, financial secretaries, board chairs, and clergy have been reviewing the first six months giving from ’05, matching trends over the last few years, projecting fixed expenses for church life into ’06, and thinking about how to communicate these prosaic points in a useful and encouraging manner to the congregation.
Christians tend to call this aspect of church life "stewardship," the process of looking at what God has given to us as individuals and as a faith community, and discerning how to faithfully use those talents, those gifts and graces, to do the work that church is called to do.
Some places use pledge cards and the newsletter to communicate, others have been accustomed to informational mailings separate from the usual print material to highlight specific needs, but use no "commitment card" or other written follow-up.
A few church bodies have very high expectations as to percentage giving for people in leadership, or for the entire membership. Many simply want to encourage members to "up" or increase their giving, an inelegant point which created a legendary bulletin blooper from a stewardship chairman. "I increased my pledge last year, so up yours!"
No, this is not a process which encourages humor or irony, and may even stifle the awareness of how ludicrous it must appear to God that we see ourselves in a struggle when we are surrounded by so much abundance.
This is where an awareness of global and local missions, if not a sense of humor, is so helpful to an effective stewardship education and communication plan. When a congregation is used to hearing about how shockingly poor church groups in the developing world not only support their immediate needs more readily than Americans do, but then offer to send "50 goats for the orphans from the World Trade Center disaster," the outreach budget looks different.
When all the membership is aware of individual missionaries and the challenges they face in ministering to global south communities where AIDS is running at 40% of the population, our own giving gets real real fast.
If the average pew sitter has heard, or better yet heard directly from, a life transformed right here in Licking County because of the
activities that church supports or is involved in, they are more ready to respond. They want to hear more about that, and they want to be part of it in any way they can.
Oh, and the best mission speakers I’ve heard always know how to see the humor in even the most challenging situation, which is a message about the stewardship of our attitudes as well as an encouragement for giving cheerfully.
How does your faith community do stewardship education?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply pastor around central
Ohio; send your tales to disciple@voyager.net while you take a break
from making this year’s shepherd costumes!
Jeff Gill
If This Is August, It Must Be Time To…
Would you believe that your pastor is working on planning Advent and Christmas services right now? Have you noticed that the children’s musical folks are already collecting costume materials for the shepherds?
September is almost too late to get started for all of the Christian liturgical and traditional folderol that packs December tighter than a seven year old’s stocking on the chimney. If your church or faith community is going to do all of the things they intend between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, they are already hard at work.
Actually, this phenomena is widely noted and well understood. Less well known is work that probably began months ago for the annual fall stewardship campaign. Church treasurers, financial secretaries, board chairs, and clergy have been reviewing the first six months giving from ’05, matching trends over the last few years, projecting fixed expenses for church life into ’06, and thinking about how to communicate these prosaic points in a useful and encouraging manner to the congregation.
Christians tend to call this aspect of church life "stewardship," the process of looking at what God has given to us as individuals and as a faith community, and discerning how to faithfully use those talents, those gifts and graces, to do the work that church is called to do.
Some places use pledge cards and the newsletter to communicate, others have been accustomed to informational mailings separate from the usual print material to highlight specific needs, but use no "commitment card" or other written follow-up.
A few church bodies have very high expectations as to percentage giving for people in leadership, or for the entire membership. Many simply want to encourage members to "up" or increase their giving, an inelegant point which created a legendary bulletin blooper from a stewardship chairman. "I increased my pledge last year, so up yours!"
No, this is not a process which encourages humor or irony, and may even stifle the awareness of how ludicrous it must appear to God that we see ourselves in a struggle when we are surrounded by so much abundance.
This is where an awareness of global and local missions, if not a sense of humor, is so helpful to an effective stewardship education and communication plan. When a congregation is used to hearing about how shockingly poor church groups in the developing world not only support their immediate needs more readily than Americans do, but then offer to send "50 goats for the orphans from the World Trade Center disaster," the outreach budget looks different.
When all the membership is aware of individual missionaries and the challenges they face in ministering to global south communities where AIDS is running at 40% of the population, our own giving gets real real fast.
If the average pew sitter has heard, or better yet heard directly from, a life transformed right here in Licking County because of the
activities that church supports or is involved in, they are more ready to respond. They want to hear more about that, and they want to be part of it in any way they can.
Oh, and the best mission speakers I’ve heard always know how to see the humor in even the most challenging situation, which is a message about the stewardship of our attitudes as well as an encouragement for giving cheerfully.
How does your faith community do stewardship education?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply pastor around central
Ohio; send your tales to disciple@voyager.net while you take a break
from making this year’s shepherd costumes!
Notes from My Knapsack 8-21-05
Jeff Gill
School Isn’t All That’s Started Already
Lakewood School District and many county systems start this week. The back-to-school supply shelves are already scraped down to metal, and the last trips to fill the unmet expectations of summer fun are planned as teachers and staff are already sweltering in the classrooms, stapling bulletin boards together and mustering lesson plans for ‘05-’06.
For everyone, the annual "watch out for buses and pedestrians" alert goes out. Corn, even with the withering drought the farmers are battling, is redefining the view at corners and along curves along roads. Stay alert: a clear view just a week or so ago may be a wall of green (well, yellow-green) shocks topped with growing tassels.
Kids are also learning or re-learning bus stop etiquette and expectations, so we pilots of metal behemoths have to be extra cautious.
Bands and teams are well into their preparations, with training camps and special sessions already weeks old. Sunday, Sept. 4, the Lakewood Alumni Band will hold practice in the LHS band room from 2 pm to 5 pm. This is to prepare for Friday, Sept. 9 which is "2005 Lakewood Alumni Band Night" directed by Scott Coffey and David Wolford.
The practice just two weeks away will jostle with the previous four days of Millersport Sweet Corn Festival, where Lakewood Band Boosters raise the bulk of their support each year at a booth that sells, um, something tasty. Rice balls, or guava pops, or, ah . . .wait, no, they sell pierogies!
No, that’s not right. Where are my notes? (Sound of scuffling and rustling.) Here it is: doughnuts. They sell doughtnuts (you may spell it donuts, which is easier to paint on a sign, I’ll admit, and shorter to type). A third of a million dollars of donuts if you can believe it, and the Band Boosters can, since 1980. That’s a lotta donuts, or doughtnuts, either way.
So band alumni are invited to join "alumni shifts" in the infamous booth, where you will see everyone. Yep, everyone comes by the donut booth sooner or later, and if you help make, dunk, or sell donuts, you’ll see ‘em.
If you are planning on playing Sept. 9, even if you don’t help at the booth (but you really should), they need you to come practice on Sept. 4. And after, they plan to have a dinner, so please contact Beth (Miller ’81) Walters at 928-1299 if you haven’t already signed up through the mailing they’ve sent to their alumni list.
So band and football and teachers and custodians and administrators and bus drivers are already hard at work, starting well before the so-called "first day," and parents and caregivers are hunting the sales and snagging vital supplies for the growing mind like glue sticks and new socks. Each of them thinks "first day, hah!"
Along that same line: one of the most significant learning experiences of my time at boot camp came at 4:00 am. My good fortune was to draw fireguard duty one night just before wakeup at 5 am (which was a joke, since we usually were awakened by the clashing of trash cans down the squad bay at 4:45). No, there’s no stove in the barracks and the shingles are fireproof, but why stop an ancient tradition?
So there I march, up and down the central aisle in the pitch dark between the bunk beds. At the end facing the company street, where the screen door opened toward the platoon command hut matching us across the way, I heard on each pass a strange sound. Finally I took the risk of pausing at the door and listening, the risk being a deranged (I thought) sergeant with the company who checked silently at random on those doing sentry duty through the night.
Freezing by the screen door, leaning to a vantage point across the way, I realized that our much "beloved" sergeant instructor was humming Sousa march tunes while ironing his camo fatigues near his screen door, five yards away. He had been up and driven to our camp and dressed and was at work . . . long before we had received our oh-so-early wake-up call.
And it occurred to me that after we had been put away at lights out, as Sgt. Camire (you never forget their names, never) stalked out of the squadbay, he no doubt went back to command hut for some festive paperwork before he drove home to his semi-mythical family. Up before us, up after us, and up in our faces all day.
So it is for the so-called nine month job of teaching or working in today’s educational system. Thanks for getting eveything ready when the buildings are at their fiendishly hottest, and let’s send our kids to school ready to learn. They’re ready to teach ‘em.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send your Sweet Corn Festival stories to disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
School Isn’t All That’s Started Already
Lakewood School District and many county systems start this week. The back-to-school supply shelves are already scraped down to metal, and the last trips to fill the unmet expectations of summer fun are planned as teachers and staff are already sweltering in the classrooms, stapling bulletin boards together and mustering lesson plans for ‘05-’06.
For everyone, the annual "watch out for buses and pedestrians" alert goes out. Corn, even with the withering drought the farmers are battling, is redefining the view at corners and along curves along roads. Stay alert: a clear view just a week or so ago may be a wall of green (well, yellow-green) shocks topped with growing tassels.
Kids are also learning or re-learning bus stop etiquette and expectations, so we pilots of metal behemoths have to be extra cautious.
Bands and teams are well into their preparations, with training camps and special sessions already weeks old. Sunday, Sept. 4, the Lakewood Alumni Band will hold practice in the LHS band room from 2 pm to 5 pm. This is to prepare for Friday, Sept. 9 which is "2005 Lakewood Alumni Band Night" directed by Scott Coffey and David Wolford.
The practice just two weeks away will jostle with the previous four days of Millersport Sweet Corn Festival, where Lakewood Band Boosters raise the bulk of their support each year at a booth that sells, um, something tasty. Rice balls, or guava pops, or, ah . . .wait, no, they sell pierogies!
No, that’s not right. Where are my notes? (Sound of scuffling and rustling.) Here it is: doughnuts. They sell doughtnuts (you may spell it donuts, which is easier to paint on a sign, I’ll admit, and shorter to type). A third of a million dollars of donuts if you can believe it, and the Band Boosters can, since 1980. That’s a lotta donuts, or doughtnuts, either way.
So band alumni are invited to join "alumni shifts" in the infamous booth, where you will see everyone. Yep, everyone comes by the donut booth sooner or later, and if you help make, dunk, or sell donuts, you’ll see ‘em.
If you are planning on playing Sept. 9, even if you don’t help at the booth (but you really should), they need you to come practice on Sept. 4. And after, they plan to have a dinner, so please contact Beth (Miller ’81) Walters at 928-1299 if you haven’t already signed up through the mailing they’ve sent to their alumni list.
So band and football and teachers and custodians and administrators and bus drivers are already hard at work, starting well before the so-called "first day," and parents and caregivers are hunting the sales and snagging vital supplies for the growing mind like glue sticks and new socks. Each of them thinks "first day, hah!"
Along that same line: one of the most significant learning experiences of my time at boot camp came at 4:00 am. My good fortune was to draw fireguard duty one night just before wakeup at 5 am (which was a joke, since we usually were awakened by the clashing of trash cans down the squad bay at 4:45). No, there’s no stove in the barracks and the shingles are fireproof, but why stop an ancient tradition?
So there I march, up and down the central aisle in the pitch dark between the bunk beds. At the end facing the company street, where the screen door opened toward the platoon command hut matching us across the way, I heard on each pass a strange sound. Finally I took the risk of pausing at the door and listening, the risk being a deranged (I thought) sergeant with the company who checked silently at random on those doing sentry duty through the night.
Freezing by the screen door, leaning to a vantage point across the way, I realized that our much "beloved" sergeant instructor was humming Sousa march tunes while ironing his camo fatigues near his screen door, five yards away. He had been up and driven to our camp and dressed and was at work . . . long before we had received our oh-so-early wake-up call.
And it occurred to me that after we had been put away at lights out, as Sgt. Camire (you never forget their names, never) stalked out of the squadbay, he no doubt went back to command hut for some festive paperwork before he drove home to his semi-mythical family. Up before us, up after us, and up in our faces all day.
So it is for the so-called nine month job of teaching or working in today’s educational system. Thanks for getting eveything ready when the buildings are at their fiendishly hottest, and let’s send our kids to school ready to learn. They’re ready to teach ‘em.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send your Sweet Corn Festival stories to disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Faith Works 8-13-05
Jeff Gill
So Many Bibles, So Little Time
"What is the best version of the Bible?" I get that question fairlyregularly.There is a simple answer. Get a good Hebrew Bible for what’s generallyknown as the Old Testament, and the Reader’s New Testament in Greek.With the discovery in 1859 of Codex Sinaiticus hand printed by order ofEmperor Constantine by way of St. Catherine’s Monastery, and theMasoretic Text of the Hebrew books by way of the Synod of Jamniaconfirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls since 1947, we have solid sourcing andconsistent readings of the sacred texts of scripture ranging from over3,500 years ago to about 110 AD. Enjoy!Or maybe you meant "what’s the best translation of all that into English?"Can I go back to talking about the ancient papyrus and parchment?Recently, I went into Moments For Majesty in their large new store nowpart of Southgate Plaza. I was looking for a very particular edition ofone translation (but didn’t have the ISBN number. Always write down theISBN number.).Pausing to review the shelves and the dozens of Bible translations andpackaging options on display, I quickly confirmed it wasn’t "out there"and went on to the counter. Explaining my request, the very helpfulsales folk did some looking on their terminal, and then offered to letme browse through their master catalogue of Bibles. Just Bibles.Over 700 pages, longer than the new Harry Potter, had descriptions offour to seven different types of Bible on each page. Some 4000 Bibles tochoose from.And you guessed it. My Bible wasn’t there, meaning that there are . . .about that many.I recall the debates among old guard KJVers and new wild-eyed RSV users,both stunned when the "Good News Bible" or TEV showed up in paperback,no less. Then Ken Taylor wrote out his paraphrase for grandkids, "TheLiving Bible," and made Tyndale a publishing powerhouse in Bible terms.Then evangelicals nervous about the applications made of currentscholarship helped Thomas Nelson et alia come out with the NewInternational Version, the NIV, and then . . .So we’ve gone in about 50 years from the Catholic Douay version and theProtestant King James, with a few very small circulation translations,to dozens of very skillfully done translations printed in everythingfrom magazine format Bibles for teen girls to weighty gold spined tomescontaining those familiar first words of scripture many children readquietly to themselves, "Rich Moroccan Leather."No one will thank me for saying, in answer to "what’s a goodtranslation" the immortal "it depends." But it does.Do you want readability? The New Living Translation or Eugene Peterson’s"The Message" use the TEV’s principle of "dynamic equivalence," holdingthe text more closely than a paraphrase, but speaking in a contemporaryidiom.Do you want to work with a close study using resources word-by-word?Then the modern NRSV or TNIV allow understandability to work hand inhand with scholarly tools from the original Hebrew and Greek. The NASBhas many helps in print as well.Do you want public resonance for reading aloud? The Jerusalem Bible isstill considered a top contender in this bracket, along with the NEB,now ESV. And the NKJV (when in doubt, N is these abbreviations is always"New") has eliminated most of the Elizabethan tonguetwisters whilekeeping the Shakespearean cadences.Unless you are a dyed-in-the-Lamb’s-wool King James 1611 adherent, alittle examination will show that there are many excellent, useful,upbuilding translations out there today. We have so much available to usthat our grandparents could only imagine.The question is, do they get us to read the text itself?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around centralOhio, and he found his Reader’s Greek NT online. What Bible are youreading, and what works for you in reading it? Tell him throughdisciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Notes From My Knapsack 8-14-05
Jeff Gill
Baird, Ashbrook Leave a Gap
So you registered to vote, actually do vote, fly your flag, and saluteher when she goes by. You may even have enlisted to serve in the armedforces or the Peace Corps or VISTA and done your duty that way. But haveyou ever run for office?Being a candidate isn’t a peculiar calling for only the privileged few.Sure, just like not everyone’s cut out for military service, noteveryone can hold a civic office: but more can than seem to think so.Every local election in recent years offers a slate with a large numberof one candidate ballots, or worse yet, the county always sees a fewspots with no one running a’tall. And that ain’t good.Is it because it’s just so difficult to run even for a local position?Your columnist wandered by the Board of Elections office, just behindthe front desk of the County Administration Building opposite the CountyCourthouse in Newark. Actually, I went in to pick up the form to serveas a pollworker, another cog in the machinery of democracy that isexperiencing parts shortages. The Little Guy was in good humortravelling with me, and so I picked up the one form and then went on toask, "How do you take out petitions to run for council?"Now, I haven’t even lived in my current address for a year, so thequestion is truly moot, but before I could say another word, the veryhelpful lady at the counter had bustled off and started banging away ata typewriter. When she began asking questions of me while still typing,I realized she was actually performing the steps to create my petitions,and I amiably exclaimed, "But I really don’t think I can run.""Well, do you want me to finish these so you have ‘em until you figureout if you can?" When she said that, I had the thought that passesthrough my mind far too often: "Hey, I can get a column out of that…" SoI said yes.And here’s the real point of this column, friends. I shared counterspace for five minutes with people who were easily recognizable aslongtime office holders in Licking County and other complete idiots…Imean, novices to the political process. With exactly equivalent patience and simplicity, the staff there explained that, with somevariation depending on the where and the which of the position, youneeded this many signatures, gathered on these forms, countersigned bythese people, all required back in here by August 25. Add one more formfor who is keeping track of the money involved or not involved (becausemany folks run for office in Licking County without spending a dime, orat least more than a few hundred dollars), and you are set. Even a guywith a seven year old in tow could walk away with (unuseable) petitionsin about five minutes.What am I saying? I’m telling you that two trips to downtown Newark andmaybe fifty signatures on a petition, and you are that great servant ofliberty, The Candidate. You may not win, but you ran, and kept someoneelse running on their toes.Friends, I grew up in and around Chicago in the 1960’s, and with all duerespect to the Daley family, one party, one candidate democracy is not agood thing. No true party partisan in America should be happy when noone from the other tribe runs against your incumbent. Just like any ofus, when Uncle Sam gets flabby and complacent and unresponsive, hestarts to show it. He moves slower, acts logy and half-stupid, and setshimself up for some real problems down the line.More seriously, we’ve lost some real electoral stalwarts in recentyears, and this last year saw the death of both Al Ashbrook and JayBaird just last week. I feel like I lost a friend with Jay, even thoughI didn’t get to know him until after he’d taken on fighting cancer as afull-time hobby. Those two did the work of seven of the rest of us inrunning for offices and serving the public during their lifetimes.Meanwhile, we see those blank spots on the ballot. One of them has yourname on it. And look at it this way: if you don’t run, that nutcase downthe street will, and may walk in unopposed. You know who I’m talkingabout. So think about it, OK?And if you don’t, you can serve as a pollworker. Stay tuned for news onthat front, live from this station.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around centralOhio. He’d be happy to sign your petition if you’re running for anythingin his area, but you really don’t want his endorsement; just throwideas, not hats in the ring by e-mailing disciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Faith Works 8-06-05
Jeff Gill
State Churches and the State of the Church
Odd observations of the dog days of summer can be a little moreheat-warped than others, but sometimes the milky haze of Augustlassitude can reveal a new way of seeing things. You can obscure quite abit behind waves of heat rising off the pavement, and even see miragesoff the blacktop miles ahead, but at least we all tend to look around usat the world during this time of year when we often just blur along inthe cooler months.But my stray thought comes from a book read indoors while avoiding theheat. Now, there’s beach reading and there’s beach reading (whether ornot sand is involved). A big fat doorstop of a book I’ve just read isthe new biography of Soren Kierkegaard (look, I don’t make fun of yourhobbies, you don’t mock mine, OK?).The author is a professor in Denmark, a Great Dane like his subject, whois part of the team translating SK’s journals and notebooks and arecognized authority on the philosopher and theologian’s life and work.What has had many looking forward for the last five years to this workcoming out in translation is that Joachim Garff is focusing onKierkegaard’s everyday life as context for the voluminous writings hisproduced in mid-1800’s Copenhagen.So what’s it got to do with our everyday life in heat-swamped,drought-stricken central Ohio? Nothing. That’s the point. Thecommonplaces of street scenes, shops, shepherding were all very, verydifferent than what we might easily assume.And the mentions of the role of the State Church both throw illuminationon Kierkegaard’s work resisting the socialization of Christianity in histime, and also on our debates today about what the folks across the pond(where one brother had migrated and died a few decades after theConstitution was written) meant when they talked about "establishment"of an official church.Peter Kierkegaard had to sign the baptismal book at the local church foreach of his children when they were born. Sounds fine, right? Yep,except so did Baptists and Swedenborgians and Dissenters of all sorts.Wait, you ask, what if they didn’t want their child baptized into theDanish Lutheran Church? Well, that was against the law. But they sawthemselves as very tolerant, because if you then went to have your childbaptized in some other faith, you could without fear of arrest.And for Peter and his sons Michael and Soren when they grew toadulthood, if they wanted to receive communion, they had to go by theoffice and sign up for it, so that a full check could be done into theircurrent state of both civic and spiritual fitness to be accepted at thecommunion table. You needed to get signed up early, the warnings said innewspapers, to give religious authorities plenty of time to do a fullinvestigation.This kind of stuff is what the Founding Folks were looking back toEurope and seeing, and what they were wanting explicitly banned in thenew US Constitution. Even though Massachusetts still had an officialchurch (Congregationalist, now UCC) into the 1830’s, and tax money wascollected to support Anglican churches (now Episcopalian) in many statesright through and even past the Revolution, they hoped that in time theidea of a state church could be banned on the national level, anddiscouraged in the separate states.How we politically deal with the modern desire to frame the"establishment" clause as the right to be free of having to deal with orexperience religion anywhere in the public sphere is a hot potato, butthe roots of the so-called "separation of church and state" don’t diginto that territory. That’s some new excavation which we will continueto sift and study.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around centralOhio. Tell him how you’re spending the summer through disciple@voyager.net.
Jeff Gill
So Many Bibles, So Little Time
"What is the best version of the Bible?" I get that question fairlyregularly.There is a simple answer. Get a good Hebrew Bible for what’s generallyknown as the Old Testament, and the Reader’s New Testament in Greek.With the discovery in 1859 of Codex Sinaiticus hand printed by order ofEmperor Constantine by way of St. Catherine’s Monastery, and theMasoretic Text of the Hebrew books by way of the Synod of Jamniaconfirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls since 1947, we have solid sourcing andconsistent readings of the sacred texts of scripture ranging from over3,500 years ago to about 110 AD. Enjoy!Or maybe you meant "what’s the best translation of all that into English?"Can I go back to talking about the ancient papyrus and parchment?Recently, I went into Moments For Majesty in their large new store nowpart of Southgate Plaza. I was looking for a very particular edition ofone translation (but didn’t have the ISBN number. Always write down theISBN number.).Pausing to review the shelves and the dozens of Bible translations andpackaging options on display, I quickly confirmed it wasn’t "out there"and went on to the counter. Explaining my request, the very helpfulsales folk did some looking on their terminal, and then offered to letme browse through their master catalogue of Bibles. Just Bibles.Over 700 pages, longer than the new Harry Potter, had descriptions offour to seven different types of Bible on each page. Some 4000 Bibles tochoose from.And you guessed it. My Bible wasn’t there, meaning that there are . . .about that many.I recall the debates among old guard KJVers and new wild-eyed RSV users,both stunned when the "Good News Bible" or TEV showed up in paperback,no less. Then Ken Taylor wrote out his paraphrase for grandkids, "TheLiving Bible," and made Tyndale a publishing powerhouse in Bible terms.Then evangelicals nervous about the applications made of currentscholarship helped Thomas Nelson et alia come out with the NewInternational Version, the NIV, and then . . .So we’ve gone in about 50 years from the Catholic Douay version and theProtestant King James, with a few very small circulation translations,to dozens of very skillfully done translations printed in everythingfrom magazine format Bibles for teen girls to weighty gold spined tomescontaining those familiar first words of scripture many children readquietly to themselves, "Rich Moroccan Leather."No one will thank me for saying, in answer to "what’s a goodtranslation" the immortal "it depends." But it does.Do you want readability? The New Living Translation or Eugene Peterson’s"The Message" use the TEV’s principle of "dynamic equivalence," holdingthe text more closely than a paraphrase, but speaking in a contemporaryidiom.Do you want to work with a close study using resources word-by-word?Then the modern NRSV or TNIV allow understandability to work hand inhand with scholarly tools from the original Hebrew and Greek. The NASBhas many helps in print as well.Do you want public resonance for reading aloud? The Jerusalem Bible isstill considered a top contender in this bracket, along with the NEB,now ESV. And the NKJV (when in doubt, N is these abbreviations is always"New") has eliminated most of the Elizabethan tonguetwisters whilekeeping the Shakespearean cadences.Unless you are a dyed-in-the-Lamb’s-wool King James 1611 adherent, alittle examination will show that there are many excellent, useful,upbuilding translations out there today. We have so much available to usthat our grandparents could only imagine.The question is, do they get us to read the text itself?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around centralOhio, and he found his Reader’s Greek NT online. What Bible are youreading, and what works for you in reading it? Tell him throughdisciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Notes From My Knapsack 8-14-05
Jeff Gill
Baird, Ashbrook Leave a Gap
So you registered to vote, actually do vote, fly your flag, and saluteher when she goes by. You may even have enlisted to serve in the armedforces or the Peace Corps or VISTA and done your duty that way. But haveyou ever run for office?Being a candidate isn’t a peculiar calling for only the privileged few.Sure, just like not everyone’s cut out for military service, noteveryone can hold a civic office: but more can than seem to think so.Every local election in recent years offers a slate with a large numberof one candidate ballots, or worse yet, the county always sees a fewspots with no one running a’tall. And that ain’t good.Is it because it’s just so difficult to run even for a local position?Your columnist wandered by the Board of Elections office, just behindthe front desk of the County Administration Building opposite the CountyCourthouse in Newark. Actually, I went in to pick up the form to serveas a pollworker, another cog in the machinery of democracy that isexperiencing parts shortages. The Little Guy was in good humortravelling with me, and so I picked up the one form and then went on toask, "How do you take out petitions to run for council?"Now, I haven’t even lived in my current address for a year, so thequestion is truly moot, but before I could say another word, the veryhelpful lady at the counter had bustled off and started banging away ata typewriter. When she began asking questions of me while still typing,I realized she was actually performing the steps to create my petitions,and I amiably exclaimed, "But I really don’t think I can run.""Well, do you want me to finish these so you have ‘em until you figureout if you can?" When she said that, I had the thought that passesthrough my mind far too often: "Hey, I can get a column out of that…" SoI said yes.And here’s the real point of this column, friends. I shared counterspace for five minutes with people who were easily recognizable aslongtime office holders in Licking County and other complete idiots…Imean, novices to the political process. With exactly equivalent patience and simplicity, the staff there explained that, with somevariation depending on the where and the which of the position, youneeded this many signatures, gathered on these forms, countersigned bythese people, all required back in here by August 25. Add one more formfor who is keeping track of the money involved or not involved (becausemany folks run for office in Licking County without spending a dime, orat least more than a few hundred dollars), and you are set. Even a guywith a seven year old in tow could walk away with (unuseable) petitionsin about five minutes.What am I saying? I’m telling you that two trips to downtown Newark andmaybe fifty signatures on a petition, and you are that great servant ofliberty, The Candidate. You may not win, but you ran, and kept someoneelse running on their toes.Friends, I grew up in and around Chicago in the 1960’s, and with all duerespect to the Daley family, one party, one candidate democracy is not agood thing. No true party partisan in America should be happy when noone from the other tribe runs against your incumbent. Just like any ofus, when Uncle Sam gets flabby and complacent and unresponsive, hestarts to show it. He moves slower, acts logy and half-stupid, and setshimself up for some real problems down the line.More seriously, we’ve lost some real electoral stalwarts in recentyears, and this last year saw the death of both Al Ashbrook and JayBaird just last week. I feel like I lost a friend with Jay, even thoughI didn’t get to know him until after he’d taken on fighting cancer as afull-time hobby. Those two did the work of seven of the rest of us inrunning for offices and serving the public during their lifetimes.Meanwhile, we see those blank spots on the ballot. One of them has yourname on it. And look at it this way: if you don’t run, that nutcase downthe street will, and may walk in unopposed. You know who I’m talkingabout. So think about it, OK?And if you don’t, you can serve as a pollworker. Stay tuned for news onthat front, live from this station.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around centralOhio. He’d be happy to sign your petition if you’re running for anythingin his area, but you really don’t want his endorsement; just throwideas, not hats in the ring by e-mailing disciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Faith Works 8-06-05
Jeff Gill
State Churches and the State of the Church
Odd observations of the dog days of summer can be a little moreheat-warped than others, but sometimes the milky haze of Augustlassitude can reveal a new way of seeing things. You can obscure quite abit behind waves of heat rising off the pavement, and even see miragesoff the blacktop miles ahead, but at least we all tend to look around usat the world during this time of year when we often just blur along inthe cooler months.But my stray thought comes from a book read indoors while avoiding theheat. Now, there’s beach reading and there’s beach reading (whether ornot sand is involved). A big fat doorstop of a book I’ve just read isthe new biography of Soren Kierkegaard (look, I don’t make fun of yourhobbies, you don’t mock mine, OK?).The author is a professor in Denmark, a Great Dane like his subject, whois part of the team translating SK’s journals and notebooks and arecognized authority on the philosopher and theologian’s life and work.What has had many looking forward for the last five years to this workcoming out in translation is that Joachim Garff is focusing onKierkegaard’s everyday life as context for the voluminous writings hisproduced in mid-1800’s Copenhagen.So what’s it got to do with our everyday life in heat-swamped,drought-stricken central Ohio? Nothing. That’s the point. Thecommonplaces of street scenes, shops, shepherding were all very, verydifferent than what we might easily assume.And the mentions of the role of the State Church both throw illuminationon Kierkegaard’s work resisting the socialization of Christianity in histime, and also on our debates today about what the folks across the pond(where one brother had migrated and died a few decades after theConstitution was written) meant when they talked about "establishment"of an official church.Peter Kierkegaard had to sign the baptismal book at the local church foreach of his children when they were born. Sounds fine, right? Yep,except so did Baptists and Swedenborgians and Dissenters of all sorts.Wait, you ask, what if they didn’t want their child baptized into theDanish Lutheran Church? Well, that was against the law. But they sawthemselves as very tolerant, because if you then went to have your childbaptized in some other faith, you could without fear of arrest.And for Peter and his sons Michael and Soren when they grew toadulthood, if they wanted to receive communion, they had to go by theoffice and sign up for it, so that a full check could be done into theircurrent state of both civic and spiritual fitness to be accepted at thecommunion table. You needed to get signed up early, the warnings said innewspapers, to give religious authorities plenty of time to do a fullinvestigation.This kind of stuff is what the Founding Folks were looking back toEurope and seeing, and what they were wanting explicitly banned in thenew US Constitution. Even though Massachusetts still had an officialchurch (Congregationalist, now UCC) into the 1830’s, and tax money wascollected to support Anglican churches (now Episcopalian) in many statesright through and even past the Revolution, they hoped that in time theidea of a state church could be banned on the national level, anddiscouraged in the separate states.How we politically deal with the modern desire to frame the"establishment" clause as the right to be free of having to deal with orexperience religion anywhere in the public sphere is a hot potato, butthe roots of the so-called "separation of church and state" don’t diginto that territory. That’s some new excavation which we will continueto sift and study.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around centralOhio. Tell him how you’re spending the summer through disciple@voyager.net.
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