Knapsack 6-14

Notes From My Knapsack 6-14-12

Jeff Gill

 

Politics and the economy in Ohio

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If you're hoping for or wanting a partisan angle on the fall elections, already spattered all over our media windshield, just turn on your wiper blades and drive on to another column or page. No endorsements here.

 

Nor is there condemnation, at least of the sort beloved by campaign die-hards. I think the last fifty years of political debate and economic maneuvering has been made up of largely decent intentions and well-intended actions, excepting the fellow who "invested" state money in rare coins. And as for gambling, state or otherwise, that's a different topic.

 

What can't be disputed is that something hasn't worked in Ohio. In the 1950s, we were Detroit's parts supplier par excellence, a steelmaker in our own right, and Etch-a-Sketch wasn't a punch line, but a product made right here in the state.

 

We had manufacturing, and a range of jobs from newbie puddlers in mills along the Ohio River, and middle management with dreams of Parma working in the Terminal Tower. Pigs, if not turkeys, flew in the Queen City, at least out of packing plants, and Dayton was entering the second half of a century where the Great Miami River carved a sort of Silicon Valley, of innovation and entrepreneurial leadership where technology was a Buckeye hallmark.

 

Another half-century, and Dayton is a hollowed out shell; auto manufacturing and parts assembly is a niche for various locations around the state, and we make baskets, at least when the economy is good.

 

One way of responding to that facile summary is to point out how much it misses. Kaiser is still pouring red hot material into giant hammering devices to create a saleable something out of molten nothing, just down the road; Owens is still spinning a pink web; razor wire and bulletproof helmets and the very essence of assembly lines are made down near I-70.

 

And baskets ain't nothin'.

 

Yet all the talk of smaller, nimbler, and right-sizing can't quite obscure the general fact, particularly addressed by both parties in this electoral contest, that Ohio has large amounts of empty brick buildings and open concrete pads where only memories are the output. We know, right down to our working class bones, that we missed a turn somewhere back up the road. Yes, Tom Friedman, our youth need to get more education than Uncle Clem did, who dropped out in 9^th grade and still retired a senior VP, worked up to middle management with a cabin on a lake and a paid for home. Maybe that was a bubble of sorts, and once popped, can't grow the same way twice.

 

The most obvious answer is that as the world changed, and the global economy shifted markets, there was a massive failure of managerial foresight. Was it really unforeseeable that labor costs and raw material development would make a compelling case for moving durable goods overseas? Could no one see, even by the 70s or 80s, that technology was about to transform decision-making?

 

Some did, but corporately, they generally didn't. Why weren't the few visionaries listened to? For one thing, we tend to hold onto the ideas of the visionaries who were proved right, and forget that, say in 1972, there were all sorts of crazy ideas out there about jet packs and food in a tube. To figure out which visionary is leading with a vision: aye, there's the rub.

 

What seems so dreadfully unproductive, though, is the dichotomy we're stuck in. The right says that it was largely union intransigence that kept companies from being nimble and adaptive, so unions are largely to blame; the left blames greed at the top for draining profit without any interest in the future other than their own in a gated retirement community on a beach somewhere, so the rich and the owners are to blame.

 

Obviously, I think those narratives are both over-tidy fictions, designed to lull the faithful to a boisterous sleep in their mass gatherings. But it doesn't explain . . . well, the real problem is that these fairy tales don't explain what stopped working for Ohio, and they explain even less what IS working.

 

Because we do have advanced materials production in Licking County, and our state does have Battelle and NASA and Boeing, and universities aplenty. I'm still interested in figuring out what we *could* have done differently, and I also think we can find a path forward that everyone can travel with security & confidence.

 

We may have to share lakeside cabins, though.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor; tell him your story of Ohio's lost, and impending glories at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 6-2

Faith Works 6-2-12

Jeff Gill

 

A feud with heaven

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This past week "The History Channel" ran a mini-series with the fairly self-explanatory title "Hatfields & McCoys."

 

Kevin Costner starred as "Devil Anse" Hatfield, along with other Hollywood stars like Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, and Tom Berenger (in an incredibly unpleasant character which he renders so well I'd feel nervous today if that actor walked in the room).  Costner was a major player in getting this story to the screen, and his band "Modern West" put together a concept album around the events, which actually preceded the making of the movie, and whose title may even be better than the one for the production in summing up the grim narrative: "Famous For Killing Each Other."

 

That is what the Hatfield & McCoy families are best known for in general: killing each other. The movie makes it clear that retribution and suspicion and recrimination and revenge are what kept the feud going from the end of the Civil War to 1891 . . . but many locals along the Tug Fork, separating Kentucky & West Virginia, say the tensions and hostility continued until the present day.

 

And with the great migrations from Appalachia up into the industrial Midwest after World War II, there are Hatfield and McCoy descendants in central Ohio, in Licking County today. I know a few of each sort; none with the memorable family name, but with genealogy that ties them closely to the valley of the Big Sandy River.

 

Their stories, when you hear them, are less of gunslinging heroics from the menfolk as they are the grinding realities of everyday life in that time and place from the womenfolk. In portrayals by Mare Winningham, Sarah Parish, and Lindsay Pulsipher you see the cost of this sort of grudge-holding, of an honor culture where guns represent a higher law than any court can offer.

 

When we hear about the culture of different lands where other faith systems are dominant, it's easy to get judgmental with an overlay of "well, that's how less developed cultures get by." One of the benefits of a historical movie like this one is that it forces us to remember that less than 200 miles and 120 years from right here, people pretty much like us lived lives not much different from what we hear about in Fallujah or Kandahar.

 

In fact, many mornings I watch the sun rise over a beautiful pair of hills to my east. It's a lovely scene, but darkly tinged with my knowledge of a story from the pages of the Advocate about the same time as the Hatfield & McCoy feud.

 

On the southern slopes of that hill here in Licking County, back around the 1880's, there had been a string of chicken coops broken into after dark. One property owner, guessing his hens were the next target, sat up inside the coop with a shotgun. Sometime that night, the hen house door opened; somehow, when all was said and done, two dead men lay in the farmyard. At dawn, as the neighbors gathered, all agreed that the corpses were not local residents. The two deaths, and their lack of identification, were reported in a chillingly casual tone, akin to the next note about the county fair.

 

Violence is not far away from the human heart. Not in distance, not in time. Our decision to value human life, when it isn't a life that's blood relation, is contingent . . . constrained by factors from self-interest to passion to simple greed.

 

I wonder about those two dead, anonymous chicken thieves. They died un-mourned, and some even today would say that's only just. But where were they buried? On the slopes of the hill I contemplate with my morning prayers and sunrise coffee? Tossed into Raccoon Creek for nature to take its course? Or buried in unmarked graves on the margins of a cemetery nearby?

 

Here and on the Tug Fork, "say your prayers" would have been words that in the 1880s did not bring hope. And many prayers, heartfelt and sincere, such as those of Randall McCoy in the film, go unanswered, then and now.

 

We still wrestle with that feud of the divided heart, those conflicts between earth and heaven , deep within; our outward vendettas may be less vicious and deadly, but they still have ultimate implications. And like Uncle Dyke Garrett at the movie's end, the community of faith has certain tools for making transformation possible, and visible.

 

From the blood of the Lamb to the waters of Island Creek. May it ever be so.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him your story of feuds and forgiveness at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 5-26

Faith Works 5-26-12

Jeff Gill

 

Late night at the grocery store

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With the last of five well-attended community meetings about hunger in Licking County, there are some new possibilities which you'll hear about over these next few months.

 

The Mid-Ohio Food Bank team, Matt Habash's excellent staff, field-tested a process here because, well, because we have Chuck Moore and most other counties don't. I know Chuck will read this and cringe, but tough! The Food Pantry Network of Licking County is indeed a team effort, and the dozens of church groups and a few other groups who staff and support the direct service around the county to families in need are the real heroes, as I know Chuck would say, but his spirit and energy shine out beyond even our geographically large county's boundaries.

 

I'm not on their board, but I work with many of their board members, and they would be first to say our spirit of co-operation and collaboration and willingness to just dive in and do what needs to be done is spearheaded by Chuck's sacrificial spirit. He's out there, and anyone working alongside knows they'd better keep up if they don't want to lose sight of the front lines of the effort to eliminate hunger in Licking County.

 

So now other counties in Ohio will get to test their collaborative vision against  a model of discussion and visioning and action plans. I'm not here to lay out the full sense of the planning outlines we've begun (the FPN board will be on that shortly), but I do want to report in this space a few things.

 

First, the Christian congregations of our area are both working hard, and are very interested in learning from each other how to work smarter. None of us thinks we have this whole "following Jesus" deal figured out perfectly, and if we hear about approaches that are both more faithful, and more effective, we're open to that.

 

"Choice pantries" are one part of this process; as I've mentioned here before, most of us hadn't considered the assumptions about the working poor and hungry people that were implicit in standard-model pantry approaches. Here's your bag, take what we give you: that model is quietly but clearly sending messages of "you should feel lucky you're getting this, so deal with it," along with our own assumptions that there's a certain grabbiness to poverty that means we don't dare open the shelves to clients.

 

In fact, while there's always someone who pushes the rules (ain't there always, in anything?), that's not what choice pantry folks see. There's actually more communication, more understanding, and even more appreciation, in both directions.

 

And we're thinking about our hours. Can we push ourselves to look at being open when people can get there? The reality is that most clients of food pantries are working, often two jobs, so respecting their time looks different when we remember that. No one meant to say that food pantry clients are just sitting home all day, but only being open 10 am to Noon on weekdays does imply that's what we assume.

 

The second general learning the hunger forums kept coming back to is the need to increase community awareness about what being working poor looks like, and why the problem of hunger is so quietly persistent, even in an era of EBT cards for Food Stamps (the stamps are gone). That's why realizing our guests, our visitors are almost without exception *working* people is so important.

 

I went out shortly before midnight as May 1 started to turn, just to see something for myself. It's often noted that if folks have used up their EBT cards earlier in the month, then a) food pantries tend to be busier at the end of the month, and b) folks will go to 24 hour groceries as the new date dawns, and "the card" is electronically recharged. In fact, I dashed around to four between 11:45 pm and 12:30 am, and met a number of people doing just that.

 

One was a mom, with two adolescents in tow; I introduced myself and explained my interest, and she introduced me to her two very polite, if baffled children. She explained they'd "almost made it through the month!" but needed lunch food for packing school lunches. And that's exactly what was in her cart as she hovered by check-out, waiting for midnight, and to get her kids home for sleep and school the next day.

 

"It's tough out there for lots of people, but we're making it. It's going to get better. This helps us get there." Then she checked her lunch supplies through the register. It was 12:05 am.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor; he will worship with the "Sacred Walk 5K" starting tomorrow at 9:00 am from the Powwow grounds at the Great Circle Earthworks. Share your tales of hunger and being fed with him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 5-24/31

Notes From My Knapsack 5-24/31-12

Jeff Gill

 

Angles of perspective

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Now that the canopy has filled in across the forest, with only the sycamores waiting for the end of June to fully leaf out, there's a green canvas over most of our local hills and valleys.

 

Add in that the season, not quite summer by the calendar but as official as needs be when school lets out, now gives us cumulus clouds more than stratus layers, and you see something unique to this time of year.

 

When the sunlight is general, punctuated by puffs and clumps of cloud, instead of winter's slate roof dimming the whole of creation, you see in May and June and July the play of rushing shadow running down the slopes and filling up the hollows.

 

In truth, it's the dark edge that's moving, but depending on your vantage point, it usually appears that the brightness is what's rippling over the green shimmer, on the move to illumine and examine and, if you're lucky, to rush towards you and splash your spot with warmth and brightness.

 

Walking down the new, ADA-compliant path at the Great Circle to the parking area (the old path had too steep a grade for wheeled chairs, and now a simple re-drawn arc shifts the slope to where it's navigable; hat tip, OHS and the Convention & Visitor's Bureau!), I saw as I walked through a cluster of tulip poplars that their blossoms had burst their cases, with tan outer layers scattered on the pavement.

 

A hundred feet above, the broad yellow and orange and pink blossoms face up, away from ground-level concerns, the pinnacle of these "redwoods of Ohio," with their own seasonal ecosystems of insects and butterflies and birds enjoying and using them to the full, while invisible to we earthbound creatures below.

 

Over the next few weeks, having done their work in the lifecycle of these multi-century behemoths, they will slowly shed their petals and create a carpet of pastels that appears as if by magic. Occasionally, a scampering squirrel will knock loose a full blossom, and give us down below a faint hint of what it must look like in the penthouse of the forest's towering apartment blocks.

 

Here atop the soil, we've seen a similar piece of natural alchemy at work, with the explosion of hairy bittercress across our lawns in early spring. It's mostly run its course, and has faded to a last few sprouts in the dimmer corners of our lawns.

 

The warm winter and damp conditions were a springboard for this species; that much we all get, but the amazement is from wondering "where has it been all these years?" Some botanists have suggested that it is always around in empty lots and un-treated corners of the landscape, and that the 2012 explosion is because of a multi-year arc of warmth and soil temperature, edging the seeds into a profusion only noticeable at the peak. Others have suspected that the hairy bittercress has lain largely dormant, part of the rich brew that is topsoil, erupting all at once when the time is right.

 

Nature is more than just clouds, trees, and grass. When you start to look more closely, the fractal detail gives you more wonders the deeper into the picture you go. Pixels, it ain't!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor; tell him your story of nature's beauty at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 5-19

Faith Works 5-19-12

Jeff Gill

 

A pastoral prayer for us all

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Dear Lord:

 

We gather here today in thankfulness for another Saturday, another newspaper, another summer afternoon ahead. You are our creator and our life-giver, and while we may think you are overdoing it in that department in regards to the grass, even as we mow we reflect on the sweat of our brow, and the story of how you have been at work to save and redeem us through the years.

 

Lord God, in this time we set aside to reflect on your will and your Word, or for some of us just to open up the Advocate and flip past the "Your Faith" page in Section C, we are blessed to know that our prayers, individually, are welcome to you. We also know, loving Lord, that like Jesus asleep in the boat during a storm, we can find ourselves thinking you are not listening, that you don't care. Grant us the calm of spirit and ease of heart that gets us through the storm, and even gives us the boldness to step out of the boat when you call.

 

We also pray together, Eternal One. There are words from our fathers and mothers in the faith which we use, some of us from missals and prayer books, and even with the words of hymns. Some of us worship where much of the service takes that form, and we honor the respect of our forebearers such prayers and praise show.

 

Others of us are more familiar with a style where the prayers are new each week, whether we call it impromptu or extemporaneous or "filled with the Spirit." Lord, I've been asked if I could explain what a "pastoral prayer" was to those who are of a more liturgical and formal experience, and to those who are unchurched. I pray that this approach in print, but very like how I pray as a pastor in such a moment (even supply preachers get asked to do pastoral prayers ofttimes), is both respectful to You, and is understandable to those who were wondering.

 

And Gracious God, you already know the names of those who are ill, whose health is failing, people who are simply waiting for test results, or our friends and family and fellow worshipers who are painfully working through rehab and recovery. But it is our practice to lift up names, sometimes just first names, sometimes a situation without even a name to it, but "lifted up" in the pastoral prayer as a way to remind us all to be persistent in prayer on their behalf.

 

God of forgiveness and grace, we ask that you keep us from using those prayer concerns as an occasion for gossip or speculation, as well; our sinful nature can lead us down that path from time to time.

 

Yet we would be specific in our prayers, and that's the great impact of this part of our services, because we have been told by your Son that we should be bold, and be persistent, and ask that you may answer…even when the response may be "No," or even worse (to us) "Not now."

 

And Lord of life and light, it is part of the power of this moment, these petitions, as we lay them before your throne in heaven, which becomes more real, almost visible to the eyes of faith as we (mostly) bow our heads and close our eyes; the cosmic nature of what we are called by You to share in means that there is a sense and a sensibility to praying for others far away, even unknown to us. We lift up missionaries at a city dump in Honduras, soldiers on patrol where this Sunday is already dark and done in Afghanistan, and friends who travel towards the setting sun on a long-awaited, deeply-anticipated trip.

 

All of this we ask in the name of your Son, whom we call by many names, who is our Lord and Savior, and whose prayer is often prayed together to close this time. But since this pastoral prayer is in the paper and online, I'll leave those reading to conclude as they will, while I ask your special blessing on all those readers who are shaking their heads and thinking "these are empty words, prayed into nothing, to no one." May they know both our love and yours, and presence made real in prayer.

 

And all God's people said: Amen!

 

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

Faith Works 5-12

Faith Works 5-12-12

Jeff Gill

 

God is not busy

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While the universe is a strange and wonderful and complex place, filled with the possibilities of string theory and Higgs bosons and dark matter, those of us in the "theist" camp are fairly certain that the Creator, or Divine Providence, or God (the list continues, but you know of Whom I speak) has a place in the grand plan.

 

Post-World-War-II theologians, with the rise of nuclear physics and complex chemistry, atom bombs and nylon stockings, warned us not to believe in a "God of the gaps." Their point, briefly stated and doubtless mangled, was that if religious folk accepted science as-is, and kept nudging God into the places that science couldn't explain, they'd find themselves soon backed into a corner.

 

Maybe.

 

Actually, over the years I've gotten pretty comfortable with a generalized "God of the gaps" understanding, because the further out and deeper in science goes, the bigger the gaps get. Plenty of room for God and divine activity in the universe even as described by Scientific American.

 

It is true, and I'm thinking about this as we see Denison commencement this weekend, and plenty of high school graduation parties as far as the calendar can see, that science and faith continue to live in an uneasy relationship. Faith is based on assertions, and science on data, or so the standard model says.

 

That's not quite right in either direction, because science takes facts, assembles theories, and tests them, based on a firm belief in the reliability of the universe not to play tricks on them from one experiment to the next (did you see what I did there? shame, shame…). And faith carries forward assertions that have been screened and sifted through history, and the development of holy tradition in what's often called "the teachings of the church." There's a different time scale, and clear variations on admissibility and authority to validate outcomes, but I sniff some similarities here.

 

What we do want to share and show our students, as they mature in their faith, whatever your church tradition, is that faith has nothing to fear from careful consideration. Faith is challenged by life itself, every day, starting with the morning traffic report and pounded at by our chronic inhumanity to one another. Science makes certain claims and offers particular challenges to how faith interprets life, and we don't do our young adults any favors if the first time they really wrestle with those realities is when they get to college.

 

It can be equally harmful to a developing mind to have always heard of God as a vaguely distracted, generally loving, but very busy (busy busy) being who is "out there," somewhere not in particular but with a mail drop marked "Heaven."

 

If I had one thing to share with college or high school graduates, as they face whatever their own particular "next" is in life, it would be this: God is not busy. We think of God as having so much to do, and so involved, that we unconsciously channel our cultural foible of confusing busyness with significance. We say to important people "oh, I know you must be so busy." Saying "I'm so busy" is often a passive-aggressive way to say "I'm so darn important." It actually may say "have you tried using a planning calendar?"

 

But an essential quality of God, I believe (rooted in the teachings of the church), is that God is NOT busy. God is active, and involved, and present, but not busy. Busy means not really listening. Busy means something more important is about to happen elsewhere. Busy means "too bad about you."

 

God is not busy. God is here. Now. And if God is not busy, then maybe we don't have to be to get something done. Sometimes we need to hurry, finite creatures that we are (who don't always plan the way we should), but we don't need to be busy, either.

 

With God, we just need to be.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's got this thing about "I am who I am" stuck in his head. Tell him whether you think that's God, or Popeye, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 5-10-12

Notes From My Knapsack – Granville Sentinel 5-10-12

Jeff Gill

Looking up, carefully

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We have a wonderful collection of ancient Native American earthworks here in Licking County, and most of them seem to have some plan or design in them to relate to the heavens.

Solstices and equinoxes and lunar cycles and the path of the Milky Way: all of these are built into the epic architecture of the two thousand year old and thousand year old works of art and engineering that dot our hilltops and sprawl with purpose across the valley floors.

Humanity has always looked to the sky for understanding, because at the very least, regular recurring cycles place themselves in reassuring contrast to the strangely unexpected fluctuations of the weather. The sun's rise point steadily marches up and down the eastern horizon, and days get longer for half the year, shorter for the other half, and then repeat the whole process again. It's comforting, and a very real point of stability, even as the human body ages, as generations pass, and the output of the land in plants and animals goes from feast to famine.

There's the naked eye observation and recording that any person with a fixed abode and a stick to make marks in, or even to poke in the ground, can keep track of and make predictive sense from. Then there's the higher order record-keeping and mathematics that we see in the lunar observatory aspects of the Newark Earthworks, and specifically at the Octagon.

A further step towards understanding came with lenses, and telescopes, Galileo's observations and Copernicus' insights. It wasn't until the 17^th century that Johannes Kepler began to take this sort of work, done for millennia by attentive sky-watchers around the world, and use the growing power of mathematics to calculate a level of detail about the Solar System that opened up even more insights into the working of the cosmos.

Kepler calculated that the planet Venus should cross directly in front of the blazing solar disc itself, and that a careful observer might be able to bring some scale for the universe down to our planet's surface, with some careful timings and observations from two widely separated locations, in just a very few years. Sadly, he did not live to see that day himself, but his prediction lived on.

From that first prediction in 1631, there was first observation in 1639 that began the process of measuring the vast distances of space through the parallax of two separated viewing points on our planet, leading to the "astronomical unit" from the Sun to Earth. More recently, with the 2004 viewing, we're beginning to calculate how to identify planets orbiting distant stars with what we learn "watching" Venus pass across the solar disc.

The distances, and odd orbits, mean that we can see this at intervals of about 243 years in full cycle, with two shots, eight years apart, in the middle. So the last viewings were 2004 and before that, 1882; in Ohio, our next shot is 2117 but not a good angle here, so we have to hold out to 2125.

So I'm hoping for clear skies (at least in the west) on the evening of June 5. I've ordered my eclipse glasses (they're quite cheap, but utterly necessary), and will drag my family atop Alligator Mound in Bryn Du Woods at about 6 pm. The "show" begins over the next half-hour, and continues, sadly for us, just until sunset. The crossing of the Sun by Venus takes about six and a half hours.

We won't be doing science ourselves that evening, but we – and you? – will be sharing in what I think is a very human endeavor. C'mon up, I may even have one extra pair of eclipse glasses. Kids, don't look at the sun without special protection!

I'll bet they said that 2,000 years ago, too.

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

Faith Works 5-5

Faith Works 5-5-12

Jeff Gill

 

Hungering and thirsting for righteousness, or at least a can of beans

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After two weeks of talking about fasting, you had to figure I'd get around to hunger: and you'd be right.

 

(Oh, and if you're reading this before noon on Saturday, come join me at the Great Circle off Rt. 79 in Heath for a program this morning on the Ancient Ohio Trail, and say hello!)

 

Back to the everyday struggles of today's life, you may have a food pantry in your congregation's building. Licking County is blessed to have a large number of pantries, over 30, located all across our wide geographic reach. In 1981, folks started coordinating their care and their resources, and created the Licking County Food Pantry Network (see www.foodpantrynetwork.net for more info).

 

The LCFPN does Operation Feed, and is helped by groups like Elves in Action, the Granville Turkey Trot, and a number of Scout-led food drives. They also partner with the Columbus area Mid-Ohio Food Bank, and the Mid-Ohio team has been impressed with the scope and co-ordination of what goes on here in Licking County, so they wanted to use us as a testing zone for a model to start community conversations around hunger and helping.

 

One thing we all know: there's need, and it isn't getting smaller. We also know that the total amount of food we're distributing is increasing, so the obvious question is: do we need to do something differently? How are we using the resources we have, and if we need more, it's not just a question of "more" or even Chuck Moore (rimshot), but where do we need what, exactly?

 

Plus the ongoing challenge of public education about hunger.

 

So there've been a series of meetings, largely with those already working at various church & agency food and feeding programs, from the Salvation Army hot lunches on E. Main St. in Newark to regular pantry operations in places like Croton & Utica. We've been meeting at Second Presbyterian in downtown Newark at 11:30 am for a two hour process that includes lunch (we're fighting hunger on many fronts . . .), and the last session is next week, Wed. May 9^th. You are still invited, whether you've been to some or none of our three earlier ventures.

 

One thing we've talked about around our tables, comparing notes and thinking through challenges: many who are coming, at least these days, have never been to a food pantry before. And quite a few come once, and aren't seen again.

 

There's a bit of a stereotype that people who come to a food pantry are all "frequent flyers," long-standing regulars. And the truth is, those are the folks you remember if you work at them, for obvious reasons – they're coming back. But that's not all, or even most of who we are feeding. Did you know that? How does that make you think differently about food pantries?

 

And another part of the new model these days is old news to some, but a startling thought to others. They're called "choice pantries," versus what Chuck calls "standard" (or I might call "stereotypical") pantries. The old idea was that you came, checked in, and got handed a bag with three days worth of food for whatever your family size was. If the bag had pasta, black eyed peas, and a canned ham, well, you're hungry, aren't you? No one said take it or leave it, but . . .

 

A choice pantry still checks you in, and you get a bag, but you go among the shelves yourself and you . . . choose. Hence, the "choice pantry" model. For some, a can of black eyed peas is a joy and a reminder of better days and something that gets eaten up right quick; for others, it's a "what's that?" and a shelf-sitter. Canned pumpkin, chickpeas, a jar of alfredo: just think about it for yourself. How would you use a random batch of items to feed your particular family?

 

Sometimes, stuff runs low or runs out, and people (clients, customers, guests, whatever) have to make do. But the choice model makes us reflect on some of our assumptions about who is hungry, why they're hungry, and what they should/must/will do to get by. And for every pantry that's made the shift, there's been a sheepish sort of recognition when, over and over again – it works. It works well. People understand limitations, but a simple, humane amount of respect and autonomy changes the whole atmosphere, to everyone's benefit.

 

There's more to learn. Come join us this Wednesday if you can, and tell your story.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's going to be at Second Pres this Wednesday. Tell him about your pantry experience at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 4-28

Faith Works 4-28-12

Jeff Gill

 

Justice is rarely fast, but doesn't have to be slow

___

 

 

Some of the feedback from last week, when I wrote about fasting as a spiritual discipline, asked about health and safety matters.

 

My observations were entirely based on my own practice of a one-day a week fast from solid foods, but including juices (while I keep away from dairy, again, just my own personal definition). In other words, not eating "stuff" but including milkshakes and milk and pop as stuff. Me, I like V8 Spicy Hot, plus a little cranberry juice and lots (and lots) of coffee, but YMMV.

 

Anyhow, the whole "fast for a week" or even more (check out Bill Bright and fasting online for where this idea comes from in recent days) is not what I'm proposing, and I'm not even saying I think everyone should skip a day to tune up their prayer life: I'm just reporting what's working for me, and where I trace the precedents for this practice in church history.

 

If you are diabetic or have other health issues, you probably shouldn't even do this much, and it's something you should check with your doctor or health professional especially if you're on medications or have other complicating factors.

 

But for those who ask if any fasting is "Biblical," my answer is actually that I'm appreciating Biblical perspectives, but in no way do I think the Bible calls on us to follow a particular diet, or lack thereof, for holiness. Fasting is Biblical the same way flying is Biblical: it's in there, but I don't think God's telling everyone to do what the swallows do.

 

In fact, there's one very specific Biblical comment on fasting, and it comes in always applicable Isaiah, in chapter 58, starting at verse 6.

 

            "Is not this the fast that I choose:

                        to loose the bonds of wickedness,

                        to undo the straps of the yoke,

            to let the oppressed go free,

                        and to break every yoke?

            Is it not to share your bread with the hungry

                        and bring the homeless poor into your house;

            when you see the naked, to cover him,

                        and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

            Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,

                        and your healing shall spring up speedily;

            your righteousness shall go before you;

                        the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

            Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;

                        you shall cry, and he will say, 'Here I am.'

(Isaiah 58:6-9 ESV)

 

How I read this is that fasting is not about giving something up for the sake of proving something to yourself, let alone to God. Fasting, denying yourself an indulgence or even on occasion a need, should have a purpose, and that purpose should bend towards providing for those without. It isn't about being some spiritual asetic as a personal achievement, but giving up some bread AS PART of making sure someone who has no bread gets some.

 

            Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;

                        you shall cry, and he will say, 'Here I am.'

            If you take away the yoke from your midst,

                        the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,

            if you pour yourself out for the hungry

                        and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,

            then shall your light rise in the darkness

                        and your gloom be as the noonday.

            And the LORD will guide you continually

                        and satisfy your desire in scorched places

                        and make your bones strong;

            and you shall be like a watered garden,

                        like a spring of water,

                        whose waters do not fail.

            And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

                        you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

            you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

                        the restorer of streets to dwell in.

(Isaiah 58:9-12 ESV)

 

When you get to know what the source of life is, it can begin with learning that it isn't inside a bottle of pop or a bag of chips, but it doesn't end there. You go on to find the spring "whose waters do not fail."

 

And then you lead others to find refreshment there, too.

 

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

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.