Faith Works 3-6

Faith Works 3-6-10

Jeff Gill

 

Carrying Everything Forward, Putting It All on the Altar

___

 

 

This past week, we had to say "farewell" to Gretchen Dubbe, a woman of whom Proverbs 31 might well have been written.

 

Among all the other things I might say about her Christian commitment, her passionate concern for family, community, and those who think they are outside of those warm-hearted circles of concern, I have to mention… knitting.

 

She loved to knit, and she was in this, as in so much, interested in understanding it right down to the ground, and back up and out to teach (teacher was one of her many honored titles). She explained to me once, very matter-of-factly, how she delighted in having a couple of sheep, learning a bit about shearing, doing the carding and pulling and spinning, and making the yarn. "It makes the knitting even more meaningful," she explained. "And fun!"

 

It's Gretchen's sense of what knitting can be about, when you have a heart for every step in the process, that carries me with confidence into what is many people's least favorite part of corporate worship: the offering.

 

To some, the passing of the plates ("the holy hubcaps" my brother used to say) is the brief but interminable fundraising pause in the program, like a pledge drive week on public radio.

 

Ah, no. It is – it should be – the very heart, or at least close to the heart of the worship service.

 

Like Gretchen's sheep, the way I most appreciate the offering, and the way I envision it in my heart even when it isn't what's actually done, is as an integral part of communion, woven in from the start. In liturgical traditions, it is actually fairly common that when the collection of the offering is concluded, they are brought forward *along with* the elements. The wine (or grape juice) and the bread are carried up to the communion table (or altar), along with what we've just put in the plates, our envelopes and wadded cash and occasional jingling change.

 

In most Christian perspectives on communion, or the Eucharist, we as the gathered community present the grain and grapes, scattered and grown, gathered in harvest, crushed or ground, and transformed through our means into the bread and cup. We trust God to work through these gifts, in ways that may vary a bit from one church teaching to another, but all agreed that God makes of them that offering which points us to the presence of Christ.

 

That's what the offering is. Alongside, next to, even underneath the appearances, like the communion offering, those mostly financial offerings are from our labors, out of our hearts, flawed and broken though they may be, but presented so that God might transform them into an acceptable gift. They are changed by grace from above for building the kingdom of God here on earth.

 

Obviously, if your tradition doesn't have communion every week, you can't always have that visual reminder of the offering plates carried forward with the loaf and cup. But that's why, though we tend to forget it, most churches carry the offering forward at the end, often with a singing of the Doxology, the "Song of Praise;" not to give thanks for what we've given, but to rejoice in what God has promised to do with what we bring forward.

 

I could talk about the contents of what we give: recent studies show that active church members give 2.56% of their income, compared to 2.2% for the entire population. Check out the website emptytomb.org for more striking insight into what giving is and isn't in modern American Christendom, and try the Yoking Map button on the sidebar for some enlightening applications of what "empty tomb, inc." is trying to say.

 

But right now I just want to remind us of what offering is, and can be in our worship services. It's a place to remember that we never really put what we might in front of God, yet somehow something amazing can happen around our loaves and fishes. When we pour out the cup, and speak of Jesus' life's blood poured out, we also see a bright spark of long-ago sunlight transformed in a sphere of fruitfulness, now juice to flow through our veins.

 

Offering, and communion, and worship itself is about transformations, each hinting at a greater one beyond. When we lay to rest those we love in the cold wintry ground, is it really so strange to see the seeds of a greater transformation that leads to a brighter day, which only ends in rejoicing before the Throne of Life?

 

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow . . ."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; make an offering of a story through him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 3-4

Notes From My Knapsack 3-4-10

Jeff Gill

 

Looking Deeply Into the Landscape Around Us

___

 

 

With the last of the leaves off of the trees, these remaining snows put a cloak on the landscape that reveals as much as it covers.

 

Over the next few weeks, we will be able to see as far into the forests and woodlots as we can at any point in the year, and these late winter, early spring snowfalls actually highlight and trace lines that are invisible under the summer canopy and fall leaf piles.

 

It might be as simple as some logs on a hillside, lying perpendicular to the standing trunks all around, putting up an accidental grid next to a road you drive all year unawares. It could be a house, a barn, or even an abandoned shed far away from your usual paths that each year about this time you say to yourself, "Oh, right, I'd forgotten that was back there."

 

The relationship of one ridge or rill to the next valley, and how the drive from the main road curls up to the distant home, all are visible and open now in ways that in just a few weeks will only make sense if you have business that takes you around that turn, and on into the opaque woods, one bend at a time.

 

The crusted thawed and refrozen snow gives you a chance to check out tracks that may fill too quickly for most to wander along in earlier winter. Whether a rabbit or a deer, or that dratted neighbor dog, you can trudge (if your shoes are up to the task, proof against the water that's everywhere under the white), and track, like Boone or Kenton, from steady trot to sudden leap, around tree trunks and ghosting through or over fences until you find the den, the hole, the hutch.

 

Scout Troop 65 went out on a Sunday after the height of our snowy season, in collaboration with the Granville Volunteer Fire Department, and dug out fire hydrants all around the core of the village and out along some of the side streets. A few good Scouts had already dug out the hydrants near their homes and around their neighborhoods. We spent a good, clear, refreshing afternoon chipping and shoveling, with a few of us adults judiciously using a powerblower for the deeply plowed under spots.

 

Stopping at spot by spot to dig and delve for that hidden chunk of blue and white metal, we had a chance to look around. Each place was familiar, but to actually pause instead of driving by at 35 mph (or 25 in the strict enforcement zones, natch), to not even be walking but to be stationary for a time, glancing around. You saw the houses and their relationships, the slopes and their outlines in ways that are fresh and new.

 

Now when I drive by, at a decent clip, my mind on a shopping list, I still see those blocks and neighborhoods and streets a bit more clearly, even seeing the parts I can't see in memory: where a brick patio picks up the sun to melt the snow, around a charming statue I didn't even know was there.

 

And I can see, even when I only hear them, the Carolina Chickadees and Eastern Bluebirds and brilliant Cardinals, their perches of forsythia and lilac and honeysuckle now fixed, leafless but all the more solid, firmly located in my mind's eye.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Faith Works 2-27

Faith Works 2-27-10

Jeff Gill

 

Sunday-Go-To-Meetin' Clothes May Be A Bit Frayed

___

 

 

So many of you have written about my accidental tour through the "side issues" of modern worship practices, and I appreciate them all, and will always try to return some kind of response, albeit brief.

 

It's kept me looking at these questions and nudging at new angles of subjects I've addressed before, such as the history of worship music.  What kinds and sorts are "right" for giving thanks to God and gathering a congregation together? It's complex and filled with, well, division.

 

Do you notice I haven't really gone there yet, either? Yep. Give me a little more time. It's a big one.

 

I did find a mention in James B. Finley's autobiography of how, in the 1830s, the question of whether or not to use Isaac Watts' hymns in worship was splitting both churches and even families. Isaac Watts, the author of hymns like "O God, Our Help in Ages Past," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," and "Joy To the World," was once controversial enough to fracture a congregation, just over whether to sing his stuff. Anyhow.

 

Clothing is often a major point of departure between approaches to worship style. Here as in all of my offerings, my intention is not to say which approach is the ideal, let alone the one, right, and true approach for all Christians (the only group for which I can even imperfectly speak), but to talk about where our assumptions about how to do things in worship come from . . . which often is not scriptural or even official, just cultural, and much less than timeless.

 

Why is there any norm, or standard about "what to wear to church" among people of faith? As I grew up as a good Midwestern Protestant Christian, it was one of those timeless, since Mt. Sinai kind of things that no one, not even the heathen, wore jeans to church, and the bottom line was that you wore your best. If you had the nerve to ask why, when Jesus wore a single robe and sandals, you heard something around the lines of "we want to offer only our best to the Lord."

 

Who can argue with that?

 

And I don't really want to, except it became a sort of church uniform, where you wore on Sunday and to funerals what you'd wear to the bank to ask for a loan (yes, I'm sounding older with each paragraph, aren't I?) or to visit the museum or the Statehouse (cue uproarious laughter from anyone under 50).

 

And it became a barrier. If you didn't have a suit and tie, or nice but modest dress, then you just knew you couldn't make it through the door. End of story.

 

Where this story begins, though, is on the western frontier, back when we, Licking County, were part of the wild, wild west (see James B. Finley, above). Before the Civil War, it's a peculiarity that in all formal, official portraits, men were actually clean shaven. Beards only came back into style with the veterans returning with full length beards, mustaches, and muttonchop whiskers (oft called, in an inversion of Gen. Burnsides, sideburns).

 

Before that, did men shave to the skin each day? The answer is certainly not. Most men went around bristly and stubbled, until that one day a week when the big kettle was hauled up over the fire, and everyone, starting with Dad, got a bath (being the youngest was *really* a bummer back then). If you were well-off, your family might have a toothbrush, even. "A" toothbrush. Yes, that's what I mean.

 

And Mom would sharpen up the razor for her husband with the leather strop she used to keep order in the house the rest of the week, a hundred strokes on each side of the blade.

 

Then the next morning, freshly bathed for the first (and last) time that week, and Pater Familias gleamingly shaved, everyone dug into the two sets of clothes they had, and put on the nicer set. The "Sunday-go-to-meetin'" set.

 

Over time, families went from two pairs of britches to three, to four, and to five or six with a "dress" outfit, but the idea that you wore your best outfit hung on. Now, many men don't even own a suit, let alone a hat or gloves (or a buggy whip, for that matter).

 

My mom still doesn't like the idea of anyone wearing jeans to church, even a new pair without holes in the knees. The question is still open, looking a bit different in the light of history: what is the "proper" garb for going to church?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him what you like to wear to worship at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Just in case you haven't seen it eighteen other places . . .

http://www.esquire.com/features/roger-ebert-0310

Read it all, I beg of you, but here's the money quote:

"I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out."

Faith Works 2-20

Faith Works 2-20-10

Jeff Gill

 

Sometimes, You Just Don't Know Whether To Sit Or Stand

___

 

 

Lent has surely begun, Ash Wednesday not so much ashy as snowy, but the days, as the Old English "lencta" would have it, are lengthening.

 

I mentioned my plan to avoid plastic and non-essential shopping or buying or consuming for this Lenten season, and many of you wrote or Twittered ("tweeted") me your plans to give up pop or candy or swearing at your car, or the snow. My prayers are with your spiritual disciplines, that you learn from them and hold that commitment with faithfulness – and I ask that you pray for me!

 

Before Lent got going, I'd been writing about some of those "edge phenomena" around worship, "adiaphora" or "indifferent things" philosophically & theologically speaking. One was about coming late, or just as services start, and the other was about where to sit when you get there: these are matters that may barely intrude into the consciousness of those of us who attend church regularly, but are major questions for seekers and/or first time visitors.

 

Another of these "indifferent" matters is standing . . . or sitting.

 

Non-Catholics, and even cradle Catholics make jokes about a typical church wedding in their tradition. Up, then down, then up, then – whoa, what are those things swinging down at me? – you kneel, and then it's back up, and . . .

 

OK, I'm exaggerating, but not by much. It isn't just a Catholic Christian thing, though, since some Protestant Christian services have a fairly good cardio-workout component to them, even without kneelers. And much non-denominational  contemporary worship has the hovering question of when to stand hanging over their unstructured services, as well.

 

Before we ask when to stand, what about "why?" Why do we stand at certain points in corporate worship?

 

Actually, in the ancient traditions of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, you find in most of their worship spaces a distinct lack of seats. That's right, no seats. None. And the Divine Liturgy tends to go around two hours.

 

In this country, a Greek Orthodox church may have pews, but it's a practice picked up from surrounding church life (or from buying a decommissioned Protestant church). Back in Russia or Romania or otherwise, the congregation gathers in an open space, with seats along some walls for the elderly and pregnant women, and children sit, if young, at the feet of their parents. Many American Orthodox sanctuaries still are this way, seatless, and standing. For two hours. Plus.

 

That accurately echoes the Roman law court, or basilica, which Christianity inherited after Constantine around 325 AD. The people gathered to watch and listen and participate, and Orthodox Christianity would also affirm participation in the act of worship through their active, attentive witness: but they stood, they stand out of respect and in veneration of God's active power in worship. You wouldn't sit in the King or Emperor's presence, would you?

 

So the practice of standing, out of respect, carries down into certain moments in other traditions, punctuated by kneeling (that's what those padded rails are for in the back of the pew in front of you). In fact, the big "worship wars" debates in Licking County congregations of the early 1800's, before the Civil War, were in two areas: whether or not to move to sitting during the congregational prayers, and whether or not men and women should sit together.

 

A reliable way to tell a church building's date is if it has two doors, which points to a pre-Civil War era building. After the war, the trend for families to sit together was affirmed with great vehemence by returning veterans, and you can understand why – that was the end of sex segregation in worship.

 

As far as I can tell, the practice of standing during prayer in most Protestant churches was already over by 1860, but I'm quite unclear on the details. There's no doubt quite a study for someone in this question.

 

Now we see churches struggle again with when to ask the congregation "please stand, if you are able." What do you feel promotes worship, and best represents personal devotion to God in a corporate context?

 

The debate continues . . .

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him how long you're willing to stand to show your thankfulness at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Faith Works 2-13

Faith Works 2-13-10

Jeff Gill

 

Learning From Lent With a Little Less In the Way

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This week is the beginning of Lent, starting for most Christians with Ash Wednesday, on Feb. 17 this year – nice and early, meaning Easter's coming early as well, on April 4^th. Watch for snowflakes at the sunrise service, but we've got some time to prepare for all that.

 

Lent is a season of preparation, of penitence, which is why in some areas they get one last blow-out done concluding with "Fat Tuesday" or Mardi Gras in French, which New Orleans started early this time around.

 

Often, those who "observe" Lent give something up, or "fast" from a particular treat (chocolate, French fries, soda pop) for the 40 non-Sunday days between Ash Wednesday and Easter: Sunday is always a feast day, so technically you get back what you give up for that celebratory day. And I have an idea you might want to reflect on this year, Lenten-wise.

 

Michelle Singletary is a financial reporter for the Washington Post and a commentator on National Public Radio. She writes a column called "The Color of Money," using the particular concerns of people of color to look at how all of us are influenced by fiscal issues.

 

She's also a very active lay leader at her Baptist church in the DC area, and for some years she's organized a volunteer led program called Prosperity Partners Ministry at her church. The results of that effort, and one particular part of it, have moved her to write a book that encapsulates what's she's learned from the participants called "The Power To Prosper."

 

The heart of the book is a 21-day financial fast. For three weeks, Singletary invites participants in her program to commit to not using plastic, credit or debit, for those three weeks, and not buying things other than necessities like groceries, gas for your car, and of course paying the household bills.

 

No buying breakfast or lunch at work, no coffee beverages, no shopping online, and no purchasing of "stuff" other than the grocery needs of your household. Not forever, but for three weeks. This financial fast is meant as a major break with casual purchasing and steady spending that bleeds away so many people's ability to save and plan for a better future.

 

And her approach isn't to shout the devil at all plastic cards, but to help us remember who is in charge when it comes to using them, which is why she says that during this fast, you use cash. You remember cash, don't you? That paper stuff with green ink and dead presidents? You commit to using cash for that which you must buy, for this certain period of time.

 

In her book, she breaks all this down and answers all the usual "but what about questions," and you can search online to find outlines with Scriptural references (use her name and the book title and/or the program title above) that give you the basic tools to get the job done.

 

What I'm attracted to is the intention behind this program, to get us to purchase and spend more consciously, so that we can not only save, but in her words, "prosper so we can bless others." The more you control your spending, the more you can commit your giving to those causes and purposes that are important to you.

 

So here's my commitment. My plan is to make this a Lenten fast – I'm going to try to not buy stuff throughout this Lenten season. No fast food, no coffee that I didn't make at home, no online or megastore meandering purchases. I'll still shop for groceries and such, and stock up when needed on toilet paper and shampoo, but cash only. I'll use my plastic for gas only.

 

Michelle would likely say that's a bit much for most to take on all at once, which is why she asks you to try a 21-day, three week fast to start. But even if you did the 21 days in the midst of the 40 days of Lent, what bonds might that loose for some of you? What empowerment might that spur?

 

I'm looking forward to our sharing some stories on this before Easter (and more snowflakes) come along.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your story of saving and spending at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Knapsack 2-18

Notes From My Knapsack 2-18-10

Jeff Gill

 

Haiti Today, Granville 1886

___

 

 

When I look at Haiti today, whether just before the catastrophic earthquake, or now in the tragic aftermath, it seems all somewhat incomprehensible, and nearly beyond incredible.

 

Terence, the Roman playwright, said "Nothing human is alien to me." OK, Latin fans, he actually said "humani nil a me alienum puto," and for Black History Month, he was born some 2200 years ago in Africa before coming to Rome, almost certainly as a slave but ending his life as an acclaimed freeman.

 

We look at Haiti, the first free "black-led republic" in the world after the 1804 slave rebellion from France; their freedom in the wake of the American example opening a door for the rest of Latin America, but one that took long years to enter for most of the rest of their neighbors.

 

So when Granville was being staked out by the first official settlers in 1805, Haiti was just beginning as well; not settlement, which had been going on for nearly 300 years on their end of Hispaniola, the island they share with the Dominican Republic, but establishing a free & independent government, and autonomous economy both trace, in the Caribbean and in the Midwest, to almost the same year.

 

Of course, the differences are significant, but not beyond understanding. Looking a little more widely, to understand the size and population of Haiti, take Ohio, and divide it in quarters. Take one-fourth of Ohio, and shove all of our population, Cincinnati & Columbus & Dayton, into that part, say around Cleveland and Ashtabula County and down to Canton, maybe over to Elyria. But put all 11 million Ohioans into that quadrant, and you would have about the same population density; Haiti is estimated to have a bit over 9 million residents, with a fourth of the square miles, so there you go.

 

What does take a painful imaginative leap is to go from an average household income of $46,000 to one of $1,000. Not having Ohio winters is a help for Haitians, but not so much as to counterbalance that. There is no comparison that helps those numbers ring anything but hollow.

 

Where the echoes do resonate for me is in looking back at Granville, and back to 1886. A distant time, but not beyond our records, our photos, our collective memory.

 

In 1886, a well-educated young community leader, a pharmacist of 37 named Charles Webster Bryant, asked his community some questions. Granville was busy and energetic and filled with educational institutions and fledgling industry, with horses on the streets and animals in backyards, often destined for the dinner table, pecking around garden plots that filled most of the property. Outhouses were the norm, and wells for each house.

 

As the population grew, Bryant noticed the increase of infectious illness, sickness that he knew, as a pharmacist, could be prevented. The trees had all been cut down for firewood years before, the hills eroded away in each rainstorm, and there was an annual increase in diseases like cholera and typhoid.

 

Bryant had already helped organize the new Granville Historical Society, and was in the middle not only of recording the eroding tombstones in the Old Colony Burying Ground, but of helping incorporate the Ohio Archaeological & Historical Society. He was a doer. So he said to the community: why not a municipal water system? Let's tend our sewage and pump our water safely, and work together in the interest of health and well-being. If each paid a bit for every property, Granville could have a system as a few cities had begun earlier in the century: so Bryant suggested.

 

But the famous "pump handle" cholera outbreak in London was just 32 years earlier, and "miasmal" theories of contagion were still common, and Bryant's suggestion was ignored.

 

Then, at the end of August, 1886, Bryant fell ill: with typhoid. There in his house, which still stands at the corner of Pearl & College, he died. Soon after, a chastened community decided to begin a public waterworks, and to plant trees and tend some public parks. Electricity and interurbans and the automobile all had their own effects in the next century.

 

My point is that Granville in that summer of 1886 was visually and economically and socially not too different from even Port-au-Prince itself today, or at least just before the quake. 124 years later, Granville is quite different. With some shared effort, this time in collaboration with more distant partners, what might Haiti be like in 2110?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

[The following is likely to be printed in the Feb. 4, 2010 Granville Sentinel; my Feb. 6, 2010 Newark Advocate companion piece for the Scouting 100th birthday is a bit further down the page -- Pax, Jeff]

Notes From My Knapsack 2-4-10
One Hundred Years of Adventure, Safely Guided
Jeff Gill
___


To be perfectly candid, I can’t be in any way unbiased or objective about the Boy Scouts of America.

Anyone who knows me knows that right behind my faith and my family is my love of Scouting, the World Scouting Movement, and the BSA. It has been the biggest single influence on my life outside of my parents, and yes, I’m including the church I grew up in as taking second place, which may be unfair because they were the chartering organization for Troop 7, the Boy Scout troop I joined in 1972 in which I earned Eagle, and my Court of Honor for that was held in First Christian Church, Valparaiso, Indiana, which still is the chartering organization for the unit, and which still has the same Scoutmaster, Mr. Bill Eckert, and long may he hike.

But before that I was a Cub Scout, starting in 1969, and I’ve been registered to one Scouting unit or another from Pack 20 at the Presbyterian Church to Troop 65 today as an assistant scoutmaster at Centenary United Methodist Church, though the charter for our troop and Pack 3 which my son and I just moved through is held by the Granville Kiwanis, long may they wave!

Scouting in the United States began right on the heels of the development of the Scouting Movement by Robert Baden-Powell in the summer of 1907, at Brownsea Island off the southern coast of England. The legend is that William Boyce, just two years later, met a young Scout in London and got help in finding an address, as a foreign businessman far from his Illinois home, but the lad would take no tip. “I’m a Scout, sir,” said the boy, still the Unknown Scout to this day, but his Good Turn held in honor by American scouts throughout the years since.

Boyce was a magazine publisher, and saw a business opportunity and also a need that could be filled, as industrial cities and boys cut off from nature might find a structured way to get back into the outdoors. He quickly found YMCA allies like Edgar Robinson, other youth group organizers like Dan Beard of Cincinnati and Ernest Thompson Seton of New York, and they got a Congressional charter in Washington, DC on February 8, 1910.

For lack of a better date, the BSA continues to celebrate the charter date as our “birthday,” even as some copies of Baden-Powell’s book had already crossed the pond and some scout troops claim to be older than the BSA itself, which may be.

Scouting in Licking County was born at Trinity Episcopal Church and perhaps a dozen other places, but Rev. Franklin and others had units and camping and activities in full flower by the close of the 1920s, so strongly that even the Depression couldn’t end it.

The Licking County Council is now a district within the Simon Kenton Council, the umbrella organization for 40,000 scouts from Maysville, KY up through Delaware, OH, and down in Chillicothe we’ll have a centennial camporee this spring.

But on Feb. 7th, which is traditionally a “Scout Sunday” for congregations that have a chartered unit, Cub Scout pack or Boy Scout troop or Venture crew, this will be a special year and time for some special acknowledgements. One hundred years of American Scouting, and a century ahead that looks pretty inviting.

This is my 41st year as a Scout, now a “scouter,” an adult leader for a movement that has inspired young men, and now young women 14 and up in Venturing, to go on in life as leaders and doers and citizens with a clear sense of their place in the world, and in their nation. Friends of mine in Scouting over the years have gone on to be liberals and conservatives, religious leaders and spiritual skeptics, avid outdoorsfolk and committed scholars with an aversion to getting their feet wet – but they are all engaged, and hopeful.

Look back over the last century, and ask the question: what other organization has grown and responded and survived and maintained its core values, while also maintaining relevance to the needs of youth in a new era? Not too many other candidates come to mind. Plenty have started and grown and crashed and vanished over those 100 years, but today, Baden-Powell and Boyce and Beard and Seton would recognize much of what makes for a troop meeting or campout. (They’d also love Thinsulate and Goretex!)

Here in Granville, and around Licking County, a salute to all my fellow Scout leaders who make the program possible, and a prayer for all the young leaders who really do run most of the units above the Cub Scout level, that they may feel our support and affirmation as they learn by doing, and see themselves making a difference that might just last for a hundred years . . . or more.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s a holder of the Silver Beaver award for volunteer service to Scouting. Tell him your Scouting story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Faith Works 1-30 & 2-6

Faith Works 1-30-10

Jeff Gill

 

Where To Sit: A Disorienting Question

___

 

 

Last week we talked about the trend to lateness, and whether latecomers to worship are a problem or an opportunity. I come down on the latter, but got some friendly e-mail & comment response both ways.

 

There were a few very emphatic statements saying "yes, not being ready to talk to people is exactly why I arrive after the service starts; thanks for getting it, and no, if you move the time back a half hour I'm still going to come late."

 

Which leads me to my next question: Where to sit?

 

This is a subject on which I had little direct information on until the last few years. When you're the preaching pastor of a parish, you get there early to adjust the thermostat, practice your sermon in an undistracting empty sanctuary, pray over the space and for those who will enter in, and (whoops! should have done this first…) unlock the doors. So you're not late, and you sit up in the front, when you sit down at all.

 

As a more frequent worshiper, and even as a supply preacher who may move about from place to place, I'm now a little more in tune with the challenges of figuring out where to sit.

 

At first, I went down to the front row, since that's always open (and that's a whole 'nother subject of a future column). But since I'm five foot seventeen inches, that gets awkward because I feel like I'm either in the way or way too much on display.

 

You can slide over to the side, but then latecomers (ha!) arrive and you end up scooting to the middle of the front, which is where you were avoiding being planted.

 

So then I started scouting out spots where I could nail down an end seat, further back; there you run into the infamous "look." The look that says "hey, we aren't telling you not to sit there, but the Jones-Smith family always sits there, and that's going to get awkward when they arrive in a few minutes." It's somewhere around the eyebrows, and it's very clear.

 

You go around the back and to the other side, but you get "the look" on behalf of the Smith-Jones family.

 

Adding to this is the usual situation I'm in nowadays, where my wife is up on the platform at the church where she does worship leadership, so even when I attend there, I'm solo. Single adults looking for a seat are less easy to fit into a sanctuary than you'd think. There's the spacing proprieties to observe, and a solo has to have a gap on either side, while a family squeezes up in between. You really start to become aware of how you affect the seating dynamics of a whole section.

 

Ends are the best, but then when latecomers arrive, do you slide in, or scootch back and make them sidle past you to the middle? Which can get you another sort of "I'm smiling because I don't want to look like this annoys me" look.

 

All of which means I've found the joys of sitting . . . yep, all the way in the back. My big giant head is not in the way of the screen for anyone, no one wants to shift me over, and in most churches the chairs against the back wall are understood to be "non-claimable" by family history – they're all "first come, first seated."

 

Some churches have clearly done heroic work in arranging space, training greeters, and simply creating a culture of welcome for both new visitors and returning members (hint: starting with "where've you been?" isn't a winning approach). Others have some work to do.

 

How does seating work at your church? Keep in mind that the average new visitor makes up their mind in the first fifteen minutes whether they're coming back for a second time to your church. Good preaching is important, but it's not the key factor. Feeling at ease and sensing that you might come to feel at home in a worship space in less than five years – those are the components of a successful evangelism approach with Sunday visitors.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he usually sits in the back unless he's seated behind the pulpit. Tell him where you like to sit at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

 

*  *  *

*  *  *

 

Faith Works 2-6-10

Jeff Gill

 

A Hundred Years of American Scouting

___

 

This is an event for me that is very like what 2000 was for many adults: it's filtered through remembering when as a kid it dawned on you that you'd see this day, and wondered then what it would be like now.

 

As a Cub Scout back around 1970, hearing that the Scouting Movement first officially began in the United States in 1910, I did the math in my head and realized I wouldn't even be fifty years old when the Boy Scouts of America would have their centennial. Assuming good health and other decent breaks, it was a given that I'd see that day, but from what perspective?

 

Well, it's now 2010, and the chartering date with the U.S. Congress of Feb. 8, 1910 has served as the official "Scouting birthday" ever since. And given that most Scout units – Cub Scout packs, Boy Scout troops, Venturing crews – are "chartered" to religious institutions (not all, but a strong majority), the Sunday nearest Feb. 8 is usually a Scout Sunday or that Saturday a Scout Sabbath.

 

From a purely personal perspective, this is a very meaningful anniversary to me. My call to ministry came through my work on a summer camp staff, and I learned that I had a gift to teach and preach in vesper services out under the trees and by the lakes before I ever had a chance to really feel comfortable in a church sanctuary.

 

The church I grew up in chartered the troop where I earned my Eagle rank, and they get that credit for sure, but it was in Scouting where I developed my sense of where God was at work in Nature and everyday life. The Scouting priority on youth leadership through outdoor education meant that my first chance to lead others in completing a task – and failing! – was as a patrol leader and troop quartermaster, shopping for food under the watchful, but gently detached eye of an adult leader whose restraint I only now appreciate.

 

If your faith community sponsors, or charters a Scouting unit, you may have some of them with you, in uniform, this weekend. The uniform is one way to put all members on the same footing, without brand-name competition or status; the only way to gain status on your uniform is to earn it, and every bit of Scouting insignia is available to anyone. There's no competition for rank or awards for one to win and another to lose, no struggle for completion other than with yourself; in theory, every Scout can make Eagle and that would be a wonderful thing.

 

Of course, not all do; one in a hundred or so earn that rank by age 18.  40,000 youth, male, as well as female in Venturing for 14 to 21 year olds, make up the Simon Kenton Council of the BSA, stretching from Delaware, Ohio to Maysville, Kentucky, and from Licking County over to London.

 

There will be tree plantings and Cub pack "Blue & Gold" banquets and spring camporees yet to honor this centennial year for the BSA. But this weekend we note that central element of the Scout Oath, the only "joining requirement," if you will –

 

"On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty, to God and my country."

 

The promise continues a few phrases, but that's the heart of it. To do our duty to God, as we understand that Presence, whether Jewish or Hindu or Moslem or Buddhist or Christian, since Scouting is a truly interfaith body and has been from birth; and to our country, which means I've met former Scouts of the left and right, as protestors and Peace Corps members and soldiers and pacifists.

 

To do our duty, to God and our country, the best we can. Thank you, Scouting, for giving me those words to live by into a second hundred years.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he holds the Silver Beaver award for volunteer service to Scouting. Tell him your Scouting story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com. 

Faith Works 1-23

Faith Works 1-23-10

Jeff Gill

 

Just Calling (or Writing) Because I'm Gonna Be Late

___

 

Thanks to cell phone and texting technology, it's the easiest thing in the world to send a quick message or make a call to say "Hey, I'm running a little late today; be there in a bit."

 

This can be abused, no doubt (and we've all seen it, if not done it), but it's also an outgrowth of increased expectations about productivity and multitasking from work and activities, where people just assume we can cram more into a 24 hour day . . . and this is how we do it.

 

I work a weekday job where people showing up on time for appointments is a sign of either signal interest and attention to detail, or their ride had to drop them off way early for their scheduled time. And quite frankly, we all try not to assume anymore that being late is a sign of disrespect. Yes, I was raised to think and act that way, too, but today being late is "just one of those things," like wearing jeans or having a ring tone go off in a meeting.

 

Which creates some interesting questions in church and for worship services.

 

None of this is entirely a new question: when I was a kid, there was a family that was famously, legendarily, predictably late to each and every Sunday morning service or any special service for that matter. They came with almost punctual precision during the first hymn and nudged their way into a pew front and center.

 

One Sunday there was a city-wide power outage, and all things worked out so that the service began twenty minutes late (something that never, ever happened). And the family in question? They came in during the first hymn, twenty minutes later than twenty minutes late.

 

I'm regularly in a number of services, and so I say cheerfully and freely "this isn't about you" to anyone who wants to know, but – my distinct impression is that over the last five years the percentage of people who come in quite intentionally after the service has begun is on the increase, in some congregations pushing towards a quarter of what ends up being the total worshipping population.

 

Is this a problem? Obviously there are complications from this phenomenon, and not a few would say that late arrival is disrespectful to the worship leadership, to fellow worshipers, and to God. In some ways, this might be true.

 

I also know that it's not that long ago that wearing other than your very best clothes was considered rude and/or disrespectful to all of the above. For good or ill, that has changed. But isn't coming late different?

 

This is something I'm still chewing over. For some, coming late is a coping strategy: they welcome fellowship and interaction, but not right away. Latecoming buffers that. As a married person who often ends up sitting as a single in sanctuaries, I've gained a whole new appreciation for what coming into and joining in worship is like for a single person (short sermon: pews & much else is oriented so much at family groups that singletons feel very much an obstacle & a problem, not a part of the celebration; more to say later). Coming in late eases these issues as a solo.

 

And just as jeans became more accepted in general, lateness in society isn't what it used to be. Is it something the church is called to fight, or work through? Go ahead, look through your Bible for teachings on timeliness: the one note you'll find? Paul chews out some folks for starting before everyone is ready . . .

 

In an age ruled by the clock, and by getting things started on a stopwatch, maybe the "be ye not conformed to this world" has as much to do with worrying about timetables as it does to chastising the tardy.

 

And every preacher knows that some folks are going to leave at a certain time no matter what has happened of worth and value in the service, because "the roast is in the oven."

 

It's fascinating to run into those folks at Bob Evans' later in the afternoon . . .

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he would never say he's never been late. Send your tardiness excuse to knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Faith Works 1-16

Faith Works 1-16-10

Jeff Gill

 

Healings, Mental and Physical

___

 

 

I believe in healing, which has gotten me some very interesting e-mail this past week.

 

Some folks (who must not have read on through the column) wanted to know why I would align myself with Oral Roberts and other even less savory characters who began to trade healing promises for requests to send checks.

 

Others were concerned that I didn't say clearly enough that if you pray with sincere faith, miraculous healing is the necessary result for anyone who asks (as long as . . . insert qualification here).

 

What is even more dangerous ground to tread upon, like recently formed pond ice, is mental health, and healing hopes for overcoming illness in that category.

 

After my encounters with medical care last month, and the column last week, I wanted to make one more set of personal comments in relation to mental health. As the saying goes, or should, columnists rush in where angels fear to tread – so here goes.

 

My surgery almost did not come off, and was postponed a week, because of a malady known as "white coat syndrome." Let's call it WCS, which sounds nicely clinical. It means that, for some, going into a health care setting, a doctor's office or more commonly a hospital (let alone an emergency room), one's blood pressure and sometimes pulse rate ratchet up dramatically.

 

Quite sensibly, when my blood pressure on the original day for my oh-so-fun procedure went up and stayed up in pre-op, I was told by the anesthesiologist "go home, go to your doctor, and let's get that number down before we put you under." I was fortunate enough to get into my family doctor that very morning, and an hour after my bell-ringing numbers, in the more familiar surroundings of this doc's office, my numbers were down right normal, average even.

 

The suggestion? "Here, take this prescription." Not for blood pressure meds, but for an anti-anxiety drug I would take the morning of when we got me rescheduled (and just to be safe, we did my BP at the doc's office every day in between – it was fine). My WCS was anxiety, and medicine has anti-anxiety meds, so all's well.

 

Here's my insight, such as it is. I was ticked off. Not at the doctor, but at myself. Keep in mind that as a parish pastor, I've spent more time climbing up and down the back stairs of more hospitals than a pharmaceutical sales rep, in six states over three decades. I know better than to clutch up when I'm facing surgery, I know what's going to happen better than most, and I know . . . ok, it's possible part of my problem is that I know too much about hospitals. Anyhow.

 

What I really had a hard time shaking was the conviction that with prayer and willpower (or willpower and prayer) I should be able to overcome this WCS on my own. Why do I need a pill? This is stupid.

 

Yes, it was. Anxiety, in this case, was an entirely autonomic nervous system response. Like many forms of depression, mania, or other illnesses like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or more loosely understood problems like autism or even fibromyalgia, there is little you can do to "think" your way back to mental health.

 

And medical science has tools you can use to get to a point where you do regain some control over your choices, of both mood & attitude, and of action & movement. Using those tools is not a sign of weakness, and they are often the only way you can return to your strengths. As a person of faith, claiming your gifts and your calling is never something we're expected to do entirely on our own, in isolation.

 

Prayer, in these contexts, can be a healing factor to help us say yes, to accept help from others, even from doctors.

 

So I took my one pill, let it help me overcome my WCS, got the surgery, and healed up afterwards (and still am, a bit) with the help of many prayers, many medical professionals, and much love. There's no one part of that formula I believe God would have me do without.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about what's healed you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Newark Moonrise reconstruction by Steven Patricia

Adena Pipe











Other purposes for the Octagon?

Dr. James Salisbury and his 1862 map

Great Circle wall profile 1992


Great Circle - Civil War reunion 1878

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, 1884

Amazon Basin new discoveries

Faith Works 1-02

Faith Works 1-2-10
Jeff Gill

Healings May Just Be the Everyday Supernatural
___

I believe in healing, not that this represents a solution to the ongoing health care debate.

Over the last month, I've had some pretty unpleasant surgery. Not the sort that carries deep and momentous consequences for the future (i.e., no cancer involved), but to deal with some health issues that have been impairing my well-being, functioning, and general upkeep for some years now.

The aftermath, part of what the medical team calls "the healing process" had its own particular elements of nasty, but as Dr. Shakespeare says, "all's well that ends well." This particular surgical intervention has worked, the medications were effective, and I'm feeling healthier than I have for literally years and years.

What the doctor and nurses and staff would all agree about is that healing, per se, is made possible in some cases by surgical intervention and by medications both prescription and off-the-shelf; but, it really happens within the person of the patient, which is to say, not even just with that one individual.

Healing requires the active support of family and friends, and of your state of mind, which is dependent on your surroundings as much as your interior life. Healing demands that you be in a community of concern, as opposed to being surrounded by those who just want you to go back to old and often self-destructive ways.

In other words, you can't heal a person with a pill and a scalpel, and no one knows that better than medical professionals.

Which is why, I suspect, you find so many highly trained, totally professional health care folks who value prayer as a key element in healing. They won't impose it, but they do ask if you have "personal or spiritual practices that aid in pain management" and other such oblique queries. Prayer is there, all the time, often right where you least expect it.

Because if a drug alone, or just an incision and poking about would cure people, they'd know it. They'd see it. And they don't.

Prayer and spiritual healing means different things to different people. Oral Roberts, who died a few weeks ago, did a great deal to both renew interest in the intersection of spiritual and physical healing, and also to cloud the issue. God be good to him. His excesses in aid of a TV ministry may have given a peculiar cast to the light in which many people view his work and that of his many successors, who make promises that imply God's favor is tied to checks put in the mail.

What can't be obscured is that the human body is an amazingly complex physical organism, "fearfully and wonderfully made." The very best of medical science does not always know what is going on, whether it has to do with allergic reactions, vertigo, heart rhythms, or brain waves.

The very best of religious thinking, or theology, says (at least in the Christian tradition) that miraculous cures are not given as rewards or in response to our efforts or worth, but that those inexplicable moments of grace are meant as signs. The whole Gospel of John is tied up with this awareness, that healings do not come to the deserving or even to those to whom they might be expected, but that each miracle is meant to point beyond itself to the fullness of God's purposes.

So we pray for cures, but what prayer is most fruitful in is healing. That nearly mysterious and very poorly understood process whereby the strange device called a body continues to express thoughts and ideas and hopes and dreams. To endure and continue and cope, to recover from the wounds of this world and to keep on keepin' on – that takes a little bit of healing every day.

Which is a downright miraculous phenomenon that happens all around us, every day. Do we overlook the power of that kind of healing because it isn't dramatic enough, isn't big enough to impress us with our own significance? Or might appreciating and valuing the sort of everyday miracle of healing, physical and spiritual, that gets most of us along our journey actually do a better of job of giving God the glory on a daily basis?

You could pray about it!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a healing tale at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 12-24-09
Jeff Gill

And Everything Changed



The baby was born, and everything changed.

I talked to a mother this week, here in Licking County. She and her husband began the paperwork for an international adoption, reaching out to a country where poverty and social norms combine to generate a disturbingly large number of babies without homes.

They will need two to three years to complete the whole process, and their plan is to request not a newborn, as so many do, more than are available, in fact, but to pursue a child who is already a few years old. A child who has not been adopted.

Which means, of course, by simple math and painful reality, that this child is born this week, or thereabouts. Already, but unknown, unknowably distant; God willing, as this all works out, a child is born to them in a land far away, but just now come into the world with tears and smiles and hope.

For this family to take in another child, since they have some of their own already, they will have to make adjustments. Some have already been made, others are in the works, a few more are contemplated. As experienced parents, they know the biggest adjustments are yet to come, for each child is unique, even if the experience of diapering is mindlessly the same.

When the baby enters your life, everything changes.

There’s something deep within almost everyone that makes the cry of a baby pull our attention and focus away from the most compelling reality show, off of our favorite activities, out of ourselves, and shift to asking “what does the baby need?” Even childless “civilians” know that tug, at the mind and in the heart. For some it is merely an irritation – “why doesn’t someone do something about that crying baby?” but for most it becomes a question – “what could I do to help?”

In an international adoption such as the one I heard about, there is a response to a cry not yet heard, by the prospective parents or indeed by anyone. It is, you could say, a hypothetical cry, of a child needing love and care and devoted attention. The idea that a child, anywhere, is lacking any or all of those things is hard to ignore; so hard to ignore, we mostly have to block out such awareness altogether, since to dwell on those ongoing forlorn cries is too much for any heart to bear.

Yet when you pick up a child and it stops crying, not necessarily because of anything you did (just as some of us pick up happy babies and they start crying because sometimes, that’s what babies do), that contented armful is the whole world for you in that moment. Peace, and love, and joy: and hope.

When you let a baby enter your life, everything will change.

A baby is the center of both the religious and secular celebration we all share, in certain ways, this week, because a baby means something, even when that child has no genetic or genealogical connection to us. A baby means promise and commitment and the future, even when those who should deliver on all those things walk away. And they do, sometimes.

A baby, not even born yet, can change your life; a baby, born long ago & far away, can change the world, your world, right now. In either case, it happens when you decide that your life is connected to something beyond yourself.

Then, everything changes.

Christmas 2009
Dear Friends and Family,

As 2009 comes to a close, our family has many things to be thankful for. Home, health, work and community are among the many blessings we count. Joyce will soon finish six years as Chief of Staff in the President’s Office at Denison University and Jeff continues his busy schedule of supply preaching and speaking, freelance writing and consulting, and work as a mediator for the county juvenile court system. In these uncertain times we are blessed by work that both meets our needs and fulfills us.

We still stay busy with community involvement, Jeff with scouts, transitional housing and financial literacy issues, and local archaeology and Joyce as an officer of the Environmental Education Council of Ohio (EECO) and as worship leader (music director) of New Life Community United Methodist Church. After starting out as a new church five years ago, New Life chartered as an official United Methodist church this fall and just opened a community center in the show room of an old car dealership. Needless to say, the young ministry is blossoming.


11 year old Chris is in sixth grade and seems to get noticeably taller by the day.
He crossed over into boy scouts last spring and has already been on several campouts with Granville Troop 65. He joined the band this year as a beginning clarinet player and is loving it. He’s also becoming quite the young thespian (can you say chip off the old block?), recently drawing rave reviews as “Boomer” in Christmas from Scratch at Centenary UMC here in Granville. His youth group puts on two mini-musicals each year, so we’ll have another to look forward to this spring.

A highlight of our year was a week spent in Disney World this summer. It was Chris’s first visit, and I think it’s safe to say that it exceeded his expectations. He especially liked getting autographs from his favorite Disney characters. It was great fun, but not exactly relaxing. We learned later that the average family at Disney World walks 7 miles a day. We’re pretty sure we did at least that much.


We hope you are well and happy, and we wish you a
blessed Christmas.

Love,

Joyce, Jeff & Chris

Knapsack 12-31

Notes From My Knapsack 12-31-09

Jeff Gill

 

A Summing Up At Year's End

___

 

 

Jacob Little was the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Granville from 1827 to 1865. For these thirty eight years, he not only preached for his flock, but he tried to lead the entire community through both example and exhortation.

 

The Granville Historical Society has just published an attractive and wonderful volume titled "Jacob Little's History of Granville." It includes not only Rev. Little's early attempt at a summary of the first decades of this community, but an assortment of other writings, not only by the parson but from a number of local historians (your columnist among them).

 

Laura Evans is well known to readers of these pages in the Sentinel, and was the presiding eminence over the effort to not only republish these early essays on Granville, but to help bring some historic context to these documents that are very much of their time.

 

At some future date, slighting asides about Sarah Palin, angry commentary about the DeRolph ruling, or rude jokes about Bill Kraner may be utterly incomprehendible, and it will take a meticulous historian or twelve (or 14!) to make sense of current observations, as it has with Jacob Little's work. Not to take anything away from Parson Little, but the lasting value of this book may well be the assembly of framing essays and inserted articles which helps the reader along in understanding what Little was making much of.

 

Most infamously, Rev. Little would issue a "New-Year's sermon" which would be presented both from the pulpit on that day, and usually found its way into print. These sermons were intended to be an assessment of the town as a whole, not just of "Congregationalist Presbyterians" in his own congregation.

 

As Dick Shiels says in an introductory essay for the volume, "Jacob Little aspired to be the pastor for the entire town." His was probably the last era of American life where that aspiration was even imaginable; there have since been a variety of movements and organizations that claim to speak theologically for a majority, silent, moral, or otherwise, but no one imagines that any pastor could really serve as chaplain to an entire community.

 

Little knew there were those in opposition to his stands on subjects such as temperance (for it) and dancing (agin' it), and not everyone was as passionate as he about education for all and even more for those pursuing clerical status, but he truly believed that through a mix of inspiration and shame he might well draw the entire village into his beliefs, if not into his church building.

 

What does unity in community mean today, when diversity and multi-everythingism is the single standard all are expected to salute? Is there any "unum" to which all us "e pluribi" should aspire to? And what would happen to any person, let alone a pastor, who tried to name in public the people whom they saw as breaking down the moral fiber of the community? Even before the defamation lawsuits were filed, can you imagine it at all, or even what categories would be described?

 

In the 1840s, listing who owned a household Bible, or specifying the drinking habits of elected officials down to the quart, or naming those who (gasp) danced last month – it wasn't necessarily popular for Little to do (ultimately, he was forced out of his position, albeit after 38 years), but it was imaginable. Today we fall back on broad, generic survey numbers that safely wag their percentages at how many spouses cheat in their marriages, or poll how many parents purchase alcohol for their children's parties.

 

It was different over 150 years ago: that may seem incredibly obvious, but sometimes I think we forget how different a place, how foreign a country the past really is, even when that place is right here.

 

If you'd like to take a quick trip to that distant nearby land, you can drop by Reader's Garden in the heart of the village, and plunk down $27 (tax included), or go to the website of the Granville Historical Society at www.granvillehistory.org and follow the instructions there for ordering by mail.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is very proud to be in the distinguished company that was assembled by Lance Clarke and Laura Evans to produce this book. Write him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Knapsack 12-24 -- Granville Sentinel

Notes From My Knapsack 12-24-09

Jeff Gill

And Everything Changed

___

The baby was born, and everything changed.

I talked to a mother this week, here in Licking County. She and her
husband began the paperwork for an international adoption, reaching
out to a country where poverty and social norms combine to generate a
disturbingly large number of babies without homes.

They will need two to three years to complete the whole process, and
their plan is to request not a newborn, as so many do, more than are
available, in fact, but to pursue a child who is already a few years
old. A child who has not been adopted.

Which means, of course, by simple math and painful reality, that this
child is born this week, or thereabouts. Already, but unknown,
unknowably distant; God willing, as this all works out, a child is
born to them in a land far away, but just now come into the world
with tears and smiles and hope.

For this family to take in another child, since they have some of
their own already, they will have to make adjustments. Some have
already been made, others are in the works, a few more are
contemplated. As experienced parents, they know the biggest
adjustments are yet to come, for each child is unique, even if the
experience of diapering is mindlessly the same.

When the baby enters your life, everything changes.

There's something deep within almost everyone that makes the cry of a
baby pull our attention and focus away from the most compelling
reality show, off of our favorite activities, out of ourselves, and
shift to asking "what does the baby need?" Even childless "civilians"
know that tug, at the mind and in the heart. For some it is merely an
irritation – "why doesn't someone do something about that crying
baby?" but for most it becomes a question – "what could I do to help?"

In an international adoption such as the one I heard about, there is
a response to a cry not yet heard, by the prospective parents or
indeed by anyone. It is, you could say, a hypothetical cry, of a
child needing love and care and devoted attention. The idea that a
child, anywhere, is lacking any or all of those things is hard to
ignore; so hard to ignore, we mostly have to block out such awareness
altogether, since to dwell on those ongoing forlorn cries is too much
for any heart to bear.

Yet when you pick up a child and it stops crying, not necessarily
because of anything you did (just as some of us pick up happy babies
and they start crying because sometimes, that's what babies do), that
contented armful is the whole world for you in that moment. Peace,
and love, and joy: and hope.

When you let a baby enter your life, everything will change.

A baby is the center of both the religious and secular celebration we
all share, in certain ways, this week, because a baby means
something, even when that child has no genetic or genealogical
connection to us. A baby means promise and commitment and the future,
even when those who should deliver on all those things walk away. And
they do, sometimes.

A baby, not even born yet, can change your life; a baby, born long
ago & far away, can change the world, your world, right now. In
either case, it happens when you decide that your life is connected
to something beyond yourself.

Then, everything changes.

Faith Works 12-19

Faith Works 12-19-09

Jeff Gill

 

When a story can't be told too often

___

 

Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" has been filmed over and over again since the very dawn of photography, starting in 1901 (less than 60 years after the tale was first told!), and Disney has taken another crachit at it.

 

Using "motion capture" animation, Jim Carrey does for multiple characters, starting with Scrooge, what Tom Hanks did in "The Polar Express." The computer animation, tied to human acting while wearing "mo-cap" suits, continues to amaze, and makes set builders weep. The virtual camera swoops around St. Paul's Cathedral and through the City of London, perching a moment on the Tower itself, never filming a bit of tangible reality.

 

Dickens' story touches hearts in every form, from Mickey Mouse as Bob Crachit in an earlier Disney cartoon venture, or the classic old black and white Hollywood versions.

 

Or you could read it, out of a book or even on your computer screen.

 

What makes this cast of characters and particular plot so affecting is the change of heart, the transformation of the unseen center of Ebenezer Scrooge from the cold and unmoved façade against the outside world to an equally mysterious, but outwardly apparent celebrator of Christmas, of whom "it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge."

 

The question for Scrooge, and for all of us traveling in company with old Ebenezer on his nightlong journey, is whether in fact he *can* change. To quote the reforming miser himself:

 

[blockquote] "Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?"

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me."

The Spirit was immovable as ever. [end blockquote]

 

Dickens was too good a storyteller, and perhaps enough of a theologian, to tell us directly whether "certain ends" are inevitable. There are inevitabilities in this world, and there are things very hard to change indeed, and then there are those moments of transformation where only a Spirit can account for the change that results.

 

As much as Americans enjoy their Scrooge, our complement to "A Christmas Carol" is a story that began and really only exists as a movie, "It's A Wonderful Life." George Bailey, too, is haunted by supernatural beings, the angel Gabriel and a Joseph who may or may not be the fellow with relatives in Bethlehem. And Clarence Oddbody.

 

Mr. Bailey wants to know, and doubts, whether his life has changed anything. The weight of predestination, of inevitability, weighs equally heavily on George as it does on Ebenezer.

 

Can one life make a difference? Can small choices make a change, or are we just pawns to "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato," as Scrooge tried to account for Marley's apparition by means of his indigestion?

 

[blockquote]"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me. I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this …. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?" [end blockquote]

 

Jim Carrey plays not only Scrooge in the new "Carol," but also all three Spirits. It's an interesting approach, hinting at not only the acting prowess of the human beneath the animated pictures, but also at a modern attempt at explanation. The three Spirits of Christmas are simply psychological expressions of Scrooge's own interior desire to change.

 

Perhaps. Many want to change, and cannot, but continue to try. This we see all around us every day, and sometimes in the morning mirror. Could it be that it is inevitability itself that is the Ghost, a persistent haunting imposed from within; and to change, to be transformed, requires a nudge from without, from beyond, from Another?

 

Might something as faint, as distant as a baby born in a backwater, thousands of years and as many miles away, be the external, even the supernatural influence that moves us where all our wishes and desires cannot take us?

 

Could the Christmas child make all the difference?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about a reason to change you've experienced this Christmas at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.