Notes from my Knapsack 5-2020

Notes from my Knapsack 5-2020

Jeff Gill

 

Weeds and viruses and the world

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Every year, there are new spring weeds that dominate the landscape, lawns or gardens alike.

 

There are the regulars, like dandelions, although they too have their ups and downs, depending on the winter past and how spring settles into the soil, provoking the roots and stimulating growth.

 

A mild winter and a damp cool spring, and I know without even going too far off the path that it's going to be a good year for ticks. Beware!

 

What I've not learned to read as well are the plant indications. Garlic mustard is an invasive non-native that's plagued both wild lands and forest understories, but also our un-mulched garden corners.

 

I've read some tasty sounding recipes for a kind of pesto you can make from it, but haven't been that motivated so far. With more time at home, my interest has been to reduce my chemical use to as close to nil as I can, and pluck the little villains before they start to wind around my now fading daffodils and launching tulips. Garlic mustard is like the disastrous oregano experiment I made some years ago: give it a season and it will take over a stretch of garden like nobody's business.

 

Purple deadnettle is not new, but I am surprised by just how much of it I'm seeing this year. Something about the soil temperature and sunlight has been good for it, and it's giving garlic mustard a run for its money. A friend said on Facebook that it is edible as well, but I'm going to work through more canned ravioli before I take that step. Worth knowing, I guess.

 

What most of these have in common, though, from dandelions since 1607 to garlic mustard and purple deadnettle more recently, is that they "come from away." They are non-native invasives, like zebra mussels in Lake Erie or the emerald ash borers and more recently infamous "murder hornets" out of Asia.

 

The challenge of a global economy is that what used to be a barrier, like an ocean, is now a pathway and an open door. The arrival of European colonists in the Americas brought bacteria and viruses into this continent which had not been dealt with by human immune systems for millennia, and Native American Indians died in horrific numbers. Medicinal plants like the dandelion (yes, a medicinal plant!) became a plague across disturbed soil in a few generations after Virginia became a colony; the weed we know as plantain in the Midwest was known to native people as "Englishman's foot" because it followed the agriculture and settlements of those newer arrivals.

 

So I pluck purple deadnettle from my garden after having pulled all the garlic mustard shoots, and I reflect on our home restrictions which have made this intensive weeding possible due to the arrival of a new virus from somewhere in the heart of Asia. The adjustments to Old World viruses involved mass death; now the Western Hemisphere looks for a more adaptive response that includes killing the virus, not people, through restrictions of movement and tracing of infectious paths through the population.

 

We are not done, in other words, even when we learn what to do about coronaviruses. Nature around the world has bugs and bats and bacteria which are themselves evolving and changing every day, sometimes for the better, and occasionally to become more lethal. Our lessons and actions now are going to become part of an adaptive response we are likely to need again and again as the world turns, and our ecosystems thrive.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's not an epidemiologist or even a biologist, but he finds life fascinating. Tell him how you're adapting to the vitality and mobility of life and living things at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-9-20

Faith Works 5-9-20

Jeff Gill

 

Tech support as pastoral care

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"No, the cursor. The blinking thing. On your screen. Okay, do you have a mouse or a touchpad? Right, a computer, but how do you control things on the screen? I know, you don't feel like you're controlling anything, I know. But when you -- right, a keyboard, but when you . . . okay, that's a touchpad. So when you touch it, the thing that moves around on the screen? Right, now, move that down to the bottom of the window you have open, and . . . it went black?"

 

In the past, as someone with a measure of comfort and familiarity with computers and HTML and online stuff, I've found the role of "tech support" mixed in with ministry.

 

Tech support is that number you call, or the department at work you contact, and they often ask "have you checked to make sure it's turned on?" Because it's often the heart of the problem. Tech support extends to "you'll need to replace your AE-35 unit" but more often it's a series of instructions over the phone or video link that helps you, the inexperienced, make your complex technology work the way you want it to.

 

Right off the top, I want to say that doing tech support for many, many church members (not always older ones, either) through these last few weeks has been a wonderful spiritual discipline for me. As I've said in this space before, patience is not always my strong point; God has in many ways worked with me on this need. Cultivating patience as I walk someone through a series of steps that I do almost unconsciously, and so find hard to describe in stages, and help another person learn how to do it on their terms: it has taught me patience.

 

Not enough, but I'm getting there.

 

And once we've gotten the video conference link to work, and the mutes off (or on, as needed) and the chat box under control; as people get used to how videos work in a browser window with a separate set of nested controls from their computer's controls for volume and screen size; as more church members have gotten used to doing worship at home, together online – in all of this, there have been some definite upsides.

 

There are people in our congregations that have never felt more connected to their church, and more included in their involvement, than they do right now. It's not that they asked for this or want it to continue, but it's just as true that they feel less like shut-ins or outcasts than they have in years. We have people dealing with illness and chemo and disease who are not "those people" when they're not in the building, they're "one among us" now as we've always intended. This should make all of us in church leadership think hard about how we can maintain the work of connection without needing stay-at-home orders to accomplish it.

 

And I will admit, as a minister, I've known these people for years: they have anxiety issues and agoraphobia, neuropathy and low blood pressure. They are older couples with complex health problems, but they are also single parents who work late Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. A recording of the sermon whether delivered on a CD or available online is a solution for some, but the wider experience is something they're blocked from on multiple levels. Right now, the worship field is level.

 

Gathered worship is still our goal and what I think of as a best practice, scripturally and personally. But the experience of online worship has led me to reflect on why I believe that, how it works in practice, and what we can do in the future. As we get closer to some form, however limited, of being present in a worship space, I don't want to lose sight of some of the new angles I've started to see through these severe limitations, which actually have made some new relationships and inspiration possible.

 

And I promise to share them with you as I reach a little better understanding of those opportunities!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's still working on that whole patience thing. Tell him how you've done or experienced tech support as pastoral care at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

 

 

 

Faith Works 5-2-20

Faith Works 5-2-20

Jeff Gill

 

Preaching and distancing

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Trend lines and hospitalizations and health department guidelines . . .

I tweeted not long ago "we can permanently retire now the phrase 'they didn't teach me about this in seminary' I think."

That kind of viewpoint has really always been off the mark. Seminary is there to build the foundations, of Biblical competency and analytical understanding and usually some basic preaching and teaching tools. A classic seminary word is "hermeneutics," which I can almost guarantee you won't run into outside of a seminary class (in a building or online).

 

It comes, though, with an interesting pedigree: hermeneutics derives from Hermes, or to the Roman pantheon Mercury, the messenger of Olympus carrying news from the divine occupants of the above world to the mortals in this one. Hermeneutics is the study of how a message is best delivered, and has both a secular and sacred connotation.

 

For most people, it's basic preaching they want to know we're learning about. When a new minister is coming, one of the first questions is "can he preach?" Women in ministry have found over the last few generations of their arrival on the scene in many church communities that they struggle with the twin barrier of people asking "can she preach?" and the skepticism among some (women and men) about whether females can bring a message from God to the congregation.

 

Well, when people say they don't believe in women preachers my answer is usually just "I've seen them." To the puzzled look I can get back at that I'll add "You say you don't believe in them, but I've heard the word preached by women, so it's not a matter of belief, but of practice." Regardless, it's a fearful thing for anyone, male or female, to stand before a congregation and bring from God a message for humankind.

 

In a pulpit. In a sanctuary. In a place where predecessor preachers have stood, and in what church is there not some earlier minister under whom all was well and everything was marvelous? Yes, in their place, you stand and deliver. With Elijah and John the Baptist behind you, and the realm of Christ before you, when it's time for preaching you gird up your loins and call on the Holy Spirit and you preach. It's awesome and humbling and a little terrifying, but it's been done before and you (hopefully) have been trained and you can do it, too.

 

And then you have your laptop on your dining room table with your own foolish face staring back at you, with a small green light above to tell you it's recording. There is no one else in the room – well, you and the Lord God Almighty, as always – but there is for your hermeneutic exercise no one else as an audience, other than through the tiny aperture, the miniscule sieve of a computer camera, and the potential future audience which may or may not click on the link to YouTube or Facebook or your website's streaming video window (oh, your church has a webmaster, cool), but right now it's just you and your message and a hard piece of glass wrapped in aluminum, reflecting your own visage back at you as you speak.

 

No, they did not tell you how to deal with this in seminary or Bible college or diaconal training or anywhere. Not last year or fifty years ago.

 

Full disclosure: I have a wonderfully unfair advantage in a few small ways. I've gotten to stand up in front of cameras with red lights overhead, and had a floor director point at me and whisper "four, three, two" then mouth "one" silently, and point, grimly, at my foolish face. At which point, you speak or die. Metaphorically, but it feels real if you've ever been in that position. Good people freeze up on live TV. It's unnatural. It's weird.

 

The weirdness is what I'm writing about. If you have a preacher who is doing this for the first time these last few weeks, be kind. It's not something there's any training for, and experience in the pulpit suddenly is useless. The sermon is there, and the Word still lives and breathes, but delivering that message is a very different hermeneutic exercise than standing in front of ten or a hundred or a thousand.

 

Some have not been able to make the technology work, and I pray you show them compassion. This is hard in a way few of us anticipated. Some are struggling, and I honor them for even trying. Because no, they did not teach any of us how to do . . . this. Whatever this is!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's working through some video editing and uploading issues himself. Tell him what you think works for preaching in an age of coronavirus at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 4-25-20

Faith Works 4-25-20

Jeff Gill

 

Gathering, assembly, ecclesia

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In the New Testament, where we English speakers see the word "church" what's behind it in the Greek is the term "ekklesia."

 

Transliterated into English, an ecclesia is literally an assembly, and in Greek literature it can be a group in the public forum called together for political purposes, an ecclesia which comes together, and is dismissed when the public things, the "res publica" (Latin) of the republic have been dealt with by the people, the "demos" (Greek again) ruling themselves, or "kratos" together making our English word democracy.

 

A Christian gathering, or assembly of believers, is also a form of "ecclesia," which does not require or even imply a building. Some of my Restoration Movement fellows dislike the term "church" for that very reason -- it derives from a tradition before English through Old English & Saxon languages which can be see in the German of "kirche" (reframed in Scotland as "kirk"), which indicates quite specifically a place, even refers etymologically to a building: the kirk o' the heather, and so on.

They're correct in that particular: ecclesia is not church in the sense that an assembly is not the building it meets in. Ecclesia very clearly, in Greek generally and the Apostolic Writings in particular, is talking about the gathered Christians as a group doing the work of Christ's commandments together. And in Acts and the pastoral epistles, that's almost always a house, once in a while a rented hall and specifically referred to as such. But generally a private residence, in which the ecclesia meets.

 

Our references in the New Testament to "church" also includes some places where there's not even a word in Greek, but an implication such as in Acts 2:47, "adding those who were being saved every day to..." The Greek implies something like "to their number," and some translations say "to their fellowship" which is fair, but implied, and King James' merry crew just wedged in "and the Lord added to the church every day..."

 

But church is, in the writings which give us our Christian starting point, and our lasting model, the gathered believers as they did the work of discipleship -- prayers, apostolic teaching, fellowship, and the breaking of bread.

 

Except for the last item (depending on your eucharistic theology, your church rules for communion) the work of discipleship of the gathered assembly, the ecclesia, can be done in many ways without having to have a specific, set-aside building. To break and share bread with your companions -- "panis" being bread, "com" being with (both in Latin), so companions are literally those you are "with bread" together -- that feels like the clearest call to come together in one place.

 

And where we don't have in Greek the word "ekklesia," when the gathered Christians are discussed, we do have one other model to keep in mind. The Body. To be as the Christian community in a particular place "the Body of Christ."

 

Which we both bring together at the communion table, but we also break and scatter, every time. "This is my body, given for you" which must be as a loaf broken for us to share, for us to be companions. So it is only right that we deeply desire to be brought back together as Christians, somewhere, in some fashion. It is also only right that we understand that to be the living Body of Christ at work, we have to also accept being broken and scattered, so that others might eat, and live.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he misses the ease and comfort of having a building to work with, but wonders if there's a message here. Tell him what tools you miss having for your calling at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.