Faith Works 6-12-21

Faith Works 6-12-21

Jeff Gill

Settings and medium and messages

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If you work with churches and camps you are excited about the opportunity to bring youth together again. There are still some cautions and guidelines to keep in mind, especially with children under 12 still unvaccinated, but CDC recommendations give us ways to do outdoor programming we lost last summer.

The need for some care and changing how we used to do things, though, still presents an ongoing challenge, for kids's activities and for summer church in general, whether you call it VBS or something else, in a church basement or out in a park or even on a street corner.

My big personal involvement for many years has been with Cub Scouts, and Cub Day Camp in particular. Last summer, of course, we had to call the whole thing off. As restrictions shifted, we did a Cub-o-ree last fall which tried to make up for what we'd missed, but it was a one-day weekend thing, smaller and certainly more constrained.

Are we "back to normal"? No, and that's a long story. But many things have changed in the last two years, and this summer is going to be different, for organizational and structural reasons, even as the refrain sings on and on like a camp song: "let's get back to normal!" We are doing some things differently, and holding onto other aspects of the Cub day camp experience. 

I look back over this past year, and think about how we've handled the small group meetings, what Cubs call "dens" and even some larger local groups, or "packs" when they got together. As a resource person in the county, I've learned how to do programs for young kids in some very different ways than I ever had, and truth be told, I'd gotten pretty good (I thought) at doing my thing when invited to present at a den or pack meeting.

But do teaching and hands-on learning in a parking lot? On a video conference with some kids visible and others just a name or initials on their square? I've been in church basements with everyone masked and numbers small and spaced out; I've done a bigger group than I've ever done outside of day camp through my computer camera while never leaving my house.

Teachers and preachers and managers and so many of you are thinking "yeah, tell me about it." Understood, but what I'm still wrestling with is what we've learned and how we apply it moving forward. Through last August, I was still preaching & teaching weekly, using FM transmitters and video cameras and uploading services and studies. Since then, I've been a consumer more than provider, but the school and Scouts side of teaching and learning still have engaged me. In all these spheres, I think we have in common this: we can't "go back to normal." Can we?

"The medium is the message" is Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase from his 1964 book "Understanding Media." This Canadian communications scholar and analyst was warning us nearly 60 years ago that the means we use to communicate may be doing most of the communicating for us, despite what we think we're trying to say. Or as Neil Postman observed in 1985's "Amusing Ourselves to Death," the technological tools we use shape and constrain very closely the content they intend to convey.

Which brings us to technology and video and streaming tools in the church, this summer and on into the rest of 2021, assuming everything epidemiological keeps looking better and better. And they very likely will.

There is an incredible amount of pressure, which from some angles looks like a majority, to drop most if not all of the adaptations we've learned and "get back to normal." And I'm acutely aware that in educational circles, we've all realized that with the best will in the world on both sides of the camera, remote learning is in most cases a distant second best. It works, but not as well as the classroom. Remote counseling, though, seems to be much better "now" compared to in-person "later." Video medical consults? Truth is they were becoming common before COVID. We are getting better at how to use them, and when.

And meetings? C'mon. Very few planning and evaluation gatherings are improved by having everyone drive and sit and be in a room together when they can be a 30 minute video conference.

The task before us is to pick and choose wisely. Our need to get together in worship, for learning, in fellowship, shouldn't displace the new opportunities we've mastered in how to save time, add new perspectives, and increase access through virtual options. What to do about those who retreat into virtuality is a separate discussion.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's ready to spend less time online, but not to just go back to lots of long evenings in the car. Tell him what meetings you won't miss attending at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter. 

Notes from my Knapsack 6-17-21

Notes from my Knapsack 6-17-21

Jeff Gill

The obscure joys of doing nothing

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Friends, if you read my last column about John Cherney and his memorial plaque at Denison, I am delighted to share that while he died in 1912 in China, he did leave behind a daughter as well as a widow, and they have connections back to Our Fayre Village!

When I have additional information I can share, I promise to continue this story. While it contains tragedy, sorrow does not define it. More to come . . .

The Manchurian plague of 1911 & 1912 was what got me thinking, and as we watch our vaccination rate climb past 50% and case rates drop below 50 per 100,000 and so on, I'm still thinking.

But sometimes, I just go out on the back patio and don't think. I just sit, and watch the clouds boil up, the birds fly over, and the cottonwood leaves flutter in the lightest of breezes. Call it killing time if you want; my own need for a break was after tugging a great deal of weedy stuff out of the cracks between the bricks, so that my back and fingers were sore and I just wanted to relax a bit. The clouds, the crows and buzzards, the ripples in the green were just means to an end, and that end was relaxation and restoration.

Until. I looked down at the arm of the Adirondack chair I was sitting in, a proper deep dark green, and saw a speck of red scurry along it. Huh, I thought vaguely. Nice contrast, tiny red against forest green plank. And then, focused on the insect as I was, my frame of reference brought down from cumulonimbus and treetop level and size, I see clearly there's not one red speck.

There's two. No, three. Wait, dozens. All over the arm rest, the seat, and . . . yep, one on me. I leapt up, brushing gently.

Previous experience reminds me that these are simple, harmless clover mites. They don't bite, don't spread disease, but when you smash them, they leave a red trace that's very hard to clean out of cloth or off of walls. And they are all over the patio, that being a lovely place for them this time of year, the lawn nearby for food and the cracks ideal for laying eggs for the next generation of clover mites.

I walked back towards the house, checking around onto my backside and down my legs; a distant observer would have assumed I was doing a strange version of upright yoga or something. My goal was simply to avoid bringing clover mites indoors and adding them to our internal ecosystem. What I didn't want to do was smash any.

This is the time of year when it's worth remembering that for most insects, most of the time, less is more. Don't swat, don't swing, don't panic. Especially don't panic. A cicada flies into your face? Don't freak out, especially if you're driving. A bee passes near? Don't flail at an inoffensive creature which doesn't want to bite you, anyhow. Even wasps and later on, yellow jackets are best dealt with by not dealing with them. Prevention, maybe, with open sweet drink containers and so on, but swatting them ends poorly for everyone.

Summer is a good time to figure out who else is sharing this ecosystem with us, and how we best live together. Smashing things often just makes a mess for you, in more ways than one.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he does smash mosquitos. It's all about discernment. Tell him how you live with what bugs you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-5-21

Faith Works 6-5-21

Jeff Gill

Things that go by pretty fast

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In a month, we will have parades again and celebrations and in some locations, fireworks.

If you're one of those feeling frustrated and snarky about anything this summer that's not happening, because it was called off months ago, I hope you'll reconsider, or at least be kind.

Those of us who have put together big public events are all too aware of what it takes to assemble people, programs, and PA systems in the out-of-doors or in borrowed spaces, and even when you control the venue, if you have to book musical talent and arrange seating, et cetera, you are acutely aware of both the long time frames in advance involved, and the ongoing calculations around how much money is spent, or invested, or committed, or whatever you want to call it, well before you know who is showing up. Wedding receptions are as close as most people get to this particular calculus, and there's a general assumption around them that you are not going to break even.

This is why in many cases events for May and June and July were called off back in March and April: too much uncertainty means excessive expense potential, and most non-profits can't risk as much as some fathers of brides spend, let alone larger sums.

Add in the fact that we didn't know where vaccinations would be back in March when some major decisions had to be made, and contracts signed, and yes, I suspect a few persons and organizations wish now they had taken a risk back then, but you know what they say: Hindsight is 2021. (No, not a typo.)

My own question about where we are and how things should proceed is tied to the fact that we're still looking at over half of the county unvaccinated. That might be by choice or out of necessity, but it means when I'm in places with groups together I keep thinking about those numbers, and what I can or should do for others. As for me and my house, we are vaccinated, as are the elderly folk I have some responsibilities to and for, but I'm willing to be masked if that helps affirm protecting that 60% or so still unprotected (see I Corinthians 8 for more on this subject). I don't need a mask, but do I need to be wearing one simply to support or encourage those who should be wearing them to do so?

I've had a few conversations in person and online about this, and frankly I'm uncomfortable with how quickly most people say "well, that's their choice." It is, but I'm not sure how well informed a choice it is, if so. If half of adults are really making that decision, I'm pragmatist enough to respect it, while wondering about what the broader outcomes are going to be. Will more choose to get vaccinated this summer? I sincerely hope so. "Only" a couple deaths a week seems to me, in light of what we've all been saying about suicide and overdoses, a steep price to casually concede is what our community has to pay, just so we can assemble and interact as if nothing has changed.

For a variety of reasons, including the ripple of COVID mortality, I've been thinking a great deal about how we regard the preciousness of life and the worth of our time over this past year. And in these next few weeks, fireworks will start to echo through the evening skies.

Sparklers are for me even more a part of a family Fourth of July than the big stuff. Nowadays fireworks are set off for all sorts of occasions, but I only see sparklers out right around Independence Day. My dad would buy a box every year, and the four of us would each get two or maybe three.

Fireworks go boom, but a sparkler is of longer duration (and probably why they have some risk involved and what makes parents watch so closely). Yet not forever, not for very long. And once the sparklers were done, so was the Fourth.

You would write your name in fire, turn circles, hear the roaring whoosh as you swung (carefully) your sparkler through the darkness. And you'd watch as the sparkler burned down the heavy wire stem to the end of the silvery leaden chemicals. It lasted only so long, and even a child tries to make the most of it. A child hears often "be careful," but they also want to wave them around. It's a joyful balancing act, in fire and light against the darkness.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's keeping some masks in the car, just in case. Tell him how we can protect and care for one another at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-29-21

Faith Works 5-29-21

Jeff Gill

Summer in church

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When I think of worship services in the summer time, I think back into childhood and the kind of church buildings we had then.

The cornerstones all had dates in the 1800s, and the stained glass windows opened on the bottom, often pivoting when unlatched, yet another difference from the everyday and at home.

Fans were deployed into the pew racks around Memorial Day weekend, with Jesus or the Last Supper on one side, and the name of a local funeral home on the other, and a wooden paint stirrer type handle. Some women brought their own hand fans; my grandmother had some Oriental painted designs with a black lacquer metal frame which she opened with a practiced flick of her wrist.

Outside, with the windows all open such as there were, you heard dogs bark and motorcycles mutter past. At my mother's childhood church, which we were at quite frequently when I was younger, when the train went through two blocks away the preacher would steadily increase his volume from the pulpit until the first crossing evoked the engineer's horn, at which point the minister would look down at his notes grimly and bow his head in a form of ambiguous prayer until the train crossed the next three intersections, and the clacking of the caboose over the points meant he could safely continue.

Was it hot? I suppose it was; it was just summer was all, and you put up with it, hoping no fly would end up circling your pew. It was a definitely forbidden breach of church decorum to swat at flies. There weren't many, but I do not recall screens in most church windows (remember, they swung open around a horizontal pivot in the lower panels), so there were always a few. The temptation to take a bash at a fly in front of you was strong, but either our reverence for all life created by God, or the behavior expected in divine services, meant it was a fatal temptation to succumb to.

Both hats and gloves were fading through the 1960s in churches I was part of, but grandmothers tended to hold on to tradition as grandmothers do. Gloves did depart at least for a few months after Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as my maternal grandmother liked to say; hats got smaller to the point of superfluity, but they were still perched there (and the flies did often perch atop them). Ties on the menfolk would be loosened, discreetly; the rakish would unbutton the top button underneath the knot, at least for the duration of the service.

Preaching was more dependent on volume, such as when trains or other distractions passed by, because in the rural Midwest I don't recall many churches having electronic amplification until the 1970s, and in some quarters that was as controversial as drums or a guitar on the platform. I suspect a PA system was seen by some as the gateway drug to rock music. In general, to be a preacher meant having a preacher's pipes, and that had as much to do with volume as it did musicality. 

And I'll confess that I spent most of my high school years helping in the nursery, where the now wired church's set-up meant that one microphone, anchored to the pulpit, with a speaker in our ceiling, gave us an unintentional solo performance by the preacher on the hymns each week. We usually turned it down to zero until we heard down the hall that the sermon was starting, since you couldn't even hear the choir very well through the one mic.

Now we're working out how to integrate multiple camera angles and sound inputs into our streaming video broadcast, and prudent pastors turn off their wireless lapel mic as the praise team begins the musical offerings. Air conditioning is just about mandatory (I've seen where some places have had to call off services for a Sunday when their cooling system shut down and couldn't be repaired fast enough), and I haven't heard a dog bark during a sermon for a very long time.

But I hear a sermon of sorts every time I'm out on the porch and hear a train blow at a crossing, off in the distance. Remembrances, and memorials. May your Decoration Day give you pause for honoring all who have sacrificed to bring us to where we are, and for Memorial Day, in honoring those who gave their all. It's a good weekend to remember, and be thankful.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's in favor of sound systems and air conditioning, up to a point. Tell him where you think that point is at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-22-21

Faith Works 5-22-21

Jeff Gill

Missions and ministries continue, and thrive

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As most churches are finding their path back to more regular in-person operations, the focus in recent months has reasonably been on worship.

Who can be together, how can they be seated, what should we do within our worship spaces — all of these matters complicated by building layout and auditorium furniture, doorways and hall ceilings, et cetera et cetera. I keep saying "there's no one right way for every church." My prayers have been, and will continue to be, with the church leaders, lay and ordained, who are making the hard choices and communicating complicated responses to frustrated community members.

What gets overlooked in much of this confusion and concern are the outreach ministries so many faith communities operate. Food pantries are a very common expression of ministry outreach for typical churches. One or two days a week, a door is opened, hours are kept, and people not members of the congregation can come to get assistance and support. There are dozens of these around this county, and they tend to work in coordination with the Food Pantry Network of Licking County, which has been helping their member pantries figure out how to follow health orders while still serving the community at large.

More tricky are the means by which other kinds of outreach can function. There have been a few clothes closet type ministries, where people (some have been targeted to groups, like women going back to work for interview clothes, or school clothes for children) come and they need to come inside, and try on items, and the issues of contact and contagion have been hard to manage. Since we've learned that contact transmission is less an issue with coronavirus than originally feared, those hygiene challenges are less of a barrier, but limits on how many can come inside and be together in a tight space are still slowing things up.

And I know many of you have had occasion to visit the Medical Loan Closet at Central Christian Church, which began almost two decades ago in a closet, moved to a room, then a hallway and half a basement, now outside into a converted garage behind the church building. They had the problem many outreach ministries have on weekdays, which is a large number of senior citizens as volunteers, and early on worries about COVID closed them down. Once the vaccine began coming available, they've opened up on Wednesdays again with a little more caution on how many people come in at a time.

Down on US 40, serving the entire Buckeye Lake twi-county region, Hebron New Life Church opened a Baby Pantry over ten years ago. They're open Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings, offering infant specific items like diapers, formula, and clothing to families who need their help. The church looked around and saw some food pantries and other ministries meeting certain needs quite well, and decided that they were called to a "gap" which was the needs of families with small children. The Hebron Baby Pantry is now, like the Medical Loan Closet in Newark, outgrowing the room it's filled inside the church building.

They are ready to expand, with the end of most of the health orders and limits, hoping to build on their property a standalone building for the Baby Pantry operations and expand their community center capacity. Pastor Brian Harkness told me "we just want to be able to expand our ability to serve the community in ways we weren't able to before," with hopes to reach out to older school-age youth.

In 2019, they served over 3,000 children; executive director Beth Walters let me know in that year they shared around 20,000 packages of diapers, 500 toothbrushes, and some 18,500 children's outfits of clothing. Obviously, numbers were down a bit through 2020, but 2021 has picked up right at the pace they were at before and even increasing a bit. Their current space, though, is at capacity, and I can tell you I have to move sideways through some of the shelving they have up.

[NOTE: keep or edit this para depending on space limits] They ask that adults with children in their care present a "Valid State ID or Driver's License," something that indicates "Proof of Residency" like a utility bill or rental lease, and a WIC folder or medical card. And since it's usually best to come without the child in question, they ask for at least one form of ID per child, whether a "Crib Card," or a copy of Birth Certificate or Social Security Card, and their WIC folder or medical card.]

If you would like to help them build some space, they're interested in support from anyone; their contact info is on their website along with a PayPal button. Along with helping them move forward in 2021 with this project, I hope every faith community is using the "COVID reboot" to think about the gaps and needs and vision they have in their area, and consider: what unexpected blessing might you be able to share where you are?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows that when you need diapers, you really need diapers. Tell him about your unique outreach ministry at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 5-27-21

Notes from my Knapsack 5-27-21

Jeff Gill

Personal protective equipment, and memorials

___

Just inside the doors of Doane Academy, the main administrative building up on the hill at Denison, are two plaques, one on either side.

As they're inside, they're easy to miss. On your way out, you're looking through the windows and onto the academic quad where commencement was held this year. On your way in, you don't see them unless you look back over your shoulder.

Actually, looking back can be a useful thing if you don't make too regular a habit of so doing. You can see things you might miss, and learn stuff about not just the past, but of how we got where we are, which is where we're getting to the future from.

To one side, appropriate for Memorial Day, is an inscription honoring William Jordan Currin, Class of 1913, who was the first Denison alumni to die in World War I. Adding to the poignancy, he died at Cambrai on November 11, 1917 . . . the date which would precisely one year later become Armistice Day, the end of the war. Later Americans would convert Nov. 11 into Veterans Day, but on Memorial Day we honor those who not only served but also died in service, and so let us salute Mr. Currin: "He lived the life of a Christian gentleman and died a brave man" in the words of his memorial.

On the other side, a reminder of how a hundred years ago the college honored in general two groups of students who served far beyond national boundaries: not only those who served in the armed forces, but also a regular "platoon" or more of missionaries set out after graduation to the global mission field, sent from Granville every May out into the world.

The opposite marker says "In Memory of John Cherney, D.U. '05 - Died from fever contracted in famine relief work, Kuling, China - May 11, 1912."

Kuling is more often presented as "Guling" today; then and now a resort town near Lushan in Jiangxi Province. It was built as a place for rest and restoration for English speaking missionaries in the 1890s, and later would be an unofficial headquarters in turn both for the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, and later the Chinese Communist Party of Mao Zedong.

Of John Cherney I can find little; directories of missionaries in "China, Japan, and Corea" for 1910 & 1911 show him as an ordained Baptist minister with a wife, unnamed, in southwestern China. But 1910 & 1911 also marked in northwest China the outbreak of the "Manchurian plague," a respiratory disease that seems to have jumped from marmots to humans, with a truly awful mortality rate, and at a time when transmission methods were still unclear to medical science. It was in Manchuria and neighboring areas that Chinese doctors first recommended "personal protective equipment" like masks and gowns for medical staff to prevent transmission; a French doctor came to help, rejected the usefulness of PPE, and quickly caught it and died. So 1911 is a landmark with current relevance.

Cherney's fever could have been malaria or any other parasitic or bacterial infection, likely not a viral transmission. But his memorial, telling us he was "Cheerful, brave, unselfish; a noble type of college man" who died of disease in China, reminds us that global questions of epidemiology have been with us for more than a century, and we still wrestle with how to prevent illness and slow spread, through means often both simple and social.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been thinking a great deal about globalism lately, from Xinjiang and Wuhan to Granville and Newark. Tell him how big or small your world is at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 5-13-21

Notes from my Knapsack 5-13-21

Jeff Gill

Spread versus containment

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Memorial Day is nearing, and Granville plans a parade and ceremony on May 31; stay tuned for more details as we get closer, and the banners go up on Broadway to honor our six surviving World War II veterans.

Summer is coming, and outdoor activities are clearly ideal in so many ways, COVID or not.

One book I'm looking forward to this summer is a new John Maclean book, titled "Home Waters" which comes out June 1. It's a family memoir, and you may be familiar with his father Norman writing about how "A River Runs Through It" which was itself a memoir about the Blackfoot River in Montana in many ways. John went on to be a journalist, and along with his global awareness and perspectives, he ended up helping pick up a loose thread from his father's estate, "Young Men and Fire," which turned John into a primary documentary non-fiction author on the subject of wildland fires, and those who fight them.

I can recommend any of John Maclean's books, tragedies though so many of them have been, but I look forward to "Home Waters" because he will get to work in a different register, as it were. When you are attempting, even in the breadth of a book's length, to sum up all the complex human and environmental detail that resulted in the deaths of those who chose to go out and fight wilderness conflagrations, you have to make many tough choices about whose stories to tell, and how you get not only from ignition to accident, but weaving in the aftermath of those firefighter deaths, lessons learned, and sometimes not learned, but always asking why.

So while looking forward to reading how John asks some very different questions when "Home Waters" comes out, I'm thinking back through those earlier works, and stories, and questions. Because I keep seeing parallels between epidemiology and wilderness firefighting. Arguably, I know little about either (I can hear you in the back mumbling "or nothing!"), but my natural bent is towards metaphor and comparison, and how we can learn in one field from the successes and failures we already have in another.

We all know, from the news if nothing else, that there are numbers around wilderness fire outbreaks, and if we have any imagination at all, we know those numbers only cast faint shadows of the human let alone natural costs they represent. Yes, we're sensitive to the number of deaths: "four killed as forest fire rips through a national forest…" The acreage is usually mentioned, even if most of us would have trouble really imagining what a thousand acres "looks like," let alone a hundred thousand acres.

And then there's containment. "The Whoosit Fire is now 65% contained." It's a figure calculated by the amount of fire line dug around it, the fuels involved and the wind direction and what's in the way. 100% contained we can imagine, but 50%? It almost sounds like there's no difference between 0% and a line halfway around, if the wind turns.

For the COVID situation, the spread seems pretty wide, but in Ohio, 10% of us appear to have had it, some extrapolate that to 20% total cases recovered from having the virus, along with 40% started on the vaccine, over 30% completed. Allowing for overlap, you have us somewhere around 50% either having had it and/or vaccinated. That leaves 50% who could still get it.

I would argue, then, that we're a long way from containment. The fire is still burning, however you measure it. And we have fire line to dig, and flames to put out, before everyone is safe.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's swung a Pulaski a few times but never in harm's way. Tell him how you think we need to put this fire out at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-15-21

Faith Works 5-15-21

Jeff Gill

On a hill, far away

___

This spring I've taken a longer than expected detour into cremation, ashes, and their disposition.

As a genealogist and historian, we're losing something with the end of the last best permanent record, an archive for past generations I've benefited from in many ways. Trust me when I say I have many and conflicted feelings about the skyrocketing frequency of "at the request of the departed, there will be no service, and a private service at a later date." 

What I've gotten myself into here is a side-effect of responding as a pastor and preacher to friends and acquaintances who find themselves in the position of having to take care of "the event." Some churches and faith traditions very specifically forbid scattering ashes; most no longer forbid cremation, but instruct survivors to handle the urn or container as they would a casket, with a reverent committal ceremony in sacred ground, a family plot or cemetery mausoleum.

Much more common, though, is a family decision to just ask the mortician to cremate the body, picking up the heavy small box of ashes, and scattering them on their own, at a later point and who knows what location. I see some parallels, which no one will thank me for pointing out, to the move towards event weddings, and having a friend officiate in a converted barn or banquet hall. Except apparently lots of people enjoy sending away for a ministry "certificate" and filing with the Ohio Secretary of State to become a legal officiant for a friend's wedding. The line is not as long to get the privilege of presiding over a scattering ceremony.

Just to be clear, in no state do you have to be licensed or ordained to conduct a memorial service. To prepare a body, yes; within a church building, those rules about who can officiate are for that faith community. But I'm perfectly willing to affirm that anyone can do a funeral, it's just that they aren't as simple as they appear (also something many ad hoc wedding officiants have learned the hard way). Having a clergymember assisting is a practical choice in most cases.

But let's say there is no one available or appropriate to the occasion, and the person presiding is you. What do you do? The word has gone out to family and friends, and you're arriving at a hilltop in a national park or a family cabin next to a public waterway, and everyone expects you to lead the service. How does it go?

I've gone into the practical at length because if you don't have a smooth, seamless set-up for those tangible issues (scissors or a very sharp knife, situational awareness of how the ashes will behave out of the bag, what to do with the remaining materials at the end) then the fumbling and confusion become most of what people remember. You don't want that, lay or ordained.

You need a rally point: a table, a stump, a place to set the container. You may need to guide people into where they should go to stand or sit (there being no aisle or pews to steer them). Once together, you really should have a clear start, regardless of time (but starting early is risky because late arrivals can be very distracting). A song or soloist is nice, or at minimum a "Thank you for coming."

You say why you're here not because they don't know, but because it clarifies matters. That's why we have any ceremony at all. "We are here to honor the life and mark the death of [Name]." If it's a purely secular ceremony you're after, that I can't help you with. I would advise anyone to pray after the opening; you don't have to call it an invocation, but I would want to ask divine blessing on the occasion and those gathered.

The rest is simple. You invite people to speak or not, as the family prefers; you tell as much truth as the occasion allows, but the happier memories tend to be central because the sorrow is already there, with that box and what it means. Be honest, within reason. Be humorous, when it's earned and not forced. Be reverent, whatever that means to you. And then scatter the ashes as you've prepared to do.

If it were me, I'd close in prayer. Keeping in mind the whole act, however engaged in, is a form of prayer, one that will be remembered.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; his ashes are not ready to be scattered in any case. Tell him what you have in mind at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-8-21

Faith Works 5-8-21

Jeff Gill

Ashes on the landscape

___

Last week's column evoked a response like none I've ever had, and I'm rewriting what was going to be a second half to reflect some of it (part three next week, in other words). Cremation, and delayed services, are a subject of intense and even painful interest for a great many people. I knew it, but I'm feeling it all the more after reading your messages (and if I missed any replies, my apologies).

Households with a black plastic box on the counter, or in a cabinet, are many. And I have to add, this was an issue building up well before COVID closures came along. At my last parish ministry post, there was a point a few years ago where I had four boxes of cremated remains sitting under my desk. Cremation and waiting for another date, or for a partner's death, has been growing as a choice for years, but people are still very unsure how to deal with them literally in their hands. So asking a minister to hold onto them makes a certain amount of sense, even if it added a strange atmosphere to my office (they've all been since distributed appropriately).

Add to this the fact that more people, especially since the last year, have no church affiliation, and have taken the cost effective option of cremation only and just "pick up" the remains from the funeral home: who is in charge, and how do they handle things for final honors? Particularly when it's intentionally wished to be informal and low key?

I don't have to "like" it to understand that between cost and calendar, cremation is the new normal . . . but without clergy and funeral home support, people don't know what to do. And I'm too much a realist to say "well, everyone just go back to church." So I hope to help - plus I get many requests for "tell me what I need to do" from friends who are going to other states and places to scatter, and realize this many not be as simple as people think . . . which it is not.

To repeat from last week: if you're the one in charge, open up the box. It's okay, they won't jump out at you. You'll see a heavy duty plastic bag, sealed shut. You can't just tear it open, and that makes sense, right? So you need a tool to open it in hand at the location you're taking them to.

And the contents are five to seven pounds of grayish material. It's about half heavy and pours right out and down, and about half powder that does what powder does. So you need to figure out where people will stand, where you will be, and where these ashes are going. It's also where I strongly recommend that you, well, practice. Go to the spot in advance, or a similar location if you can't get there beforehand, and take a canister of talcum powder from the drugstore. Open it, pour some out. Yep, where a bunch of that goes is where those ashes will go. Yeah, it can swirl or reverse direction. Glad you practiced yet? It's just talcum powder. This time.

Ashes can be "in-urned" and put behind a niche in a cemetery, or in the ground. That may be looking like a better idea as you think about this, but it will have to be paid for, up front. If you want to go to a previous family gravesite and scatter ashes there, just understand the cemetery rules may require a fee for doing so. I'm not defending that, I'm just cautioning you. Ditto for placing an urn in a casket, which makes even less sense to me, but I don't run a cemetery.

Please understand: just because the deceased asked to have their ashes scattered someplace does NOT mean you have the right to put them there. On someone's front yard to settle a score, for instance. I've seen some strange locations requested, and as a minister, have had to explain "that's not a good idea." Placing ashes in a container in an appropriate place is the safest, and some say the most respectful option.

But if the last request was for scattering, and you know it's alright to gather people there and do so with permission, I'll offer a few more words on how you might go about that.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; his ashes are not ready to be scattered in any case. Tell him what you have in mind at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-1-21

Faith Works 5-1-21

Jeff Gill

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

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As the weather warms and we're more able to gather thanks to vaccinations and other loosening of travel restrictions and the like, many families that have had loved ones die in the last year are thinking about . . . ashes.

Due to coronavirus issues, quite a few families who had never thought about cremation or used that option previously have gone that route.

Along with financial concerns, the desire to "wait" on a memorial service meant that cremation made increasing sense. Cremated remains in a container, whether temporary or in an urn, became part of many homes, uneasily in some cases, less so in others. Sir Tom Jones was on the radio recently talking about how his late wife, after over sixty years of marriage, was cremated and he keeps her ashes on the dresser so she's the first person he greets in the morning and last he says good night to every day. Note: the Catholic Church discourages scattering as a way to "place" remains, though cremation is accepted today, with the urn then buried or placed intact.

In general, cremation has steadily become more popular in recent years, even if more so in 2020. Heading into the summer of 2021, there are a remarkable number of family groups who are now ready to call together relatives, to hold a memorial of some sort or another months or a year and more after the death at the heart of the matter, and to . . . scatter ashes. Which is where I've been getting some interesting requests for advice.

I know, it sounds simple, but if you've never been involved with doing it, you'll find pretty quickly there are issues involved. And I'm finding I need to keep a few lines handy to copy and paste into replies for friends and strangers alike.

Yes, you can scatter cremated remains, or "cremains" (funeral directors don't like that word much, but it gets used, same diff) on private property in Ohio, IF you have permission. Other states may have different guidelines, but the carbon and calcium grey powder in that container are sterile and safe. What you can't do is scatter them just anywhere. Ask the groundskeepers at Ohio Stadium at every home game: yes they will stop you, and yes, it just gets vacuumed up and thrown away if they don't. But please don't. Ditto Disney World or Cedar Point.

Yes, cemeteries can charge you for scattering ashes. Some do if they know you're doing it, some don't. If you ask, they'll tell you. Ditto for burying an urn. Yes, you can scatter ashes on inland waterways or lakes in Ohio; Lake Erie, like oceans, is a bit of a grey area, as technically you need to be three nautical miles from land by federal statute. I've heard that's oceans only, and I've also been told authoritatively Lake Erie counts as requiring the distance. Lawyers can sort that out, I'm sure.

Let's say you have permission from a landowner or are in a boat on an appropriate waterway, and you want to scatter ashes. Now what? A few cautions: first, make sure you know how to get into the heavy duty plastic bag inside the cardboard or plastic box you were given the ashes in. It's sealed shut, and the bag isn't something you just tear open. A good pair of scissors needs to be handy, or a very sharp knife.

If you've never dealt with ashes, I recommend you go where you plan to scatter them with a canister of talcum powder. Seriously. Stand there, and open the container, and pour some out. The ashes you have aren't all like that, but the six to eight pounds of material you have is a mix of what's like heavy dry sand and light powder. It's the powder that becomes an . . . issue. No, really. Think about wind direction, and who is standing where. Seriously, do that a few days before you take the ashes there with fellow mourners. See how it pours, and where it goes, and plan accordingly.

And an odd but awkward detail: that bag will still be coated inside somewhat with ash. Think about how you want to handle that. You may want to have water to rinse it and pour out there before putting the bag in the trash.

There is no one right way to handle a scattering of ashes when it's months later. I've talked mostly about the pragmatic side of the process, and will say a bit more about how you do it in company next week.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's scattered ashes in some interesting locations over the years to family requests. Tell him anything but a Big Lebowski story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 4-24-21

Faith Works 4-24-21

Jeff Gill

Freedom isn't free; sometimes, it's a tie that binds

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One commentator said this past week that our social messaging ought to be 100% "you should get the vaccine, wait two weeks, then go live your life. The vaccinated should be actively discouraged from wearing masks, etc. Again, if they get the virus, it will be mild." His argument, which I think is worth considering, is that we're likely to hit a wall at around 60-65% of full vaccination soon, and the only way we're going to get people in that last 35% to get vaccinated is if we make it clear the vaccine is a ticket to "living your life" as in "without face coverings."

Again, he may be correct about that: I expect we will see rates of new vaccinations slow this week, and then come to a near-stop as we cross that 60% level. I'd love to agree with him about the relative risk of vaccinated people transmitting active virus if I was sure it would get us up past 75%. But what I'm more sure of is that if those of us who HAVE been vaccinated stop wearing masks, you'll see wholesale tossing aside of mask wearing, and I think there's still a very real, quantifiable, calculable risk of additional damage from illness and indeed some "excess death" from spread within that last 30-40%. Not another 500,000, but an avoidable additional 100,000 or more. That's why I'm still wearing face coverings in public settings where distancing can't be consistently maintained, like grocery stores and in school buildings and other gathering spaces. 

I suppose the counter-argument could be made that 100,000 deaths of at-risk, un-vaccinated individuals is both a question of their choices not to vaccinate (true, for some) and a utilitarian balance of how many billions lost in economic activity versus those 100,000 fatalities . . . although I'm at this point thinking more about the follow-on impact of getting COVID with lung damage and other lasting physical effects we're still figuring out, for that more than 100 million Americans still unprotected by vaccine. 500,000 people who lose a few years off their lifespan from COVID impact on their bodies later is a utilitarian calculation that might be more economically damaging than 100,000 additional deaths among people in high risk categories who've not been vaccinated.

So it's a balance of those two hypotheticals for the policy makers to sort out: will telling people they can completely dispense with masking and distancing after getting vaccinated get us up past 75%? It might, it might not. Or will doing that lead to general disposal of face coverings, triggering another new spike of illness and death among at risk populations? That's my concern, but I'll admit we don't know that for sure, either.

We all WANT to stop having to mask & distance in our social gatherings. That's the only thing I know for sure. But in balance, I'm going to keep wearing my post-vaccination face coverings . . . for the good of others. As a good example, as a team player who wants to see as many come through this uninjured as possible. Saying that even social pressure to do so is a "risk of our civil liberties" I think does cognitive violence to what the common good really is in a free society.

And I have to say I worry about the witness, the public example of what religious faith means in practice, of churches that have said — legally, I will add in fairness — they will dispense entirely with distancing or even encouraging face coverings, let alone returning to congregational singing and even social gatherings let alone seated group meals. What exactly are we saying as faith communities when we jump into that way of being church, which understandably is where most of us really want to be?

Yes, I'm aware of Hebrews 10:25, and the exhortation for us in "not giving up meeting together . . . but encouraging one another." I also hear a great deal of "we cannot live in fear" and "perfect love casts out fear" (hat tip, I John 4:18). However, that feels very near to "Do not put the Lord your God to the test," which Jesus himself says at Matthew 4:7.

For myself, I have no fear. Health-wise, or heaven-wise, Philippians 1:21 has me covered. What I believe I reasonably dread is to be the cause of stumbling, or even death, of another (see Hebrews 13:17 on that). If a little discomfort and inconvenience is the cost of discipleship and an opening to the realm of God for others, I think that's a cloth across my face I can bear.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to being able to smile with more than his eyes. Tell him how you're working around challenges at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.