Faith Works 9-22

Faith Works 9-22-12

Jeff Gill

 

Fundamentalism and its discontents

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When you hear the word "fundamentalism" used it's often in the context of describing violent demonstrations ("Islamic fundamentalism") or intolerant displays of disapproval ("Christian fundamentalism"); it can show up on the other side of the world ("Hindu fundamentalism") and even appear in discussions of politics ("constitutional fundamentalism").

 

I think it's helpful, and also interesting to look at where the whole idea of "fundamentalism" comes from, and what gave it birth, because it has not only a history, but a fairly recent one.

 

Fundamentalism is essentially one of a number of reactions to Modernism. It dates almost entirely to the period of the late 1800s and dawn of the 1900s, when the implications of the European Enlightenment from the 1600s were starting to percolate into popular, mass culture . . . and some would argue it was the rise of mass culture (sometimes called more recently "pop culture") that not only created the context of Modernism, but virtually forced the rise of Fundamentalism.

 

There are other reactions to Modernism, the best known of which is Post-Modernism, a cultural move that's largely (in this writer's opinion) running out of gas. But if you think the end of the PoMo period in academic and artistic discourse means that Modernism died long ago, you'd be (again, in my opinion) dead wrong.

 

Modernism is Darwin, Marx, and Freud, but it's also Pulitzer and Hearst and Hollywood. It's a sense of scientific understanding combined with an awareness of "deep time" in geology and biology that evokes a little awe and wonder, and lots of irony. Modernism is the realization that things haven't always been this way, so historical consciousness looks back and a certain wry apocalypticism looks forward, nervously. Modernism says "try something new" and values it not because it continues a tradition, but because of the innovation that becomes a value of its own: cars and electricity and flight are new, and good, so something new in art and literature is very likely to be good, too – right?

 

Or not. So conservatism, with roots in the English hesitation over the twin challenges of the American Revolution and the French, starts to offer a qualification to "new equals good." Conservatism (as opposed to reactionary-ism) says "let's try something new, but cautiously, without tossing the old and traditional, not yet."

 

So liberal and conservative trends in social and cultural life began butting heads (and became political parties), but what about the church? Or the Church?

 

Some faith traditions had an innate conservatism built into them (Orthodoxy, much of Catholicism), while others reasonably would tend to a more liberal acceptance of change (Protestantism in general). But "new" and "revealed truth" are not likely to be automatic fast friends.

 

This is where "The Fundamentals" come in. They were, in fact, a series of lengthy essays, ultimately multiple books worth, edited by a group of Protestant theologians and church leaders who looked Modernism in the eye around 1910 and said "Not so fast, bucko."

 

Or words to that effect.

 

I bring all this up simply to note that whether it's Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, or even Buddhism, all world religious traditions are still trying to figure out what to make of Modernism's inroads on their traditional terrain. Complete withdrawal from Modernism means a disavowal of science and culture, which is itself not in keeping with Protestant tradition, but Modernism has proven to be a sticky lint ball of a cultural trend, which is difficult to touch lightly.

 

So I actually have a smidgen of sympathy for some in the Far East, whether you dismiss them as mad mullahs or outraged imams. The Enlightenment in general, and Modernism in particular, has only relatively recently (since WWII) made inroads into their home territory, and they are only just now trying to figure out what it means to affirm or reject, in whole or in part, this strange new ideology.

 

And I'd argue that we're not done figuring it out right here, either.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he'd not call himself a fundamentalist, but he may have read more of "The Fundamentals" than most who would. Tell him what's foundational for you at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Knapsack 9-19-12

Notes From My Knapsack 9-19-12

Jeff Gill

 

 

We need nature, and now more than ever

___

 

 

Yes, the election season is wholly upon us.

 

Yes, the rhetoric is overheated and the facts are being spun, twisted, mangled, and fracked beyond all earthly recognition.

 

Yes, I have no interest in joining in with the din (nor do I have bananas, I have no bananas today).

 

What I need is a walk in the woods. Or . . .

 

To tell you the truth, I've been doing a fair amount of creekwalking recently. Creekwalking is not something you should do, nor am I recommending it. You get me? I. AM. NOT. RECOMMENDING. IT. (Corporate legal, are we happy now?)

 

Creekwalking is indeed tricky because there are legal questions about who owns what or where, whose liability covers you down in the shallow waterways (I. AM. NOT. RECOMMENDING. IT.), and then there's the fact that once in a while, even around Licking County (or Legend County, if you prefer) the water gets deep.

 

Not often, though. You can pick your way from Alexandria down through Granville if you don't mind getting wet up to your armpits, and as a citizen measuring five foot, seventeen inches, that might come out a little differently for you.

 

My favorite stretches are closer to the confluences, where the South Fork of the Licking curls down from Pataskala to bounce off of the northbank of Buckeye Lake, then wandering through Hebron arcing north to Heath and joining Raccoon Creek where Newark begins.

 

Down in the lowest levels of the ecosystem, you can still see the richest span of species and types, along with the rarities not often spotted on the flat stretches we think of as the lowlands, which are far above your head when you tread the gravelly, sandy, occasionally soggy breadth of the bottomlands.

 

Sheltered by overhanging trees and high banks of shrub and sapling, a cedar waxwing perches on one bush; a kingfisher splashes into the water in front of you; a great blue heron slowly flaps a primordial path past your vantage point; scarlet tanagers and goldfinches punctuate the margins of the ribbon of blue unspooling overhead.

 

When your path allows no other way forward than into the water, you share the road with fish in shoals and schools; young and small, you tend to see only those who have the potential of being fished, since the seniors of the set stay in the very spots you intentionally avoid while creekwalking: deep pools, side riffles with overhanging brambly brush.

 

Native accounts and early settler tales remind us that once these waters were rich in paddlefish and freshwater sturgeon, in a time when the moral equivalent of caviar was a local staple, not a foreign delicacy. Clams and mussels are seen almost not at all, only as broken, long dead shell bits probably only washing down from the furthest upstream reaches. The general lack of health in the waters, even with all the progress we've made since the Clean Water Act and the EPA, is reflected in the absence still of those canaries in our well lit coal mines, the freshwater molluscs.

 

Despite that hint of concern, it's remarkable the range and number of wildlife you can see literally within blocks of the county courthouse. Yes, including bald eagles. Yet for all my creekwalking in recent months, I've seen precisely one guy out there fishing, and he said the catch was good. (Okay, I saw two other people, but they were smoking something and didn't seem pleased to see me pass by their secluded bankside hideaway. Anyhow.)

 

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has noted that the US Fish and Wildlife Service reports the number of Americans who fish has dropped fifteen percent from 1996 to 2006; the National Park Service has seen a thirty percent drop in the number of backcountry permits since the late 1970s.

 

"In wildness is the preservation of the world" said Thoreau in his magnificent essay "Walking," and it is certainly the preservation of my sanity. There's social science data coming in showing that exposure to and time spent in nature helps youth reduce the impact of things like attention deficit disorder and general anxiety, and for adults it can improve blood pressure and general well-being far beyond just the health impact of walking alone.

 

Have you had your nature today?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he DOES NOT RECOMMEND creekwalking. Tell him what you recommend at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 9-15

Faith Works 9-15-12

Jeff Gill

 

People who are not quite invisible

___

 

So many topics I meant to write about this week. Ah, well.

 

Events along the southern coast of the Mediterranean continue to erupt, and tragedies burst into flames here and there in the debris of dictatorships' end and the ad hoc workshops of nascent democracy.

 

From a faith perspective broadly understood, which is what this space is intended to address (the pastor's column is for particular perspectives, but "Faith Works" is meant by the editorial staff to speak to a much broader, non-sectarian audience), there are hints of what goes on in the Middle East as being rooted in religion. As in "see what these crazy people are doing in the name of religion!"

 

I would dispute that.

 

Not that some of the behavior isn't deranged, as killing and death always is, but whether they're really doing it "in the name of religion."

 

Perhaps I do them an injustice, but most of these terroristic acts by so-called sectarian groups are aimed at keeping control of state power in the hands of a specific ethnic group, or just keeping power for an in-group, however defined. Yes, religion gets used, but religion per se seems to rarely have thing one to do with what they're fighting about.

 

My own travels are sadly limited. But between where I have gone, and my opportunities to talk to those who have been in strange, hot, dusty places, I've developed a general hypothesis.

 

The average citizens of most countries are decent, hard-working people who bear no ill will for those from overseas who visit or work to develop their land. But their stability is also their weakness, in that they can't resist roving, rootless, often faceless armed thugs who hide behind them and threaten retaliation to those who would report or unmask them, because they have to stay put to maintain their way of life, while terror is always on the move. ALWAYS remember that, whether Russia or Libya or Egypt or Iran.

 

Or the United States.

 

In Libya, shortly after the brutal acts that culminated in the death of the US ambassador and three of his staff, a public rally was bravely held, with signs honoring Chris Stevens all handmade and small but all the more sincere. That gathering got relatively little general media play, and occupied almost no space in the overall debate about "what's wrong over there?"

 

Which is the real Libya?

 

Well, that's like watching some footage of the idiot preacher with sideburns in Florida and the vile preacher from Kansas, then seeing an equal length of footage from two other randomly chosen mainstream churches in Poughkeepsie, NY & Harrisburg, PA, then asking "what's the real American religion?"

 

In most of the world, I am quite certain, though lacking objective data, that people in general believe that they are created by Someone greater than they can comprehend, and have a purpose in this world that ties them to the next. As a Christian, I believe I know a way to understand that general belief with some very particular applications, but not in a way that leads me or anyone I know or worship with to draw a weapon to enforce; as an American, I think my personal faith has public implications, but not in a way that bars me from making common cause with other faiths which share my public positions.

 

Americans rarely have to worry about mobile militants who kill to enforce a worldview. Oklahoma City would remind us that's not "never," but rarely is still true. One of Christianity's core remembrances is a willingness to die rather than renounce our faith, but the fact is we barely have to think about that prospect, let alone face it. But it only takes one Toyota micro-pickup full of Kalashnikov wielding teenage boys to force the question. In some parts of the world, those careening caravans are a sporadic part of the landscape. They can even insist that your own teenage son join them.

 

Let's be very, very careful about judging whole peoples, whole religions, based on the murderous influence of a few. And it only takes a few.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he's not had to explain his theology in the face of anything worse than a raised eyebrow. Tell him about your non-negotiables at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Knapsack 9-6

Notes From My Knapsack 9-6-12

Jeff Gill

 

Not so much the politics, but the politicians

___

 

You may have noticed that there's a major political season blowing through right now, our media version of a hurricane for the senses.

 

Soon we will see more letters to the editor on various candidates and issues, enough that these merry little columns may be reduced in number or frequency. So if I had something to say politically, now would be the time to get that in…

 

Except, of course, that the management really doesn't want these human interest essays to veer off into partisan politics. That's what the ad pages are for!

 

Politicians, though, fascinate me. Because they are, all evidence to the contrary, us.

 

Yes, there are some tendencies to dynasty (Kennedys, Tafts, Bushes, Romneys) and they don't represent the nation or state with mirror-like perfection, but I'm pretty impressed with our overall expansiveness when it comes to U.S. Presidents.

 

FDR was patrician, as was JFK, but LBJ? The anti-patrician, as was Jimmy Carter. Ford was Midwestern, while Reagan, from Illinois, was a true 20^th century Californian because of his Midwestern roots, not despite them.

 

Harry S. Truman was a Pendergast Democrat and Richard Nixon was a McCarthy Republican, but both rebelled in significant ways from their youthful patrons.

 

And this factoid will doubtless be misused in ways I can't even anticipate, but I'm doubly fascinated by the fact that: both Barack Obama's paternal grandfather & Mitt Romney's paternal great-grandfather had five wives. Five, both of 'em. It means absolutely nothing about either of the candidates, politically, but it's the kind of historic coincidence that you'd think would be feature-bait on the air and in print, but everyone is too hyperaware of the partisan sensitivities on each side to go there. So I just did!

 

Mitt's paternal grandfather was post-1890, when the condition of statehood for Utah was an official ban on polygamy by the Latter Day Saints, so he had a single wife, but is occasionally mentioned, he married in Mexico where they had George Romney, then in the tensions around the 1911 revolutionary activity in Mexico they returned to Utah; George didn't get to Michigan and the auto business until 1939.

 

Still, it's another thing that they have oddly in common, a history of dislocation and achievement in the face of constant moves and entirely new cultures while being in a strangely regarded outsider group themselves. Barack Obama, Sr. arrived in the US in 1959, part of a cultural exchange program between Kenya and America which was meant to strengthen both countries (and arguably has paid dividends beyond their funders' dreams!). He studied in Hawaii and at Harvard, a school to which his son would return.

 

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney both graduated from Harvard Law School; it's generally assumed that they would have nothing else in common, but that one point of shared reference I would argue is but one of many. I can only imagine a conversation between the two over a long meal and in a private space for reflection: both had fathers who were strivers, carrying personal backgrounds of which they had much to be proud, but with many reasons to be sensitive about them. George Romney was the last of a generation to rise to executive office level without a college degree, and he was apparently always reminding people about it; Barack Obama, Sr. carried the weight of a patron's expectations who had sent him to America, and whose death essentially ended his career in Kenyan government as a new form of meritocracy took sway. Both had high hopes for their sons.

 

Soundbites aside, these are compelling personal stories.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; nope, he's not making an endorsement here, not a'tall. Tell him your preferred candidate's story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 9-1

Faith Works 9-1-12

Jeff Gill

Craft and Patience, and Faith

___

Out at the Flint Ridge Knap-In this weekend, you'll see plenty of quiet focus, silent diligence, and mutual respect all at work and on display.

Is it prayer?

To some degree, that would be up to the artisan. I wouldn't want to impose that perspective on anyone who didn't have that intention. My question is on behalf of those who would, intentionally, see their work as a spiritual discipline.

When you do flint knapping to make a "point," or arrowhead as folks mistakenly call them (since bow and arrow wasn't used around here until fairly recently in historic terms), you have to quiet yourself, settle your mind, and find a non-distracting posture.

The idea isn't to put on a show, a flurry of activity; you need to only make the motions that contribute to each step, going from flake blank to final projectile point.

Your work is steady, but slow – at least in modern terms – and you have to work with the materials. If a beautiful piece of flint has a crease or bulge of crystals, you can't force it in the direction you want the shaping to go, flake by flake.

But when you let yourself learn from your materials, you find yourself making something unexpected, but all the more fascinating for how you become a part of a larger process, something beyond your own plans and intentions.

That sounds very close to prayer for me, or at least a worthy discipline for entering a prayerful state.

Many people who work with their hands on artisan-type projects report that they feel closest to God when they are creating something. Woodworkers, quilters, blacksmiths, and yes, flint knappers; farmers working the fields at harvest, and bakers at home or at a bakery. All say that the act of creation, the simple repetitions and shaping gestures, brings them to a place where their prayers are not only more personal and clear, but their sense of God's presence is more real.

"Created in God's image" would mean we're created with an aspect of that creative urge, right? "Sub-creators" as J.R.R. Tolkien said in his writing about the meaning not of his literary creation, Middle Earth, but of the act of creation itself – the task of writing and correlating and molding character and plot and landscape, which he went on to compare to . . . woodworkers and quilters and blacksmiths.

Labor Day is an opportunity for all of us to reflect on the nature of work; our work, the work of others that shapes our lives, of the place of work in God's purpose for our lives. The union movement that gave birth to Labor Day as a holiday is itself rooted in a desire to see work honored and respected, no matter how humble; unions ask laborers to come together to protect the workplace as a setting for more than simply economic purposes. We shape our souls as we choose how we approach our work, whether it's our attitude as we scrub the grill at closing time, or how carefully we attach the spade lugs to the power supply. A casual, careless attitude toward work as just a set of hours on a pay stub leads inevitably to a casual, careless value of life itself, and all manner of ills, social and personal.

So take a trip out to Flint Ridge off Brownsville Road this weekend (they're out there chipping away through Sunday), and walk about the knappers and reflect on their work, and your own, whatever Monday holds.

Can your work be prayer? Is prayer in your work?

(first published 9-1-2007) 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he's worked closing and scrubbed more than a few grills in his time. Share your story of work and faith at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 8-25

Mandy -- Do you have room for a long one? I forgot about my closing quote as I was writing; if this needs radical surgery, I'm happy to do it, but if you can use it all, then I'll be glad not to!  Pax, Jeff

Faith Works 8-25-12

Jeff Gill

 

Step by step, we travel together

___

  

Poverty involves a great deal of walking.

 

It's something most people don't realize, or see beyond certain circumstances.

 

We're all dimly aware of the fact that transportation is a persistent problem in keeping our social safety net woven together; getting people from where they live, or can live, and to work or to needed services is a constant challenge.

 

There are ongoing efforts to co-ordinate taxi and bus programs here in Licking County, but they still carry – or place – a burden for the poor of irregularity and inconsistency, often not getting people where they need to be in our regimented, clock-driven society.

 

And oft-times it just isn't practical to try to get a bus token or taxi call for the assorted errands that have to be done, or for the reasons you want to go.

 

So the poor, anywhere, but including here in Licking County, walk. A lot.

 

You may see some walking along the uncertain edges of high-traffic areas and think "why would someone walk down this street/artery/highway?" Sidewalks aren't always present where you need them to get from, again, the places where people live in more affordable housing, and to where the stores and offices and entertainment are. But you walk anyhow.

 

That's not all, or even most of it; when you get off the busy streets, there's more of it even as there's even less sidewalk. From house to house to visit, sometimes carrying bags, occasionally carrying kids; maybe riding a bike but bikes have an irritating way of disappearing even when you put a lock and cable on them. So you walk.

 

I've heard it said that, because so many of the folks stuck in poverty are overweight, they ought to have to get out and work and walk more: trust me, most of them are walking. Questions of diet and nutrition in low-income working class neighborhoods are a whole 'nother column, but for now, let me assure you, the lower the net household income, the more they're walking, no matter what the BMI measures.

 

Recently, I've been doing some work with the Newark Earthworks Center on a hike around the full circuit of our remaining portions of our 2,000 year old complex. You've probably seen the Great Circle, and maybe even the Octagon, but if you know where to look, there are many little fragments and traces of all the rest of the formerly 4.5 square miles connected array of geometric earthworks, the largest such complex in the world.

 

The Octagon is leased to a country club, and has the hospital and doctor's offices around it, but almost any direction you walk from there towards the Great Circle or where the Ellipse once arced across Union St., you're walking through some working class and ultimately low income neighborhoods. I've been in and out of most of them over the last few decades, but it's different when you're on foot and tracing up and down alleys, treading out the streets, and even wading down in the creeks and rivers. And you meet people, fellow walkers. We talk. I learn things.

 

It was an unintentional experiment, but one that got me to thinking about "walking in someone else's moccasins" not only across 2,000 years, but across some more immediate divides.

 

George Orwell under took a similar sort of experiment in "Down and Out in Paris and London," a book he wrote based on personal experiences between 1929 and 1931 in those cities. It began out of necessity, when a robbery took his money and he had to take a job as a dishwasher in Paris to get by until a check could be sent to him, and continued as an experiment in participatory journalism, one emulated in recent years by Barbara Ehrenreich with "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" in 2001, another worthwhile read.

 

A friend and colleague in ministry in Oregon, Christian Piatt, is doing something like it online and in life by trying to live on SNAP/Food Stamps for a week. Yes, it's supposed to be a supplemental program, but he knows that too; we both know that there are not a few trying to get by on that as their entire food budget, and that's what he and his family are working to understand . . . just a little. You can find him at Patheos.com and search for "SNAP/Food Stamp challenge."

 

Christian and I both know something that Orwell said better than either of us can back in 1933 at the end of "Down and Out":  "At present I do not feel that I have seen more than the fringe of poverty. Still, I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him where you've been walking in someone's shoes lately at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Canyon de Chelly, Navajo, & Wupatki

http://www.nps.gov/cach/historyculture/upload/CACH_adhi.pdf

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/nava/adhi/

http://www.nps.gov/wupa/parkmgmt/upload/GMP_finalWUPA.pdf

http://www2.nature.nps.gov/stats/

Gen'l stats

Knapsack 8-23

Notes From My Knapsack 8-23-12

Jeff Gill

 

It's time we had a talk

___

 

This is awkward.

 

I know this will just make us both uncomfortable, and leave me sounding like the weird one, but I feel this needs to be discussed.

 

It's the county name.

 

You know what it is. You've had relatives, when you pull your car into the drive, read the sticker on your license plate, and look at you with an arched eybrow: Really?

 

Yes, that's the county name, you reply, perhaps adding "it's because of salt licks that used to attract animals that the Indians and pioneers hunted."

 

I wrote in these pages not long ago that my study of the earliest mentions of the Licking River seems to point us to Spring Valley here in Granville, and Salt Run, with prehistoric mounds near some very early historic earthworks that are all that's left of a salt works, trying to extract and dry some of this precious commodity that otherwise would have to be purchased with the cash money that was in such short supply in the earliest decades of the 1800s.

 

Bob Neinast, aka "Barefoot Bob" (long story, but you can find his blog online; he likes to hike all over in his barefeet) told me, as we walked with a group a few weeks back around the circuit of the Newark Earthworks, that his research had made him lean towards "Licking" being derived from the Lenape (Delaware) language, as Hock-hocking meant "bottle-shaped" (actually gourd-shaped) which gave rise to the Hocking River.

 

His argument is that a Lenape word for "sandy, gravelly bottomed river" would have easily transformed into "Licking" which echoed nicely our Hocking neighbors one watershed to the south. The story of salt licks was a "folk etymology" which was a later imposition.

 

He actually hasn't convinced me, but I think it's a good enough argument to go alongside of the "Salt Run" connection to Granville to account for the 1800-era label "Licking County" to both the watershed and the new political entity that was born off of Fairfield County in 1808.

 

In 1808, apparently, whatever it originally meant, the label "Licking" didn't have the snicker factor it does now. Our county government wisely created the website "lcounty.com" or we'd probably activate some web blocker programs. Other organizations do some headstands to find a name or designation that doesn't use the county name, or if they have to, they go to an acronym as fast as possible.

 

Licking County. We don't think about it, because that's how we deal with it. Nerk, Ahia jokes about their name, or at least the pronunciation of it, all the time. Jokes about "Licking"? It's almost too easy, if not too . . . well.

 

So I have a thought. The river is what the river is, and will carry the name rolling down to Blackhand Gorge for generations to come. But for the county, and for all the business and industry and civic groups that edge uneasily around our name in a governmental sense, why not make a change?

 

It will cost a little money in signage and paperwork, but not much letterhead gets printed up anyhow. We could have a transition period and use up the old.

 

Because my suggestion would be: Legend County. We've had the tag "Land of Legend" for many decades, going back at least to the 70's, tying together ancient earthworks, amazing flint deposits, pioneer tales and the growth of unique industrial ventures. Legend County – it would leave Licking County in exactly the same place in an alphabetical list, which is no small matter, and would reduce the concerns non-county folk might have about what has to be changed.

 

A name change, subtle yet eloquent, that might just pay for itself if even one company chooses to locate here that wasn't going to, because the CEO thought "I just don't want to have to keep explaining the word "Licking" in our company paperwork to people who've never been here."

 

Legend County. It's got a ring to it, doesn't it?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he's not sure how serious he is about this, either. Contact him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-18

Faith Works 8-18-12
Jeff Gill

Yesterday and Last Sunday (on a personal note)
___

At Friday's Licking County Prayer Partner's breakfast featuring Tony Campolo (see Lois Whyde's story for details), there was a moment, as there has been for the some twenty years they've been holding these, when they ask pastors to stand up. It's to thank them for their service, and to remind us all to pray for those in congregational leadership as preaching and teaching servants.

For the last seven years, I've not stood up then. I consider myself to be an ordained minister and have the piece of paper and the sharp, clear, delightful memories of my ordination to prove it, but that time seemed to me to be focused on those serving at table and pulpit, in homes and hospitals, as parish clergy. I've been involved in church life and leadership, but not as a serving pastor.

Friday, I stood up.

Last Sunday was Aug. 12. That's the commemoration of the passing of William Blake, and I'm sure some other more globally significant events happened on Aug. 12. For me, it's a meaningful day before this year because in 1979, my Eagle Scout award was pinned on me by my mother, with both grandmothers present, my dad at my side. It's one of very few memories I have of the two grandmothers together, just because of geography and circumstance; my paternal grandfather died the year before I was born, and my maternal grandfather had passed almost a decade before.

But Aug. 12, 1979, in the sanctuary of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the church where I made my confession of faith and where I was baptized, the Boy Scout troop they sponsored held my Eagle Court of Honor, and I received the award I had earned through two dozen merit badges, many campouts, some youth leadership roles, and a service project. My Eagle service project took me to meetings of our county commissioners and city council, where I learned a citizen, even at 16, could ask for a hearing and impact policy. I met the sheriff and the head of the county roads departments and I saw the realities behind the civics class discussions. All of that work, along with the knots and fire building skills, has stayed with me in a useful and personally meaningful way ever since.

Ten years to the day after that, now married, both grandmothers gone, but my parents and even more family and friends gathered around, I stood a few dozen feet west: the sanctuary was condemned, and slated for demolition in a few weeks. Age and unintended damage from well-meant repairs in the 1950s meant this 1888 building would soon be no more. But there was the date, and the opportunity to hold my ordination service, after my seminary graduation, on Aug. 12th.

The platform party, without the permission of the city engineer or the church insurance carrier, snuck into the shadowed sanctuary for what was, for me, a last time. We prayed together there, then quietly left by a rear door and processed into a large tent filled with Scouts in uniform, older folks in suits and dresses, kids in shorts and t-shirts running around as the CWF ladies tried to keep them out of the cake with a large Disciples' chalice on it in the back. Joyce and a friend sang, we held the service, and with the laying on of hands including my 4th grade teacher, friends from seminary, pastors from all around the area of many denominations, and my dad -- there, on the grass, I was ordained. On Aug. 12.

So after preaching for the summer at Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) here in Newark, where I served from 1989 to 1993 as the associate pastor, and as plans were confirmed for me to succeed Rev. Rick Rintamaa who had retired with Memorial Day weekend, there were discussions of when the congregation could hold a meeting and vote to confirm me as their call for senior pastor. It bounced around from July to after Labor Day.

Then Rick Hayden, board chair, e-mailed me one night and said "It looks like the best date for all the leadership will be Aug. 12 - is that date OK with you?"

You know my answer, and you've doubtless guessed the result of the vote. I'll still write this column, aimed broadly at those who find faith interesting, but are still skeptical about this whole church thing. I'll still read and answer (maybe more slowly) your e-mails, and see this as a separate, but still important ministry.

But I'll have to stop calling myself a supply preacher!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he's ended a seven year sabbatical from parish ministry! Contact him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-11-12

Faith Works 8-11-12

Jeff Gill

 

Faces to watch and stories to hear

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Tomorrow night the London Olympics closing ceremony will hand over the flag of the games to Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

 

It's been an amazing two weeks for the winners and the spectators, a mixed bag for TV viewers (a fall preview wedged into the coverage because we'll excuse Matthew Perry anything? Really?), and for many athletes, it really is simply about the honor of participating.

 

Quite a few are shrugging philosophically about the Olympic Games now past, and are already starting to prepare for Rio.

 

As are the coaches.

 

It's probably one of the many signs of growing older, but I find myself watching and intrigued by the coaches back on the bench or behind the starting line more than I am the athletes.

 

The truth is, these folks often have competed in Olympic Games themselves, often not to medal level but many had, and over their lifetimes they will be a part of the Olympic movement longer than any of their protégés .

 

You probably recall Sam Mussabini, the pioneering running coach for Harold Abrahams during the 1924 Games in Paris, so memorably portrayed by Ian Holm in "Chariots of Fire." Ben Cross and Ian Charleson play Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, which are the roles you usually recall, but it may have taken a second to think of Sam.

 

If I say "remember the guy who punches a hole right through his hat, sitting in a little hotel room where he couldn't see a thing" then you remember Sam. (And Ian Holm is the guy who played Bilbo Baggins in the "Lord of the Rings" movies.)

 

Sam was in that room, punching that straw boater, because in the 1920's coaches were disreputable and in many circumstances banned: if you paid a coach to train and guide you, you weren't an amateur, just as if you were being paid yourself.

 

The definitions of amateurism have obviously changed (was that LeBron I saw playing Olympic basketball?). And coaches are not only in the stadium but next to the athletes. They occasionally get interviewed by the media, but they tend to stay in the background unless their names are Béla Károlyi.

There was one Danish swimming coach whose craggy features and gentle smile caught my attention even as the Phelps & Lochte drama was in the foreground; the Chinese gymnastics coaches, alert on the side of the mats during the uneven bars competition, poised to catch their tiny charges if they slipped but tensed to stay out of the way so their routines could continue on to the medal stand.

 

What experiences, how many frosty mornings beginning in darkness, how many locker rooms – and while you certainly would wonder that about the young athletes (and even those they call "old" are surely young themselves), what does that same routine look and feel like across years and decades, with technique and technology and time changing around them, while the essence of their sport remains the same? How do they adapt, adjust, learn, hold fast?

 

Paul, in the Christian New Testament, uses a number of sports images in his letters to churches. Given the stock image we have of him as short, bald, and possibly epileptic (or whatever the thorn in his flesh might have been), we usually relegate him to spectator status, obviously not much of an athlete himself.

 

But considering the letters as a whole, I wonder if we might usefully imagine Paul to be Sam. Sam Mussabini, the skilled coach.

 

That's the kind of leadership he's doing through the letters, nudging, observing, guiding, occasionally directing but more usually just pointing out all the "don't do that's" and cheering on the "do that more" choices his trainees make. Paul is being a coach.

 

Coaching is a category of counselor and mentor that you hear about in everything from personal fitness to business consulting, not just when you take your kid to youth soccer games. It's a role that we often need even in the practice and activities of faith. Clergy may or may not embrace that sort of role, but I think in some ways we all need a coach from time to time. Not always right at our elbow, but observing, reflecting out of their greater experience, communicating with grace and precision just enough to help us make better decisions on our own, but ones we might not have made without a good coach.

 

Who's coaching your journey in faith?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he's helped coach youth basketball & soccer teams, but not very well. Tell him about your coaching experience in wider contexts at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-4-12

Faith Works 8-4-12

Jeff Gill

 

What doesn't change

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Zion National Park in Utah is a glorious canyon and surrounding geological landscape that has long been a special place for our family.

 

The Lovely Wife was a seasonal ranger there in the early 90's, and I got a chance to visit her while she worked, and we returned once for our tenth anniversary; ever since The Lad was born we've been planning when he'd be old enough for us to return. It's a place of great beauty even if you never leave the parking lots and shuttle buses, but the true glory of the canyon is only revealed when you walk the cliffs and gaze down the precipices, out across the void.

 

So this summer was the time, and we made it back. I've always thought that Jesus' example and explicit teaching was clear in telling us that time away, retreat time if not "vacation" in the modern sense, is part of spiritual health and growth. Likewise, I figured on seeing and feeling some experiences that would help in illustrating sermons down the road, because preachers always do.

 

This trip, though, and the Zion time in particular, had some strong messages that I really knew I'd have to share with you all, and they connect to everyday faith, even more than to a hundred year old historic national park in the Southwest, but that's exactly where I learned this:

 

First, you think of a place like Zion Canyon, like the somewhat better known canyon to the south which some might call "Grand," as being timeless & unchanging. The thousands of feet sheer plunging drops from a caprock above to the Virgin River below, the reds and russets of the sandstone mixed with tans and greys and even an off-white glow on some cliff-faces, and it all seems to make the clock stop, or at least slow down to the steady crawl of shadows against the sun's path.

 

In fact, while we were there, a huge chunk of the West Temple tore off and thundered a rock fall into Oak Creek Canyon in the heart of the park. A bright white gash in the iron oxide red wall changed the look of something that from early black & white photos to current posters appears identical . . . but no more.

 

And then you realize: duh. That's how canyons are formed. So even the ancient rock is not untouched by time, and is surely not permanent. Add in the fact that the staff has wholly changed over, the visitors center has moved, and the very gateway is turned in its path (plus they moved Oscar's Café near the entrance in Springdale), and you realize that nothing in this life is permanent in a whole new way.

 

Even so, the river flows, the clouds pass, the condors circle lazily overhead. What's stayed the same the most are the things that are . . . the least permanent. At least in outward ways.

 

Then you talk to people: many of them German & Scandinavian, because those folks must be raised on a steady diet of Karl May & Zane Grey, given their numbers in all the southwestern national parks. I practiced schoolboy Deutsch with quite a few, and took a family picture for a Danish family, to whom I could only exchange a few awkward sentences (his nervous English, my gestures trying to explicate my non-Danish directions). But when I mentioned to this Copenhagen citizen the name "Grundtvig," he beamed like I'd complimented his kids.

 

British tourists with bored daughters, women from France in threes and fours wanting a group picture taken, and on Sunday a campground worship service with ladies from New Jersey, a couple from Texas, and we three from Ohio.

 

What was eternal in that gathering? Something of God in each of us, and in the living Word we shared. The rocks erode, the park videos change, and the seasons pass; our faith tells us that each of these souls we encountered have an everlasting destiny.

 

Did I have to go to Utah to learn that? No, but it sure helped.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he's leading a walk next Saturday to see the ancient remnants of Newark's earthworks. You can ask him about it at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-21

Faith Works 7-21-12

Jeff Gill

 

Get your kicks this summer

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Have you ever driven Route 66?

 

I was born and raised near the eastern terminus of "the Mother Road," which in Licking County we know takes second place in chronology to The National Road, but it's the best known by far.

 

Maybe Doug Smith has written one by now, but no one did a Top 40 pop song about US 40. Bobby Troup strung some town names together, from "starts in Chicago" to ending in San Bernadino, and had himself a catchy hit which most of us can hum if not recall all the words to ("don't forget Winona!").

 

So from the steps between the lions at the Art Institute of Chicago, where the sign "Route 66 begins" faces the exiting crowds, down across the Land of Lincoln and launching out across the Great Plains, a journey could begin.

 

Actually, few people ever started out meaning to drive from the shores of Lake Michigan to the Pacific Coast. It was driven by Dust Bowl refugees to the Inland Empire of California looking for migrant work, or used by trucks to carry products from state to state.

 

In the 21^st century, it's been supplanted (mostly) by I-40, an interstate which plows through the landscape. There's a beautifully evocative scene in Pixar's "Cars" where a James Taylor song accompanies an explanation of how the development of the interstate and the growth of speed left small towns and simpler pleasures in the dust, such as the town of Radiator Springs.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I took my family in our rental car, as we hopped about from national park to national park, down some stretches of "original" Route 66. We drove through Flagstaff and waved at the Lowell Observatory, and after a stretch of I-40 towards Kingman we turned off to a long, winding stretch of Route 66 that was still concrete, the tires going thumpa-thumpa-thumpa over the joints in the road, ponderosa pines on either side. A few former "porch" style gas stations could be identified, even if the pumps were now planters and rockers sat in the one-time service bays.

 

In fact, this was a part of the second layer of Route 66, which (if you have time and temperament for it online) can be traced in sections as the original narrow lane in some places, a more developed built road of mostly concrete, and then occasionally abandoned pieces that are more farm or ranch lanes than county road, which in turn may run right into the towering berm of the modern obliterating interstate. It's not like US 40 vs. I-70 thru Licking County, but a puzzle of pieces and layers. You really, really have to slow down to find it. And you may never quite find it all.

 

Following the ghost of Martin Milner's Corvette, or picking up the hints in pop culture far afield from any path Route 66 once took, you can cover quite a bit of ground. Monument Valley is rooted in the imagination as part of the path, which in fact runs far to the south of that iconic landscape . . . but the gift shops in Monument Valley sell more Route 66 souvenirs than almost anywhere else, in acknowledgement of the fact that Route 66 is a state of mind.

 

All of which is part of an approach I've been taking with a group on Wednesday nights this summer towards the Bible. It's a sacred library of (in Protestant tradition, anyhow) 66 books, and we moderns tend to take the highway through it, hitting the high points and speeding on to predetermined destinations.

 

What I'm finding rewarding is the slower, more leisurely look at the landscape all around, and trying to find the thin red line that originally connected it all without just passing by. Sometimes the path is well marked, and occasionally you just have to stop the car, Corvette or Impala or VW minibus, and get out and look around.

 

And when you do that, you realize the road is not just the pavement, or the horizon, but the people who built it, and travel it, and whom you meet along the way.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor around central Ohio; tell him about meeting the Word along the Way at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 7-14

Faith Works 7-14-12

Jeff Gill

 

The Lad doesn't like hearing me say it, but this is the time of the summer when I say to him "there's not much vacation left: what do you want to do with it?"

 

The last few years we've tried to make a plan in May and have a special project or two from the start, but the recent years include summer reading required for the new school year, plus once you've helped with Cub Scout day camp, gone to Scout camp yourself, we've gotten in some family vacation or trips to various family households in Indiana, and the whole Fourth of July melee, the fact of the matter is that there's not much break left.

 

Add in that marching band actually starts the last day of July this year, and I can't blame him for feeling like his summer is over before it began.

 

Which to my way of thinking is an argument for a little planning, in order to make the most of it. You don't want to get too tied to your plan, and then be miserable when small details don't go as anticipated, but a plan taking into account the time you have to work with, and what you want to accomplish or even enjoy, can really make the time last longer.

 

Michael Hyatt, the author & former head of Thomas Nelson Publishing, is a big advocate of having a life plan. You can find his materials and suggestions very easily online, but he's passionate about saying, especially to Christians, that we really owe it to the One who gave us this life to stop and pray and consider and plan how we will use this gift. He points out, accurately I think, that sometimes we avoid doing a life plan because it implies from the outset that our life plan has an arc, and an unavoidable end, so it's easier to just "live for today."

 

Hyatt says that this sort of living is dangerously close to heretical (at least for Christians it would be!).

 

We have a certain amount of time on earth, just as summer vacation only lasts so long. We have the promise of eternity ahead, which gives us both hope and a new way to look at our mortal life, but that doesn't mean we should assume that our time here is just a prelude, or of lesser significance. How do we want to spend this gift? A plan can actually help us enjoy that, and not quietly dread the end of it. A life plan might just make the days stretch out enjoyably, even as we know that band camp is coming.

 

What's your life plan? This summer might be a good time to take a step back, prayerfully look at where you are and where you're going; to think about what God is inviting you to do with your life, and make a plan for following those leadings.

A vacation might be the perfect time and place to do that sort of worshipful work . . .

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor; tell him what stories you've heard this summer at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.