Knapsack 4-26

Notes From My Knapsack 4-26-12

Jeff Gill

 

A Bucket List right in the breadbasket

___

 

Leigh Ann and Marci of the Granville Fellowship asked me last week if I would consider putting together a program for them next fall (sooner than you think!) on a "Licking County Bucket List."

 

That took effectively no "talking-into" time, and they have my "yes." But just a couple of days later I open my Sentinel and see that my colleague and occasional competition in scribbling, Don Havens (first place in the Ohio Newspaper Association's Hooper Awards for column writing among papers of our size, 2011; I got third), is looking for "bucket list" recommendations.

 

A couple of thoughts occurred to me: one, that the Lad who begins high school next year will not experience the tender mercies of Prof. Havens in the classroom, darn it; and two, this works out nicely!

 

For those of you who haven't seen all the movies made by Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, or have missed this metaphor, a "bucket list" is what you scribble down on a piece of paper of all the places and/or things you want to do before you . . . kick the bucket. See Paris in the springtime, Autumn in New York, all that.

 

What would I put on a Licking County "must see" list, with or without the motivation of mortality? Here's some brief notes, which will be the basis for my Granville Fellowship talk TBA, but for which Don will qualify next fall!

 

The Newark Earthworks, obviously, but in particular, to see a moonrise along the northerly end of its 18.6 year cycle, unfortunately not until 2024 (and a few near approximations in 2023 & 2025). Stay healthy, my friends! Until then, if you get a chance to watch a sunrise at the Great Circle, standing near the eastern tip of Eagle Mound inside about June 21, looking along the left side of the Grand Gateway about 6 am. Awesome. (Or just come at 10 am on May 5 to the Great Circle for an intro!)

 

Also in the awesomeness category is the West Courtroom on the second floor of the County Courthouse in Newark. Paintings, stained glass, mosaic, woodwork, brass and gilt and just a feast for the eye, with the majesty of the law all around. Call in advance for permission to enter.

 

Naturally speaking, the glory of Blackhand Gorge is a geological peculiarity that just sort of sneaks up on you until you get there. The water line is the lowest spot in Licking County (highest is west of Fredonia), with towering sandstone walls where once petroglyphs from millenia past peered down at the canoe, train, or interurban passenger.

 

South of there, atop Flint Ridge, not just for the precious prehistoric mineral and state gemstone, but to wander back in the woods of the State Memorial, sprinkled with the "redwoods of Ohio," tulip poplar; their orange and pink and salmon and blossoms falling in May from their sunward perch a hundred feet above in the canopy. If you are blessed, you might see a pileated woodpecker flash past, white and black and slash of red.

 

Then to the unnatural nature of Cranberry Bog, open to all one day in June, slowly disappearing, a floating island of pre-glacial bog on the southern shore of Buckeye Lake. Walk along the path with a guide from your boat, feel the "earth" shake beneath you, see the meat-eating (well, bug-eating) pitcher plants.

 

Then motor slowly across the canal-era waters that forced up this bog from the bottom as it filled; see the sunset over the waters, and dock at any one of a number of places where a meal and music can wrap a bucket-worthy day.

 

It's not all, but it's a start!

 

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

Faith Works 4-21

Faith Works 4-21-12

Jeff Gill

 

Slow down a little by fasting

___

 

 

Christians are still in the season of Easter; Lent leads up to it, and we're still celebrating the Resurrection through Pentecost for 50 days.

 

It's a good time to look back across our Lenten journeys, and ask "what worked? what helped? what built up the Body of Christ for my faith community?"

 

On a purely personal level, I tried something different this year, but something that is in fact very old. I tried fasting.

 

Most of us have heard of "giving up" something for Lent, as a way to refine our prayer life and discipline our thoughts and impulses and reactions. Some choose a sweet or treat, and for years I'd give up my beloved coffee every other year.

 

One of those in-between, "let's not make an empty ritual of the coffee thing" years, I gave up French fries. When I would have had fries with that, I didn't, and made those cravings a reminder to pray for those without (fries or more than that, of course), and saved some money to add to the special relief offering that year. $50, in fact.

 

What I learned was that I really didn't "need" French fries, and while I'm in no way a total abstainer, I mostly don't order them anymore. I'm not saying it's a God thing, just that I learned and my doctor seems to agree I've benefited from that step of living mindfully.

 

So this year, having had friends and fellow clergy talk about the discipline of fasting, I decided to try it. One day a week, through Lent.

 

The day ended up being nudged about a bit, because there's always the challenge of social eating and meetings, and my goal was not to draw attention to what I was doing (said the guy who's now writing a column about this, but still), and so I moved back and forth between Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Tuesdays were a good day also for the home front, because those evenings are often either leftovers or sub sandwich for the Lad, and the Lovely Wife usually has a prayer group she's at. Through Lent, I only ended up fasting through a family meal once – again, by design, because I didn't want them to feel pressured by my choice.

 

And some might dispute my approach, but for me, fasting was not eating "stuff." I drank fruit and vegetable juice each morning, more late in the afternoon, and all through consumed the finest organic suspension ever invented, as Capt. Janeway once said of coffee. No Gandhi-esque water only for me (though Gandhi usually balanced in some juice when he fasted, too, but not always).

 

Did I feel it? Sure. Not eating, intentionally, is a real attention getter inside your own head, at least at first. You start really, REALLY noticing every time you DON'T eat.

 

But the other thing I noticed, and let's be fair, I'm a 6'5" male with plenty of excess stored energy, was that mostly, I wasn't all that hungry. I wanted to eat, yes, but even towards evening, I wanted to eat mainly because . . . I wanted to eat.  The time seemed right, it was a moment I often checked the pantry for a bite anyhow, or circumstances had me thinking "oh, let's just eat something now rather than deal with this next thing."

 

Once you move past, or perhaps I should say "move along with" the impulse to eat, you still feel the nudges, but much less anxiously. And then you're able to look much more critically at WHY you want to eat when you do, and that can be instructive [koff*snackfood*koff].

 

Did this practice, which John Wesley observed every Wednesday and Friday of his life as a minister (note to all clergy, Methodist or otherwise: never try to out-anything John Wesley did, he's always going to be out there ahead of you), help my prayer life? Yes it did. It made me aware, conscious, mindful of many habitual behaviors I didn't even know I had.

 

It went beyond "the day," too; the day before, I was more healthily attentive to what I ate (gonna fast tomorrow), and the day after, I found I wasn't waking up wanting to wolf down mass quantities, and was very content with easing back in.

 

Will I continue? Right now, yes. Two more weeks, two more fast days, and I think I like what I'm realizing, how I'm becoming more mindful of my choices and expenditures and compulsions. All of which does just what we've heard for generations is why we talk about "prayer and fasting." They're a good team.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is neither a vegetarian nor health food fanatic (all things in moderation!). Send him recipes at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 4-14

Faith Works 4-14-12

Jeff Gill

 

Down With the Old Canoe

___

 

One hundred years ago tonight.

 

It's a disaster that some might argue has gotten attention far out of scale with the magnitude of the suffering and death involved.

 

Thousands have died in many other occasions around that time, and with more direct documentation by survivors and even from victims just before their passing: the Galveston hurricane of 1900, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake & fires, the Mississippi floods of 1927.

 

But when the RMS Titanic went down on the night of 14-15 April 1912, resulting in 1,514 deaths, a story began that continues to the present day. We keep retelling it, and analyzing it, and considering it. The story of survival, and the narrative of sacrifice, woven into a fabric of inevitability and avoidability.

 

2,224 souls were aboard her when she sailed from the Irish coast into the icy Atlantic, so 710 lived to tell the tale. As is well known, there were only lifeboats for about half the total complement, not out of sheer indifference to human life, but because the assumptions around Titanic's solidity did not focus on her being "unsinkable" (one of many popular assumptions that don't hold water, if you'll forgive the phrase, on close consideration), but that she was at least durable enough that in an emergency, she would float long enough for aid to come, and the boats would casually shuttle the passengers and then crew to the waiting vessels.

 

One iceberg disproved that theory, and one telegraph officer wanting to get to bed on a nearby ship closed off that option. Does anyone not know these stories?

 

But here's what we don't know, and the reason why Titanic isn't and won't be going away anytime soon.

 

What would we do?

 

The tale of the Titanic is unique simply in that you have a broad arc of the human condition (steerage, second class, first class; stokers, pursers, officers), and a need for swift decisions, yet in a context that takes just enough time for few to say they were rushed, at least until the very end.

 

Two and a half hours, from impact to sinking, and the question: what would you do?

 

For years I've had a variety of occasions to preach on the Four Chaplains (and written about them here in this column). The USAT Dorchester was torpedoed on the night of Feb 3, 1943, and swiftly sank. 230 of 904 on that troopship survived; the four chaplains traveling with the troops supervised handing out lifejackets, and when the supply ran out, they gave soldiers their own, supervised the loading of the lifeboats (again, not enough for all) and were seen standing together, praying with linked arms, as the Dorchester sank.

 

It's a moving story, and yet it's what we expect in many ways – not that all of us clergy can always be certain that our commitment to Christ will be that complete. The Four Chaplains deserve to be remembered, but their story doesn't quite grasp everyone the same way Titanic does.

 

Because male or female, young or old, in love or standing alone, the circumstances of those last moments in April 15, 1912 force any one of us to ask: what would we have done? Or more terrifyingly: if the moment of decision comes, what would we do? To give up our seat on a lifeboat, to hand to a younger person our lifevest – or simply to keep our heads while all about us are losing theirs. What would we do?

 

Titanic is now a movie and a traveling blockbuster exhibit and really, now, a brand. Yet I think the week after Easter makes it a fit subject for reflection and consideration: if we are called upon to sacrifice for another, would we? When should we? If everyone on the Titanic had refused to get into a boat until everyone else could, you would have had a macabre game of "After you, Alphonse," and a killing chaos all its own. But the answer can't be "devil take the hindmost," either.

 

When are we called upon to sacrifice? When the water is rising, when the pressures of life are upon us, when choices need to be made?

 

And does it help to make that choice in the knowledge that one's heart, one's soul, does indeed go on?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he doesn't much like ships in the first place. Tell him your nautical tales at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 4-12

Notes From My Knapsack 4-12-12

Jeff Gill

 

We should have a sing along

___

 

 

Karen Loew wrote a fascinating article for "The Atlantic" magazine online recently about "communal singing."

 

She's working on a book, provisionally titled "Alone in the Valley," about small town life a few valleys over in Virginia.

 

As she's had a chance to reflect on community ritual in general, and singing in particular, she realized that while it's not dead, large group singing is surely not well.

 

Beyond the obvious examples of the national anthem and "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," there's not much; Loew did introduce me to the fact that at Fenway Park there's a tradition around "Sweet Caroline" that I'll have to participate in someday. At Wrigley Field, it's more traditional to listen to a celebrity singer, often half in the bag, sing during the seventh inning stretch a mangled rendition of "Take Me Out."

 

"Amazing Grace," "God Bless America," maybe "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and right there you've run out of what's a safe bet as a standard repertoire for a crowd of average Americans.

 

With regular church attendance rates down around 20%, if you started singing "Old Rugged Cross" or "How Great Thou Art" in a crowd you might hear some distant voices join in, but not the full-throated roar of a plurality jumping in from memory. Patriotic songs used to run the gamut, but equally few would be the voices accompanying you if you ventured into the second verse of "America the Beautiful" or tried out "Battle Cry of Freedom." "This Land is Your Land" should be on everyone's lips, but it would be a shaky rendition even in the first stanza.

 

Loew also taught me something else I didn't know; the National Association of Music Education noticed the anti-trend in community singing, and tried to promote back in the 1990s a list of songs that they said ought to be a shared repertoire for Americans. Their 88 included everything from "Down By the Riverside" to "I've Been Working on the Railroad," "Shenandoah" and "You've Got a Friend." (I'd add "Your Smilin' Face" to their list, but we all have favorites.)

 

You can see their whole selection at http://www.nafme.org/resources/view/get-america-singing-again. [Chuck, keep or delete, depending on what the current policy is on links!]

 

I've been a songleader for over 35 years now, and I can report that Loew's concern is well-founded. Getting a crowd to sing together is more work than it used to be, if it can be done at all. When she notes with sorrow that, as you watch on TV or attend candlelight vigils or various communal gatherings, the absence of singing together is felt, I believe she's right. There's a time for speeches, and places where only silence will do, but there are also times, happy & sad, when singing together can bind us as one like nothing else.

 

So I wonder, if we can't quite figure out how to afford the infrastructure costs of a community-wide picnic: maybe we just need a big old singalong on the green at summer's end. A sort of informal Eisteddfod on the grass, echoing our Welsh history and current need for a little more unity than is in the air.

 

We need a song in the air. "And a star in the sky; a mother's deep prayer, and a baby's low cry…" You see, for some of us, everything makes us think of a song. And there's a song for everything.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; one of the high points of his year is getting to lead the Midland Theater in singing together. Tell him your favorite group song at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 4-7

Faith Works 4-7-12

Jeff Gill

 

To Be Someone, Whatever the Cost

___

 

 

Here's the thing.

 

Pilate wanted to be somebody.

 

He was Roman procurator, but the job could be revoked by the Emperor at the drop of a toga. There had been rebellions, and a Roman ruler in the provinces of empire was judged by how briefly such rebellions lasted, and how many were killed in retaliation.

 

(The "how many killed" part was a feature, not a bug, from the point of view of systems administrators back in Rome.)

 

Peter wanted to be somebody.

 

He'd just been another Simon back on the lakeshore in Galilee, but with his new nickname of Cephas in Aramaic, Petros in Greek, (Rock in English), he had a new sense of himself as strong and reliable, maybe even central.

 

Saul wanted to be somebody.

 

The Sanhedrin student in Jerusalem who had to have heard the ruckus in the streets, but never came out of his studies enough to see who the fuss was all about; he'd come down to the spiritual capital of Judaism because from Tarsus out in the sticks, this was where you came to make your mark. He'd get a new name soon, too, shifting into gentile Greek and getting called Paul.

 

Mary Magdalene wanted to be somebody.

 

Her reputation has morphed and been mangled over the generations, most recently by "The DaVinci Code," but her role in those last days is second only to Mary herself. She was as much of a leader as her time and place allowed, and maybe more so; she sees things sooner, more clearly than even the men who were called visionaries in that early group of Christ-followers.

 

The centurion at the cross wanted to be somebody.

 

You didn't just earn the rank of centurion by correspondence course. It took being seen at the front of the fighting, known as a leader among the enlisted and the conscripts by the officers, the equites looking down from their horses and their social prominence. If they saw you as one who could serve their thirst for conquest, you might be plucked from the ranks of private soldier and made a commander of a hundred, a centurion. Of course, you also got the duties that the officers didn't want to dirty their hands with.

 

That man in Florida wanted to be somebody.

 

You know the fellow I mean, who was riding around for years, calling the police frequently, carrying a gun always, wanting to protect his neighborhood and be acknowledged by law enforcement as a peer. His goal was something just a bit beyond safety, but also to be seen as someone who was bringing safety to his community.

 

And the teen he shot, that young man wanted to be somebody.

 

He'd been talking to a girlfriend on the phone, which always makes a male want to be someone in a strong and certain way. Running down to the store during a break in a basketball game, he'd had a tough week for a youth, struggling at school and with his separated parents to establish who he was, what kind of man he could become … which now he will never do.

 

We all want to be someone. And those desires and intentions push out into the world, and run up against the "someone-ness" of others, who are trying to shape the world's view of them by forcing the impress of their image, their character, their (our?) qualities into the material around them.

 

The problem is that the world isn't all that soft; it doesn't take impressions easily, and when we're up against someone else, they tend to push back.

 

Jesus, the story of this week reminds us, was someone. The story of the church tomorrow is that Jesus IS someone, but hold onto that until sunrise. During the events of what we call "Holy Week," Jesus was someone, but he did relatively little to push that image onto anyone.

 

Day by day, the agendas and concerns of those surrounding him tried to push Jesus into a mold of their own making.

 

There are miracles of Easter beyond even the resurrection, although that is the central celebration, the key mystery. But when Jesus took the cross, and made it his own, a sign of his true self and a symbol of triumph – that miracle makes us look at all the ways we seek ourselves, and see them as broken molds.

 

To die to self, and live for others. Is that someone we can be? I hope you hear an answer to that tomorrow.

 

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

Knapsack 3-29

Notes From My Knapsack 3-29-12

Jeff Gill

 

Easter blossoms and bitter herbs

___

 

Passover meals always have bitter herbs along with the sweets and salt; good quilts need the dark colors arranged to help the bright squares pop.

 

Visual art pays close attention to negative space, and any musician or actor knows that silences are a crucial part of what we listen to, and how everyone hears.

 

Even if John Cage took that idea about 4'33" too far for some of us.

 

Easter needs Good Friday. No crown without the cross, goes one old saying, and if you try to leap from Palm Sunday's kingly procession to the glory of the resurrection a week later, you're likely to fall hard into the valley of the shadow of death.

 

As Winston Churchill liked to point out, the 23^rd Psalm says "though I walk *through* the valley . . ." not "as I stop and sit a spell in the valley."

 

So we make our way from the rented rooms and furtive, yet fraught with significance meal, a scurry through the Kidron Valley to Gethsemane to a betrayal, and an imprisonment, a scourging, a crucifixion.

 

You've seen the movie.

 

Maybe you don't want the whole Technicolor visual, but if you don't "go there" in some way, you'll lose the contrast that helps make sense of the raucous, gleeful, incredulous joy of Easter Sunday. At Centenary UMC, we're going to try to wrap up the Maundy Thursday service next week, for those who are game, with a footwashing.

 

John's Gospel skims the communion story of that Holy Week Thursday, the usual heart of why Christian churches do a Thursday night service, and tells a story his predecessors skip past themselves: Jesus gets down on his knees, wraps a towel around his waist or neck, and washes people's feet.

 

This, in a society where that was not only a social no-no, but where many wore no shoes, most who did had but sandals, and the streets were filled with camel droppings. Foot washing was a real humiliation.

 

We just have to warn the women who want to participate not to wear hose. Do women still wear hose? We'll warn 'em anyhow, just in case.

 

For all the cultural distance, there's something strikingly counter-cultural in 2012 to wash someone's feet. It's a situation and position whose essential humility can still be felt, and it's hard to lord it over someone while you're holding onto their foot while sitting on the floor.

 

So towards the end of the 7:30 pm service, as the sanctuary lights darken with the reading of what is to come, and under our willful forgetting of what will be brightly unveiled, just beyond that night on the coming Sunday morn: some will choose to leave through a side door, and sit in a circle in Shepherd Hall, and take off their shoes.

 

That's what Moses had to do first, too. Barefoot on the soil, the humus, humility, on holy ground; standing to look into the depths of the darkest night, before the coming dawn, waiting for a place of promise to be revealed.

 

May this spring fulfill some hoped for promises in your life!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he wears size 14.5s, so you don't want to have to wash his feet, it will take longer. Tell your spring story to him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 3-24

Faith Works 3-24-12

Jeff Gill

 

Let the Games begin

___

 

As someone already said on Twitter, "It's beautiful outside, so let's all go indoors, sit in darkened rooms, and watch children kill each other."

 

For the three or four of you who haven't had the pleasure, I'm giving you the major plot device of a book and now, this weekend, a movie called "The Hunger Games." These "games" are a bread and circuses sort of gladiator ritual in a dystopian future USA called "Panem" (and all the one-time Latin students nodded their heads sagely).

 

Panem has a Capitol which is the Roma Eterna of this nation, the pagan heart of the culture where simple folk living close to the land are in "districts" of which there are 12, though rumors of a 13th will crop up in the books to come (there are three in total). The Capitol has all the money, all the power, all the fun, and apparently neither taste nor morality. To make their authority absolute, every year there's a drawing (Shirley Jackson, call your agent) and two teenagers from each district are picked as "tributes," to compete in a . . . yes, that's right, a battle to the death. Think Survivor, but no walk out of tribal council with an extinguished torch. Your lights get put out, and by one of your peers. Permanently.

 

If you're not exactly thinking "oh joy" at this bullseye shot into the heart of the young adult publishing marketplace, I have little comfort for you, except the observation that there are no vampires involved. Or 104 year old guys who look like teenagers wooing and winning a sixteen year old girl. That's the story arc of the "Twilight" series, after all.

 

Do we live in a world where teenagers kill each other, whether on mean streets close to home, or in isolated battlefields under jungle canopies far away? Yes, horribly so. Is it good for young people to get a message about the potential evils of absolute power, and the need to hold onto your core values even under severe stress? Certainly. Does "The Hunger Games" communicate these concerns effectively? My definite answer is: maybe.

 

In a vacuum, the answer would be "no." These stories don't stand on their own; their internal inconsistencies and implausibilities make the "Star Wars" saga look like documentary filmmaking. But for their teen audience, and for most of us adults uneasily looking in over their shoulders, we know they aren't intended to stand on their own. These narratives are islands of their own reality, surrounded by the ocean of everyday experience, just like any allegory or parable.

 

You can make the case all too well that middle and high school feels like "The Arena," just that the backstabbing is literal. When young people see characters like Katniss still trying to figure out who she is inside, but having to work out a persona at the same time to make the right impression on those around her, they feel very, very close to her. You can tell kids (and their parents) that acceptance and achievement in school isn't a life or death battle, but they might not believe you.

 

This is why parables are so effective: they echo reality, and intensify it, even as they allow you to try it on or set it aside. You can listen and choose to step inside, or not, but if the storyteller is compelling enough to get you to enter into the story of your own volition, the impact is so much stronger than any amount of instructive preaching.

 

So what is "The Hunger Games" a parable of? The jury is still out. Many note that you have to look at the trilogy it begins as a whole, but I will hint that the end of the first story and the grim games is not with just the one traditional survivor, and there is not, as Walter Wink would warn against, "a myth of the redemptive blow" so common in Western visual arts, where a justified punch in a villan's face or bullet in a bad guy's heart changes everything for the better. There is sacrifice, early and late, and of course there is the power of love.

 

So my son will go see the movie, and we will have some long conversations about it when he comes home. It's a starting place. For us adults, may I recommend coming next Wednesday over to the Bryn Du Mansion at 7:00 pm to watch "A Canterbury Tale" from 1944, filmed in wartime Canterbury starring a onetime Granville resident who passed away just last year, John Sweet. He played himself, a young man caught up in a war beyond his comprehension.

 

Sound familiar?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he really, really loves "A Canterbury Tale." Tell him your movie obsessions at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 3-17

Faith Works 3-17-12

Jeff Gill

 

When God speaks to me

___

 

There are probably few statements that unnerve non-believers more than when someone says "God speaks to me."

 

We've let an idea gain credence in everyday discourse that the belief God "speaks" to someone almost inevitably leads to violence, oppression, and cruelty.

 

Well, I call BS on that one. Blessed Suspicion, that is, that those saying so have actually spent even five minutes talking to religious people.

 

My own personal Blessed Suspicion meter says that the problem begins with the idea that there's anyone Out There to hear from, hence the strong negative reaction.

 

Also, I'll freely admit: I don't hear God talk. The whole "auditory phenomenon" isn't in my experience base. There was once a time when I strongly felt, in the dark, wondering about a very important question, that I internally heard a voice clearly speak to me . . . but the pronouns made it clear it was me, speaking to myself (hopefully my better self, telling my everyday self how things should be).

 

For those who are not in support of the idea of a Divine Being, or at least one that actually pays any attention to us puny humans (as opposed to say, Cthulhu), this is what they think any of means when we say "God told me [blank]." They argue: we're hearing what we want to hear, or maybe our subconscious is masquerading as a separate entity to make a point, but God isn't on the telephone line.

 

Could be. You check out your assumptions about the universe, and I'll live out mine. Here's what I experience myself, though, and it's in line with most believers I end up talking to about this. I'd say: God isn't in the speaking business very often. That's how WE miscommunicate, for the most part, when we aren't sending tweets or texts. We talk, but like my mom, who doesn't do e-mail, God doesn't talk. Much. (Could happen, I guess. Wouldn't want to rule it out!)

 

God communicates with me in a variety of ways, and my real challenge as a person of faith is learning how to rightly hear what's coming across. You can mock that as projection or a highly developed imagination all you want, but it took me almost 24 years to understand what my wife was and wasn't saying about how the dishes should be managed in the sink, too. And she's pretty darn real, and no one would argue with me on that one – of course, you haven't all met her, so maybe I . . . nahhh.

 

There's a process of what we call "discernment," and it starts with a faith stance that God does want to communicate with us, and guide us, and cares for our best outcomes. If you can't get to "Go" on that score, whether because you're adamant that there is no God, or if there is a god, it's a flying spaghetti monster of benign indifference to human concerns, then you're not going to go on to the next step.

 

The next step is learning to "listen," to the urgings and hints and leadings – us evangelical Christians are big on leadings, but we're still pretty bad at explaining them to others – and over time and with practice, you intend to sort out the "devices and desires" of the heart (I want a burger) from the stirrings of the Spirit (go to the Burger Place and talk to whom you meet there). And they can intersect, sometimes pretty interestingly.

 

And you can be wrong. At least, I'm pretty sure I've been wrong; there've been times when I really was sure God was nudging me to do something in particular, with a fair amount of urgency, and in the end, nothing really happened to make me think "this was a God-led, Kingdom-driven moment." Except, maybe my getting that kind of confirmation wasn't the point, at least that day.

 

These are ways that (again) the unbeliever finds unbearably subtle and highly qualifiable about all this. "Wishful thinking and wish fulfillment, Jeff; it's God's still small voice when it works out right, and you just blame your own sinfulness when it turns out you 'heard' God wrong." Fair enough.

 

Except there are these moments, when the cosmos lines up: and it's not always, or often, to my own comfort or personal satisfaction. But you follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, you act in obedience to what you perceive as God's will, and you can find that you are standing on holy ground. Not always a happy place, but a certainty that you are in the Right Place.

 

And that's what keeps me listening.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he talks to God. Yes, sometimes God answers. Tell him what you believe you're hearing at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 3-15

Notes From My Knapsack 3-15-12 -- Granville Sentinel

Jeff Gill

 

Be prepared for . . . many things

___

 

You could say we're heading into tornado season if it hadn't already begun, with a vengeance, to our west – and not far west, either.

 

Indiana, my home state, is one of the great dramatic stages for tornado disaster, but I've had the dubious privilege of seeing funnel clouds there, in Michigan, in Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, and Oklahoma (plus a dust devil in New Mexico that sure looked like it wanted to be a tornado when it grew up, but not a cloud in the sky).

 

Not in Ohio, but that's a personal quirk of history, and not a measure of a blessed thing. Even in the Hoosier State we watched the videotape of the aftermath in Xenia, where the downtown area was, not to stretch a point, obliterated. For many of us, that may be in another century, but it wasn't that long ago.

 

Buckeye tornadoes are common, large, and can be devastating. You all know the drill each Wednesday at 12:15 pm, and we've gotten used to the drill: "oh, it must be 12:15" gets said in offices and on street corners every week across the state, with a shrug and a going on about one's business.

 

Schools and newspapers try to help us keep an edge on our awareness, and the disasters in Henryville IN and earlier in Joplin MO & Tuscaloosa AL make many of us check the batteries in the . . . hey, who moved the flashlight? We make some arrangements, consider a few preparations, and then move on.

 

After all, it probably won't happen here. Right?

 

Right. So. Someday, it probably will. Or if not a tornado, perhaps an earthquake. My seat for the 2011 East Coast shaker was next to a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, and wedged at the end of a long table in a narrow room filled with people, and all I could do was look up and out and realize "this building is distinctly moving back and forth, repeatedly, and that's not good."

 

The shaking ended, then we got outside, then we laughed. 30 more seconds of shaking? Uh-huh.

 

So we talk about preparedness, and there's plenty of folk on TV and in the paper to tell you what to do (or ask your household or neighborhood Girl or Boy Scout, they know how to do a family emergency plan). And there's our response, which many churches and civic groups have dealt with nobly, sending monetary aid and traveling work crews from the Gulf Coast to Greensburg KS. Kudos to all that.

 

There's one last piece of preparedness, though, that might be overlooked in all this. It fits nicely, if you'll allow me a brief religious note, into the season of Lent, just over half done, heading for Holy Week and Easter.

 

Are you prepared to accept help? I'm not joking; have you thought about how it will feel, and how you will respond, when you are the one waiting in line for pure drinking water, or getting a fresh change of clothing from a bag? Sitting eating under a vast tent, unsure if your kitchen is even still there (and even in this hypothetical, let's say that it is, but you can't get to it just now).

 

A common challenge emergency workers face is that the proud, strong, individualistic American spirit all too often means that people just can't ask for, or even receive help. "I've never asked for a thing my whole life," they brusquely snap, and walk away, even when there's nowhere to walk to. Their statement is probably true as far as they understand it, but that's the thing: you've never done this, and it's hard. You'd rather be asked to shovel mud for someone else for a day in the hot sun than ask for assistance.

 

Someday, God willing, we all will need help. That's part of life, part of the plan, baked into the cake, if you will. Are you mentally, personally prepared, in an emergency, to ask for, and to get some help when it's needed? Think about it. That skill might just save your life. Like most skills, it takes some practice, or at least consideration before the fur starts to fly.

 

And buy some new batteries, just in case.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he got Emergency Preparedness merit badge as a Scout, but they didn't cover this. Tell him how you feel about help at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 3-10

Faith Works 3-10-12

Jeff Gill

 

Deserving and deliberating and discerning

___

 

 

Here's a tough one.

 

Can you be too poor to get assistance?

 

It's a problem a number of our local faith-based, as well as public service assistance organizations deal with on a regular basis.

 

Just to pull an example out of the air: someone comes in, and needs rent assistance because some unexpected expenses (say, a transmission on the car and a biopsy on lung) have put you behind enough to be in danger of eviction.

 

But you talk to the family, all of whose adults are working and you can tell they're trying to hold it together with a good will . . . but they make a total of [Blank] dollars a month, with no real prospect of an increase on the horizon, while their rent is [80% of Blank]. Do you help them pay last month's and this month's rent when there's really no reason to think they'll be able to afford next month's rent?

 

And then, God bless them, they add that the pressures have led them to put some other living expenses on credit, so right now their monthly minimum is [10% of Blank].

 

The hardest thing to do in social service, sacred or secular, is to tell that family "No." You have a responsibility to use the funds you're entrusted with as wisely and well as you can, and the real issue here is that we need to find you somewhere else to live that's within your budget.

 

Sometimes folks stomp out on you at that point. Blessedly, sometimes those folks come back. And you try to help in a way that lasts.

 

Our local Habitat for Humanity chapter is in that sort of situation. They've built now over two-dozen homes, with church and community sponsorship, local labor, and the sweat equity of "partners," the family that will move into that home. They pay back a no-interest loan to Habitat, and there's a revolving fund that means, in essence, each partner, having put down their down payment in work, and paying small, reasonable payments for decent housing they will own outright, is paying into the NEXT house, and so on.

 

Which means that you can be a working poor family that actually makes too little to take on a Habitat house. If you don't make your modest payments, the next family may not get help, and the chain is broken, and can take a while to re-link and move forward.

 

So the "family recruitment" work of Habitat, as much as the trowel and hammer side of their work, can be tough. Folks come in, or call, attracted by the model, willing (SO willing) to do the work, and wanting out of substandard, inadequate housing. But they find that, sometimes, they don't make enough to qualify. That's tough.

 

I'm impressed, therefore, by the creative model to approach this situation that our local Habitat team has come up with, and I present their offer to you all, as is:

 

"Can you help us find two deserving families?  Habitat for Humanity - Licking County is looking for working families who fall in the low to moderate income level, have a stable source of income, would be willing to complete approximately 200 hours of "sweat equity" and currently live in substandard housing.  Habitat will have two homes available for ownership in Newark in the near future with low, interest-free payments.  If you or someone you know may be interested, please contact Steve Cramer at 740-587-0022 or stevec@centenaryumc.com.  

 

Families interested need to attend a "Homeownership Orientation" on Saturday, March 17, 10:00 a.m. at the Lookup Center, 50 O'Bannon Avenue in Newark.  ALSO that day, a Free Community Pancake Breakfast will be served from 9:00-11:00.  All are welcome! If possible, sign up for the Orientation and/or Breakfast by

calling Sherry at 740-587-0022.  Thank you!"

 

Hey, thank you, Habitat for Humanity! At the worst, you still get a pancake breakfast. At the best, you might be able to get a home of your own. And if you have decent housing, but want to know more about the work and how you can join in, come have a pancake or two. There's plenty of that, at least, for all.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's pleased to have worked on a few dozen Habitat homes himself and commends the work to anyone. Ask him more about it at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 3-3-12

Faith Works 3-3-12

Jeff Gill

 

Theology and other truth propositions

___

 

 

You may have heard there's an election coming up on Tuesday.

 

One of the GOP presidential candidates recently made a comment about the current White House occupant's stance on energy policy, saying that he had a "theology, not a Biblical theology, but a theology" about the world and stewardship and natural resources. He said he had a different theology.

 

The White House press secretary, who came to a briefing a few days later to decry this unwarranted "attack" on the president, had a few weeks earlier made some cracks about "GOP theology" on tax cuts, so neither side had un-muddied hands on this front.

 

But why all the references to the academic understandings, philosophically conditioned, as to discourse about God? Oh, wait, you don't mean that, you mean "theology."

 

(Warning: this gets even more wordy than usual, but I don't think the answer to what's wrong with how "theology" is getting misused is going to be found in using more short, simple, inaccurate words. Sorry!)

 

One reason I find myself not happy with either side in this so-called debate is that they are both, equally (to my mind, anyhow) using theology in the casual, everyday manner that's come to be common, which is to say that "theology" is a set of beliefs founded on unprovable assertions.

 

So if I say that I think the world is hollow and people who live there not only cause earthquakes with their little hammers, but also use them to capture or kill anyone who investigates them, that would be a theology of sorts. Likewise if I argue that the world will come to an end through mystical if electromagnetic means understood only by the ancient Maya, wrapping up Dec. 21, 2012, that's theology if only until Dec. 22, at which point it becomes an "odd news" story again.

 

Our political betters (or so they seem to think) who lecture us about the theology of their opposition, left or right, are saying that (on the one hand) GOP tax cut ideology is unproven, and unprovable, even as they assert that we don't dare try what the Republicans suggest because it's absolutely, certainly untrue and will be so disastrous we would likely never recover from the attempt to prove it . . . and the theology is on which side?

 

Contrariwise, the candidates who say the Democratic Party views on non-renewable resources are necessarily a function of a pagan ethos, worshipping Gaia and earth spirits, and insist we trust their certainty that technology can cope with declining fossil fuel availability in the future . . . again, who is making unprovable statements that must be taken largely on faith?

 

Yes, I have an interest here: I've got a 90 credit hour master's degree in theology. It was once known as "the Queen of Sciences," and all the great ancient universities were built around theology as the pinnacle of the curriculum.

 

Just a century ago, amateurs did science, and only ordained, educated professionals "did" theology; today, only professionals are trusted to do scientific projects on a large scale, but anyone at all is considered to have all they need at hand to offer statements about the Divine and eternal matters, and be taken seriously in the pages of the Washington Post (I'm talking about you, Sally Quinn).

 

Frankly, I have no desire whatsoever to go back to that era. Theologize away, anyone who wants to – seriously! But I'm troubled by the idea that theology is now easily taken to be the twin sister of comparative fantasy.

 

One of my seminary professors (a seminary is a graduate school for theologians, by the way, following a bachelor's degree in the field of your choice, which could be science or technology) explained it this way: theos, Greek for God (or a god, if you prefer), and logos, Greek also, for "word" in particular, but more generally for "statements with meaning." A "Logos," a dialogue, a series of meaningful statements that takes into account the possibility of God, of a theos – something, even a Someone who has eternal standing in the review of what passes by.

 

That's what theology is for me. A dialogue about, and even with, God. The Logos. I see that Logos at work in Jesus of Nazareth, and to say that, with meaning, I have to explain myself in ways that make a certain internally consistent sense, and when I do so, I'm doing theology.

 

As for the candidates, I'd like to suggest that they do a better job of being internally consistent about their policy statements before they start taking on theology, their own let alone anyone else's.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; nope, he's not gonna provide you with a slate to vote for – you're on your own! Tell him your electoral preferences at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 2-25

Faith Works 2-25-12

Jeff Gill

Finding Christian practice in a chili pot

___

Everyone hated the chili pot.

It sat on a back corner of the flat top all evening, with a half load
of chili weeknights, full-up on weekends. It was battered, and really
more of a large metal measure for scooping flour or sugar in
quantities, once upon a time, with a riveted metal handle you had to
grab with a counter rag, another reminder that this was really the
wrong tool for the wrong purpose.

But it was there when I started working at the student union grill,
and three years later it was still there as I left. It might be there
yet. The advantage to this odd non-pot pot was that it was taller
than it was wide, so it held enough chili for the chili burgers and
chili dogs without being so wide as to block our other uses of the
flat top grill.

The bent and battered bottom meant it didn't perfectly contact the
surface, which actually helped keep the contents the right
temperature, not quite to boiling. Overall, though, what it meant was
that every night, about 1 am as we shut down, someone had to clean an
inch of carbonized gunk out of the bottom of that pot, scrubbing back
down to grey metal at the bottom of this (as you'll recall) taller
than it was wide container. It was a real pain, even with steel wool.

Technically, the grill cook that night cleaned the chili pot. The
problem with that plan was that the regular grill cook, a townie who
had contempt for both the college students he served, and even more
for many of the ones he worked with behind the counter, would walk
back, at close, and toss the chili pot into the dish room sink where
the counter man was cleaning all the parts of the ice cream machine
and the drink fountains. You could try to hand it back to [Name
Redacted], but few did. Or did twice. I saw him once throw the chili
pot the length of the behind-the-counter space from the grill to the
dish room and skip it off of the shoulder of the hapless new guy at
the sink.

[Name redacted] had a thing going on with the night manager; not with
each other, but they liked to sit and smoke (this was in a different
century, children) and tell each other about their most recent heavy-
breathing encounters, so throwing heavy metal objects was not
something he was going to get disciplined for, not in this life. So
you scrubbed it.

I worked all around the horn, sometimes as cashier, sometimes out on
tables, sometimes in the back room doing prep, sometimes grill cook
when [NR] was off or just when he was recovering from the night
before and wanted to sit out in the dining room smoking with the
manager. Usually, I could avoid the chili pot by taking the trash
out; my long arms meant the full bags didn't drool on my shoes as I
walked them out to the dumpster.

One night, not long after I'd admitted to the crew that, yes, I had
applied to seminary next year (to which, I should note, the manager
applauded and gave me a hug), I saw on the clock that it was almost
close, and the place was empty. I thought about what [NR] had sneered
about last break to me as to the meaninglessness of religion & faith.
Wiping down the front counter and picking up some trash in the public
area, and seeing the weary look of the shoulders of the new swabbie
on dish room, I leaned over the grill from the customer side and said
"[NR], give me the chili pot. I'll clean it."

He looked up, startled. "Nah, let the newbie do it. It's cooked down
good." I shrugged, nodded, reached over the service counter, and
scooped up the pot and walked back to the dish room. It took five
minutes, and I didn't get too much black goo under my fingernails.

It became a tradition. Every night, just before close if we weren't
dealing with a last rush, I'd come over and grab it. After almost two
years of avoiding the chili pot, leaving it to some other poor
schmuck to scrub, I'd just get it and do it first (and clean the sink
out when I was done before the dish guy had to do the fountain parts).

It would be nice to end this with telling you that [NR] later
accepted a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. I can't tell you
that. I will say we probably talked more those last six months than
we had the years before. He knew the chili pot, and he valued someone
choosing to take care of it, because the fact of the matter is: none
of us could go home until the chili pot was done. Someone had to do it.

And he stopped making snide comments about how stupid going to church
was. I pray for him still, from time to time.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around
central Ohio; he knows his steel wool. Tell him where you ran into
Jesus recently at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Knapsack 2-23

Notes From My Knapsack 2-23-12

Jeff Gill

 

The Ancient Ohio Trail goes through Granville

___

 

Ohio's landscape is inscribed with some of the most remarkable earthworks and remnants of ancient sites in the world. Visitors and scholars have been coming for decades to see and experience this amazing Native American architecture, and new technology allows any visitor at any time to have a world-class experience on and around these sites.

 

From the 2,000-plus year old mounds and geometric enclosures, to comfortable guest accommodations & amenities today, you can find yourself lost in the many roads and paths through Ohio's antiquity.

 

My unique opportunity these last few years has been to work with the Center for the Electronic Reconstruction of Historic and Archaeological Sites (CERHAS) at the University of Cincinnati, as they are partners with the Newark Earthworks Center of OSU's Newark Campus, and director Richard Shiels and associate director Marti Chaatsmith (who is Comanche). They are partners in a National Endowment for the Humanities' grant which funds something called the "Ancient Ohio Trail" and this coming Ancient Ohio Summer of 2012.

 

Our goal is to help you use the Ancient Ohio Trail (AOT) website and downloads to find your own personal trail that connects up as much of our history and culture as you have time to enjoy.

 

This coming "Ancient Ohio Summer" takes the already existing website, www.ancientohiotrail.org, and completes the toolbox with apps, podcasts, and short videos, all available on your own smart phone, tablet, or personal computer. We have four "keystone" sites and over 50 additional locations, along with the tourism resources of nearby communities, which gives you a broad network to move within.

 

For the Ancient Ohio Summer, our programming will include a series of events particularly targeted at rolling out these new downloads and apps for site interpretation & education. While many other ongoing events at our partner sites can also be places for you to visit and use the website's tools, these events will all have Ancient Ohio Trail team members present to help guide and enhance your use of these tools to understand the sites.

 

May 5^th is our "launch event," part of an ongoing series of Newark Earthworks Days. Based at the Newark Campus of The Ohio State University (OSU), the Reese Center will host a series of presenters, including a keynote from Gerard Baker, a Mandan-Hidatsa and former assistant director of the National Park Service, and who served as superintendent at Little Bighorn National Battlefield and Mount Rushmore.

 

May 5^th will also include presentations from other Native American voices, and archaeologists like Brad Lepper & Jarrod Burks showing us some of the most current field work going on in Ohio in 2012; the day will wrap up with a chance for the entire audience to work with the technology on their own or AOT's devices. John Hancock, director of CERHAS will offer a presentation as well.

 

I am incredibly excited, not only at what I am telling you now, but at a number of other events that are going to happen here in Licking County that are still not quite ready to take out of the oven. But I want all of you to mark some of these events on your calendar today! You'll hear more, I promise . . . and soon!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's also working for the Newark Earthworks Center this year! Ask him about the AOT at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 2-18

Faith Works 2-18-12

Jeff Gill

 

Dreaming of dinner, one entrée at a time

___

 

For Christianity, "the table" is an important place. That goes from the elaborated, ceremonial "altar" to saying grace while holding hands around the family table. As Dom Crossan points out so effectively in his writing on the early church, the question "who is invited to the table" has significance which can shake empires, let alone households.

 

And combined with who is gathered 'round is the question of what's set upon the table. In our day, food choices have a more apparent ethical context than they once did; you can make that a cause for anxiety, or simply use it as a teaching tool.

 

Teaching the Lad a few new recipes in our home, I'm reminded as we chop and stir that most "authentic" cuisine of various cultures is based on a single, central principle: stretching.

 

Just to clarify, Chinese food in China isn't large quantities of deep-fried meat with a few scraps of largely ornamental and uneaten cabbage and carrots; Mexican food in Mexico does not center on large dollops of sour cream and a thick coating of cheese. Et cetera.

 

There are for various places on the globe what are called "staples," rice in Asia, pasta in Italy, rotting fish sauce in ancient Rome (and now you know what happened to their empire). Somewhere south of the Rio Grande I'm sure refried beans are relatively common, even if not to Taco Bell levels.

 

But the rest of what is the traditional set of recipes is usually based around taking an often scant amount of protein, whether meat or eggs (or legumes for the vegans out there), and making a filling meal with a bit, enough of the protein getting to each of the many people around the family table.

 

So fajitas were a way to take a cut of meat, and along with tortillas and peppers and onions, make sure everyone got some. Egg rolls took a single serving of pork, minced it fine, rolled it up with a bunch of cabbage and a wonton wrapper, and along with some oil (sure, deep frying isn't all bad) got a sense of heft into everyone's belly. And so on.

 

Northern Europe liked more meat when they could get it (and who doesn't? Sorry, vegans), and when they came over and carved out their homesteads in the New World, they didn't recognize the plant foods other than nuts, and it took a while to open up garden plots, let alone learn what vegetables they could grow. Meanwhile, deer and bear and turkey meat was plentiful, so much so that in pioneer accounts, a mere piece of fresh bread was a dessert-level delicacy, and a sandwich was often a piece of deer meat between two slices of bear meat. As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.

 

So we got used to a very meat-centric diet; as immigrants came to this land of milk and meat, they adapted into the plenty formerly only known in palaces with obvious glee. In fact, I can recall as a kid that pasta wasn't considered a decent meal, which you would hear older folks say was because you went back to a plate of pasta for dinner when money was tight: a successful man had meat on the table for his family every night.

 

Times, indeed, have changed. It's helpful to know they changed to get us here, too. I'm not a vegetarian, but a meal without meat in our house isn't a sign of either poverty or that someone forgot to go to the store.

 

Most dieticians, and Michael Pollan with other sustainability advocates, all ask us to think about meat as more of a garnish than as the weighty center of a meal. Big chunks of meat, whole or processed, go through our physical selves and internal systems differently when we spend our day as a steelworker or farmer, as opposed to when we sit all week at work.

 

Two generations back and more, meat meant a big part of the American dream was fulfilled right there on the dinner table. We can celebrate successes and live a happy life, maybe happier, if we look back at some of the elegant original recipes in our history that bring a bit more of the field and farm to the table than the stockyard.

 

How does your faith community talk about food as a moral and ethical opportunity? You could talk about it at your next potluck . . .

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he likes to grill steaks in the summer, right next to the sweet corn in the husk. Tell him your dinnertime dreams at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 2-11

Faith Works 2-11-12

Jeff Gill

 

As a hypocrite myself, I represent that remark

___

 

 

Even as the big news stories in the past week have been about same-sex marriage, as to whether or not gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to have the same legal options as men and women entering into marriage, the percentage of people choosing to marry in the first place continues to decline.

 

That seems odd.

 

The First Lady pushes healthy eating on late night talk shows and in kids' programming, along with many public health efforts adamant in insisting that we need to restrict through law or taxation (or both) unhealthy food options. Meanwhile, obesity rates go up and more and more people eat out of sacks in their cars.

 

How's that New Year's resolution going?

 

Exercise is touted as the sovereign remedy for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, depression, and low test scores. High scores, on the other hand, go to TV ratings and screen time in general, on computers and smart phones and tablets. We're spending unprecedented time sitting, in chairs, hunched over displays of ever tinier sizes.

 

Our thumbs, however, are stronger and more adept than at any point in human history.

 

We are very good at saying one thing and doing another. That may not be a new skill set; Romans worried about overeating even as they invented the vomitorium (no, I didn't make that word up, but you'll have to look it up on your own). Cowboys expressed concern over limitations on their freedom if farmers fenced in the land, even as they shot Indians who didn't stay on their reservations.

 

The word we usually deploy here is "hypocrisy."

 

To be hypocritical, I fear, is part of the human condition. You can call it sin, our fallen nature showing forth as moral inconsistency, but the churchly side of the problem is that many (most) of the unchurched say that we inside our Sunday morning worship spaces proclaim and affirm choices and actions that we don't do much about on Monday through Saturday: to wit, we're hypocrites.

 

First response is: yep. Sure we are. Too much time spent trying to counter that argument is just wasted. Trust me, there's always another example to draw on for the anti-church, pro-y'all-are-hypocrites camp, and if we try to change the subject by saying "but I'M not a hypocrite," you're just begging for trouble.

 

So my answer is to say: absolutely. I'm a hypocrite at heart, and I need someone, even a Someone outside of my own little tiny cramped diseased heart to help me see it . . . because the core of hypocrisy is blindness, willful or well earned. THAT guy needs to lose some weight, while I just need to get a little bit more fit. YOU should behave more morally, and my choices are understandable because, well, you know, I've done my best. THOSE people's debts are appalling, but mine are earned…I mean I worked hard for…look, I'll pay it back out of my tax refund advance… Et cetera.

 

Is the church writ large hypocritical? You see, this is where the book of Revelation is most useful, and where it really should most often be utilized – not for skeezy predictions of that event of which the Boss plainly said "Ye shall not know the day nor the hour."

 

In Revelation, St. John the Divine from his Patmos Island exile reminds the churches in his care "y'all ain't all that." He sharply outlines their failings and foibles, their fallenness as faith communities, their having earned nothing much more appetizing than being spewed out of someone's mouth. He wasn't kind, and he made no excuses for them.

 

And then he closed his writing with an attempt to put down in words something of what he saw, when he looked at what the church might be in God's own vision. From the Divine perspective, he saw a redeemed and fulfilled Church, transformed and flawless – check out Rev. 21 & 22, it's at the back of The Book.

 

John was pretty clear: you're not there yet. But that's where you want to be heading.

 

Let that be the sincere prayer of all us recovering hypocrites!

 

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

Faith Works 2-4

Faith Works 2-4-12

Jeff Gill

 

My lecture notes from last night

___

 

 

Last night, I started a new semester with students at Methodist Theological Seminary of Ohio over in Delaware. Our class is "Disciples of Christ History & Polity." History is simple, in a way; polity less so.

 

Polity is basically how an organization is structured and run. Names of denominational groups are often indicative: Presbyterians have a presbyterian polity, run by presbyters or "elders" and the session (board) of a congregation. Episcopalians have an episcopal polity, with bishops as the core element of the structure.

 

And of course Presbyerians of whichever national body (there's more than one) or Episcopalians will laugh at the idea that it's that simple, so polity is both the formal structures in constitutions and bylaws and canons, and the folkways, aka how it actually works.

 

Like most mainline Protestant denominations, the polity that grew and was formalized in the go-go days of the Baby Boom, and spread in depth and weight through the 1970's, is creaking and cracking in 2012. Processes and procedures I was taught in the 70's & 80's as if they were "as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be" have vanished like snow in a warming trend. There are still patches surviving in shady spots, but the broad connective sweep of denominational polity is now, in Amos' words, a bag full of holes.

 

So what am I teaching this year? Well, most of the history is still what it is, from 1801 & 1804 around Cane Ridge, Kentucky and in 1809 through 1811 between Washington, Pennsylvania and Bethany, West Virginia. There are stories of minority groups and their experience of this new vessel for carrying the gospel across the frontier than have not been well told, if at all, in the past, and we highlight those narratives more than in the past, but it holds up pretty well.

 

Polity, though, is calling for a wholesale rewriting of the syllabus, and my methods. We're going to take an inductive, not a deductive approach, because . . . well, here's where I plan to start.

 

In the 1970s, I learned how to edit reel to reel tape, quickly and well. If you were doing production for radio news or station promos, this skill made you invaluable. It is physical work, but takes a fine touch; you use both hands to manually turn the reels after adjusting the play heads, find your spot, mark it, then pull out some slack, notch the tape into a special grooved device, then slice it with a razor blade. Keeping track of which part you're splicing to what, there's a tape you also slice into strips and lay across the side of the tape ends on the side opposite the playback heads: then take up the slack on the reels, return the heads to standard settings, and you're ready to play. If that sounded simple, it is . . . and isn't. But it was a marketable skill in radio and production studios for many years.

 

Likewise, around the same time I learned how to use not razor blades so much as eXacto knives and clear adhesive paste instead of tape, and lay out a page on a light table for a newspaper. The oldtimers would razz us about setting type, but we had the latest technology which printed out much of our formatted text, "camera ready." The page layout, however, needed physical arrangement, with borders and headers and boilerplate and ads, then you trimmed and laid in the text to the "news hole" waiting on the page for your content.

 

It was said that a good layout person could always find a job, and from what I heard from recent graduates, it was true. You literally laid out the page, and the results were an art which took both an eye, and an ability to see the pages in your mind's eye not yet laid out where "cont. pg. 7" would go.

 

I still know, in my head and through my hands, how to do those things. I haven't done them for years (decades) and probably never will again. If I taught you how to do them, and said it would help you find work in radio or newspapers, I would be lying.

 

That's why we need to look at our polity as we have it, and figure out from there where you should go. (And that's how I began last night with my class. I'll let you know what we learn together.)

 

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