Faith Works 6-6-15

Faith Works 6-6-15

Jeff Gill

 

Some climbs are steeper than others

___

 

There's always more to say about mental health in general and behavioral health care options in the community.

 

Last week I was talking about pastors in particular, and more to all of us about being willing to discuss, to recommend, to commend getting help when a mental health challenge is in front of us.

 

We need to admit our need for help to ourselves, just as you know you're gonna have to get that ankle looked at when it can't support your weight, or get a few stitches when the cut is not going to heal with some butterfly bandages and some first aid tape.

 

Most of us, and generally families can tell when the quick-stop medical check or even the emergency department visit is called for. Some things you tend to at home, and other things you go, whether you really look forward to the trip or not, to have a professional look in and add their care to your basic needs.

 

So talking about behavioral health the same way we do medical health is a smart, helpful, healing way to look at ourselves. Some of that is reactive, knowing when to get that help in the moment; a great deal of it will have to be proactive, being supportive and understanding of why such help is on hand, and used by others.

 

This is where we hear talk of "reducing stigma," which is a fancy way of saying "get over yourself." Stigma is saying "you don't need a shrink" or "why would talking to someone who doesn't know me do any good?" It comes from the culture, it can come within our own families, it can have deep roots in our own assumptions that need pulling at and eradicating.

 

That's why we have groups like Mental Health America at work in Licking County, sharing information, telling stories, promoting hope. The Main Place is both reactive in being there to help people living with mental health challenges, and proactive in allowing those people to tell their own stories and participate in their own successful treatment.

 

A new voice in the field in Licking County is Postpartum Progress, a group addressing postpartum depression (PPD). The medical field tells us that one in seven women deal with some level of depression following childbirth, making it the most common complication today. Postpartum Progress is at work across the nation because they know that mood and anxiety disorders like PPD can be dealt with effectively if the mother is willing to accept professional help and support…and fathers need to support that acceptance, as well!

 

Locally, Postpartum Progress is participating in a very interesting awareness event called "Climb Out of the Darkness," at Infirmary Mound Park on June 20^th at 10:00 am. That date is no coincidence: their plan around the world is for communities to have such an event on a day close to the longest day of the year, the summer solstice. They want to "shine the most possible light on maternal mental illness."

 

This is the third year globally for this event, and the first year "Warrior Moms" from Newark and Licking County will hold their own "Climb Out of the Darkness." Christina Boeshart is coordinating our local walk, and you can contact her at momsforlife43055@gmail.com, or check out their Facebook page "mothersofferingsupport" for info on how to register or sponsor.

 

The key is that when women and men in general, and mothers in particular, are aware of the reality of PPD, and seek help, the overwhelming majority are helped. Or as is said throughout the mental and behavioral health care community: "Treatment helps, recovery happens."

 

And again, if you have concerns or questions, call our 211 hotline in Licking County; if you have an immediate concern for someone's life or safety, don't hesitate to call 911 or go directly to an emergency room. But there are answers, and there is help. As we like to say in the faith community, the first step is finding hope. My faith says that God wants us to use all the hope and help available around us, so that Good News may abound. Making use of mental health services may not just be good news for you, but it might be a witness that opens a door for good news to someone else that you don't even know is watching.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him where your help comes from at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Notes From My Knapsack 6-4-15

Notes From My Knapsack 6-4-15

Jeff Gill

 

Having My Say, So To Speak

___

 

Thank you to all the people who've told me they enjoyed the 1815 tale of Granville, "A Body in the Well." Great literature (or reliable history) it wasn't, but it was a fun story to develop and tell.

 

This column, from when it was in the Booster to the years it's been here in the Sentinel, I consider both an opportunity and a responsibility. It's an opportunity to share stories and start conversations; and I see it as a responsibility to tell stories that build up our community, with a similar obligation to provoke conversations that bring people together, more than reinforcing divisions.

 

Of course, interesting narratives often start big disputes: intriguing conversations flame up and keep burning because of differences brought out into the light of the campfire. You can have a storyteller keeping the village up late into the night with an epic tale, or you can end up with someone getting burned.

 

Adam Weinberg up on top of College Hill likes to talk about "working across difference." That doesn't mean avoiding differences, whether of race, culture, or ideology, but it certainly isn't yelling across a chasm either. You could call it a dance or a process or an ethos, but it's always going to entail a certain amount of work (even though it's often quite fun). If the point of a community is to simply reassert and reaffirm and expand what we've already got in common, pumping it full of lukewarm balloon juice and calling that growth, you'll at best end up with a tepid gas bag with no ability to fly. Mix things up a little, using your head and your heart to add just the right amount of combustion and inspiration, and you might just soar.

 

Has this column helped our community soar? I'm not fishing, I'm just thinking out loud, and reading back reflectively over my own back numbers. I've made up stories about our past from the point of view of twelve year olds, looked at inscriptions and natural phenomena, raised a few points of controversy and hoisted more than a few commonplace sentiments up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes.

 

Why do I write this? I guess if you really wanted to know (and you've read this far), I'd have to tell you that my goals are actually fairly small and my expectations low. I'd like to encourage more of my fellow residents to spend a bit more time out of doors, appreciating what they see and smell and hear as they stroll and saunter. I hope to spark a love of literature to the point where anyone realizes that everyone can produce some, even if it's just a handwritten thank you note to a friend. I want to promote meals and meetings where we see each other face to face, frankly disagreeing and fully enjoying the experience of having done so, right down to the fight over paying the check.

 

I'd hope that I've given residents old and new a more vivid and deeply resonant sense that they live in a place that's interesting; for what it has been, and what it is becoming. As long as Grand Marshal Charles is willing, I think I'm not done yet submitting columns to try to fulfill those modest aims.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you think a column is for at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-30-15

Faith Works 5-30-15

Jeff Gill

 

Treatment works, Recovery happens

___

 

 

In this space some years back, I mentioned that I've had a few colonoscopies.

 

Yeah, I'm sure you were waiting for me to get back to that subject.

 

No details, right? Right. But it was a necessary subject because, among other things, my doctor conducting the colonoscopy (is that right? do they conduct them? perform doesn't sound quite correct…) had read the column, and afterwards asked me if I would write about the experience. That it wasn't so bad, very tolerable, and oh yeah – they save lives, so go get them when your doctor calls for one, please?

 

Happy to oblige. A colonoscopy is a basic procedure, a minor inconvenience, and a lifesaving part of staying healthy, especially when you have a family history of colon cancer. Why not share that I've had more than one, and they're just not a big deal. People have assumptions and concerns and fears that make them put off colonoscopies, so anything I can do to reduce fears and encourage use of them when needed is a public service.

 

Well.

 

Folks seem to have some of the same issues around mental health care; fears and misconceptions around behavioral health services keep people from making use of the services that are available, or to give up when they're waiting for the ones that take some time to access. They see mental health issues as being a label you wear forever, because the problem sticks around and the treatment is either pills that make you dopey or you're spending decades laying for a 50 minute hour on a sofa telling a shrink about your childhood. In other words, people have some assumptions and anxieties that are largely based in stereotypes and confusions and frankly outdated images of what behavioral health care is, and does.

 

So may I note that I've made use of behavioral health in my life? Details aren't important; if you really have to know, get ahold of me, and we can talk, but I may tell you about my colonoscopy first.

 

But I have, both in college and after, made use of mental health resources to help deal with life and circumstances that were leaving me out of step and turning in circles in my life. I needed a solid, dispassionate listener who also could make practical, evidence-based suggestions about practices I could engage in and new patterns I could follow that would change how I responded to difficulties.

 

Or as the phrase in behavioral health goes: Treatment works, recovery happens. The biggest barrier I've noticed as a pastor is that even very smart people are somewhat stupid about what counseling and psychology and treatment or recovery are. They really do get stuck in movie stereotypes and old cartoon pictures of therapy.

 

If you think that mental health is just a life sentence of "crazy" and that treatment is no more than oppressive medications or mysterious conversations with someone sitting out of sight as you lie there answering questions, it makes sense to avoid pursuing treatment. But today, mental health care is complex and flexible and adaptive. It's very similar to talking about chemotherapy, which used to be largely one kind of awful experience, but now is many, many approaches with much more going on to make it tolerable – and successful! – than once was the case.

 

Starting with our community's invaluable 2-1-1 hotline, you have access to behavioral health supports in this community that can address a variety of issues, from depression to anxiety to addiction to major mental health problems. And pretty much all of them have effective, proven treatment strategies that work. You can talk to your family doctor, you can call Mental Health America, you can call 2-1-1 even if you're just wondering how to help a loved one, a family member, a friend, and say "help!"

 

And help is out there.

 

Odds are, that help won't be something you'll need for a lifetime. But if you do, keep in mind that an illness of the mind is really no different than any other chronic medical condition: if you walk with a limp, you walk with a limp. Get your physical therapy, and life goes on. The same goes for mental health hiccups that we all, at one point or another, can have.

 

For men who won't see a doctor about anything, that's an entirely different column! But if you need mental health care, make the call. Accept the support. It's there for you, and it works. Bless you.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's used mental health care services and doesn't care who knows it. Tell him what you don't care who knows at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-23-15

Faith Works 5-23-15

Jeff Gill

 

Memorials throughout the Bible

___

 

There are many memorials in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

 

Memorials are often stones put up as a marker, or piled together to stand out in a place. Stones were easy to come by in the Holy Land, milk and honey being a dream and a promise, but rocks were always right there.

 

On the journey from Egypt to the Land of Promise, in the wilderness, there were memorials placed by Moses and the people Israel to honor manna's appearance to feed the people, or to mark a revelation of God's word to the people.

 

Joshua had the twelve tribes mound stones from the streambed of the Jordan River to mark where they crossed, dry shod, into the new countryside. Altars, places of worship or assembly, all had their memorial observances.

 

Passover, itself, grew in the life of the people as a memorial in time, the date and circumstances of the event they did not want to forget, when the Angel of Death struck Egypt but spared the Hebrews. The Jerusalem Temple was meant to mark where Abraham was prepared to sacrifice Isaac, an association Muslims still connect with the Dome of the Rock on the same spot.

 

For the disciples, they came to the Mount of Transfiguration (some say it was Mt. Tabor, others Mt. Hermon) and the appearance of Moses and Elijah was so striking to them flanking Jesus that they said to him "we should build something" to mark this event, a suggestion Jesus mercifully ignored. 1900 years later, Mussolini went ahead anyhow and put up an edifice to honor and remember Christ and Moses and Elijah, a church building now atop Mt. Tabor that leaves everyone a bit uncomfortable.

 

The Roman Empire was all about memorials, but they weren't quite sure how to respond to Jewish ones; just before the time of the Gospels they had tried to add their symbolism to those of the Temple, and found themselves with a revolt on their hands. Memorial meanings are tricky across cultures, and trying to validate or rewrite memorials through later changes can provoke angry responses. Adding a memorial of one people to those of another almost always ends badly.

 

The most enduring memorial, though, in the Bible is one that by definition cannot endure. It's a memorial made of the loaf and the cup, the memorial given by the hand of Jesus himself, the meal of which he said "This do in remembrance of me."

 

What lasts is the meaning, even as the body and blood are seen and shown and shared in the memorial of that meal in an upper room on the edge of Jerusalem. "This is my body, broken for you . . . this is my blood, shed for you." It vanishes through being consumed, but it endures in not just the memory but the behavior, the actions of those who by eating and drinking together come to see how they are now "one body" themselves.

 

Today we have memorials which are deep-set V shapes in the earth with reflective marble walls, glass panels with etched images, online guestbooks and holographic videos. They are not just a heap of stones standing out in a wilderness place, asking the passer-by to wonder "what happened here?" They aren't simply standing stones, although we still place them in our cemeteries and memorial parks, unhewn and towering above their plots and pavements.

 

Memorials can take many forms today, but they all still call us to remember, and perhaps more to the point on Monday, to take action based on those memories. To not stand so much as to be moved.

 

May you be moved this Memorial Day weekend; through your meals shared in remembrance whoever you eat them with, and in those places where markers make us think. God be with us to act in accordance with the memories we would honor.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you would remember at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes From My Knapsack 5-21-15

Notes From My Knapsack 5-21-15

Jeff Gill

 

A Body in the Well (conclusion)

___

 

Back at the tavern, Job Case sat with William and Sarah Gavit on one long bench alongside the large hearth in the public room. Opposite them, closer to the fire himself, was Hezekiah Mirk. Case and Mirk were closest to the warmth, boots to one side, woolen socks steaming.

 

"So, Chief Justice Gavit, what do you propose that we do?" Case had just finished describing the scene at the well southwest of town, and the conversation he had just had including Mirk with Caleb Munro's widow, Tirzah. "That was near enough to a confession of murder."

 

"Was it?" asked Mirk gently. "She repeated what her . . . second husband had told her. She might have misunderstood, she could have misheard, we don't know."

 

Gavit smiled grimly. "You have the makings of a lawyer, Mr. Mirk. That's correct, her statement, even sworn in court, is not a confession. And you told her, Mr. Case said, that her account matches the wounds you saw on Munro's body?"

 

"That's correct. His face is not marked, and his skull is . . . depressed from the top. If we could call back this Judson fellow, and he's battered about the face and front, I'd be tempted to credit her, or rather his story told us through her. A man choked with rage, blindly lashing out again and again, charging forward and plunging into that open well headfirst…" Mirk looked at his hands in the firelight, and the other three knew he saw them in a different light than they did. Stories of Lundy's Lane had been told, not by him, but of slaughter and blood unimaginable.

 

Gavit looked at his wife, then back at Case. "We are left with your question, then; what shall we do? We could try to get Tirzah to call back Judson from Lancaster, inspect his wounds, take his statement."

"If he'd return," shrugged Case.

 

"That's right," Gavit went on. "Or we could send to Newark for a warrant, recruit a bailiff, and go bring him back before he flees farther. What do you think, Mr. Mirk?"

 

Hezekiah looked up and directly into William's eyes across from him. "Or we could do nothing."

 

"Nothing, Mr. Mirk?"

"We see to Caleb Munro's proper burial, we report his death. The circumstances of his return are well known in the district. Who is there to file a charge? If anyone believes justice requires one, they can travel the few miles to the courthouse and do so. We honor the man's service in the late war, we allow his friends to help see to his burial and marker, and speak honestly to what we know if asked."

 

"If it's up to his friends," nodded Case, "he will have a plank for a tombstone. But the village will honor him, and bury him rightly."

 

After a long silence, Sarah added "There are many problems in this world that are best served by letting them alone for a season."

 

William stood, and then did the rest. "We all have work to do, and perhaps I can send the parson down to let Tirzah know what's to be done for Caleb."

 

"Husband," Sarah said, "I think that right, but I should say that my guess would be that she will have been long gone by that time."

 

A year later, an envelope arrived from Natchez, Mississippi addressed to William Gavit. It came with money enclosed and a note saying only "To cover the costs of burial for Caleb Munro."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's enjoyed sharing this fiction based on stray facts of life in Granville 200 years ago. Tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.