Notes from my Knapsack 2-3-22
Jeff Gill
Development's subversive edges
___
Since I have professional reasons that get me out and around the county on a regular basis, it wasn't hard to find an opportunity not long after the big announcement to drive out Rt. 62, and out into northern Jersey Township along Green Chapel Road, Clover Valley Road, Mink Street.
Right now, it looks like most of rural Licking County. Turns out that's a big part of the attraction: the development's hub in this case wanted to be far away from major highways or railroads, but with access. That's us in a nutshell outside of our larger communities.
Our once and former Air Force Base, now an economic engine in its own right, came here because of deep sediments and low levels of unavoidable vibration, establishing a metrology lab for guidance system calibration. Those first guidance systems helped to spur the development of semiconductors, in a roundabout way, and now as the news decries the fact that 80% of the computer chips our US economy depends on are made overseas, we're going to become part of solving that problem, right here.
We're losing good farmland, there's no doubt about it. At some point, we have to come to terms with when and how we treat topsoil and fertile land with the respect it deserves, but as with fossil fuels, the reckoning seems far enough away to put off a bit longer. Each new housing development starts with scraping away all the organic soil down to more solid, stable, mineralized clays and silts; some of the smarter developers sell that stuff, others just find a place to dump it, then buy new topsoil a year or two later to put down in a thin layer around the new build on the stable footers dug down below the frost line.
Yet driving down Miller Road, whose meandering path bisects the parcel in question, and turning back towards 161 on Mink, I could see through the wintry spindles of barren trees tall grey and white and black warehouses marching north, as they've been doing for some time. In a sense, these fields have been doomed for quite a while. The question is whether we want more distribution centers and fulfillment facilities or an actual factory building out on this land.
Or we could shout "stop," and hurl our smart phones to the ground, after first deleting our credit card numbers from all the ordering and delivering and transportation apps, retreating to our homes where we retool our lives to grow our food and card wool together as a neighborhood and brew beverages for our community at the alehouse where we also eat communally.
I'm not meaning to make fun of any of that, truly. In fact, I think if we're going to have healthy communities and families, with or without billions of investment and tens of thousands of jobs, we need to find and maintain some kind of balance between our virtual lives and our natural interactions. Eating fast food isn't the problem as much as always consuming it is, and while we can't all grow all of our own food, it would be both psychologically and ecologically healthier if more of us grew some, got our fingernails dirtier, and got in touch mentally and physically with soil and fruitfulness.
Lots of people have quoted Joni recently: "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." Perhaps as we're losing some land to development, we can use this opportunity to gain some new appreciation for the land that gives us life.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he grows a mean pot of basil for his pesto, but hasn't raised his own garlic, yet. Tell him how you breathe deeply outdoors at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Faith Works 2-5-22
Faith Works 2-5-22
Jeff Gill
Cross currents and communion in church
___
Jaroslav Pelikan, the great Christian historian, was asked to address the problems and opportunities churches faced with ancient liturgies, modern tastes for innovation, and debates over how to honor both the old and the new.
His response still echoes in the ears of many worship leaders and spiritual teachers decades later: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."
My dad liked to point out that the measure of a community was how it cares for the most vulnerable, the least powerful. So the Bible teaches that our social priorities should emphasize the support of widows and orphans, strangers and sojourners. His observation, though, was that we really need to be mindful of how we tend to the dead.
Tombstones can't defend themselves. Cemeteries have a somewhat limited constituency. But a community that cares gently and reverently for such memorials and locations is probably one that understands how to make provision for the more lively groups of underserved people.
And when it comes to tradition, G.K. Chesterton was onto the same thing when he said "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead."
Pelikan's observation is a reminder that it's just as unhealthy to give the deceased an absolute veto. How to reflect on tradition today is tricky in all sorts of situations. What would Dorothy Day say about some political development? How would Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King take a stand about a current event? You can't just unplug them from their context and drop them as if living into today; when that's done rhetorically, it's usually to serve the speaker's purposes, which might well not be those of their historical figure's intentions.
In worship, though, we can trace some odd and interesting patterns through history that give us hints, if not clear direction on how to do our services "the right way." Among Protestants, I can point out five or six different distinct eras over just the last few centuries where one generation innovated in terms of music and preaching, in the next few decades it became a norm, and then a rising generation comes along to look at the last innovations as dated and uninspiring while their elders defend that now beleaguered model as "tradition." Lather, rinse, repeat. Congregational singing versus professional choirs, or open air preaching with popular songs adapted, jostling alongside of Psalmody which gives way to Watts's hymnbook, organs displacing ad hoc instrumentals, electronic amplification and backing instrumentals on cassette tape, Singspiration and "Gaither music" to praise bands to . . . whatever is next.
I did not grow up in a liturgical tradition, but in a tradition that had many givens which were a de facto liturgy. Total improvisation and spontaneity were considered a mode for different churches, not for us. Now many of the churches I've guest preached at in the last two decades have had effectively no order of worship or set prayers, just an outline of "music, prayer, offering, more prayer, preaching, last song." I miss sometimes a style I've never really known, some ancient elements and parts of worship that connect us to generations before, which can offer continuity with those yet to come.
One of my phrases about what worship is for, when I'm in a space where that question can be discussed, is that at heart I think regular worship is made up of equal parts "birthing classes and funeral rehearsals."
If you've not had the opportunity either as a male partner or female directly involved party to attend birthing classes, they spend a fair amount of time teaching you how to breathe. Yes, even the man. Practice now, because you don't want to try to learn this later. Things will happen fast! But you are preparing with expectation for new life to join the family.
Funeral rehearsals are less something anyone has gotten to do, I suspect, but in a sense we are doing it every time we think about eternity, after us, the time to come. Preparing ourselves and those around us for the hard reality of what happens after life goes on, without us.
Birthing classes and funeral rehearsals. Every faith community is doing this in their gatherings, and it's where you really need the perspectives of both the old and the young present and participating. How do we make meaning out of our journey in the light of God, and honor each other along the way?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still not sure what the best way to worship is, but he's got a strong bias towards communion at the heart of it. Tell him where you find the heart of worship without quoting Matt Redman at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
Cross currents and communion in church
___
Jaroslav Pelikan, the great Christian historian, was asked to address the problems and opportunities churches faced with ancient liturgies, modern tastes for innovation, and debates over how to honor both the old and the new.
His response still echoes in the ears of many worship leaders and spiritual teachers decades later: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."
My dad liked to point out that the measure of a community was how it cares for the most vulnerable, the least powerful. So the Bible teaches that our social priorities should emphasize the support of widows and orphans, strangers and sojourners. His observation, though, was that we really need to be mindful of how we tend to the dead.
Tombstones can't defend themselves. Cemeteries have a somewhat limited constituency. But a community that cares gently and reverently for such memorials and locations is probably one that understands how to make provision for the more lively groups of underserved people.
And when it comes to tradition, G.K. Chesterton was onto the same thing when he said "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead."
Pelikan's observation is a reminder that it's just as unhealthy to give the deceased an absolute veto. How to reflect on tradition today is tricky in all sorts of situations. What would Dorothy Day say about some political development? How would Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King take a stand about a current event? You can't just unplug them from their context and drop them as if living into today; when that's done rhetorically, it's usually to serve the speaker's purposes, which might well not be those of their historical figure's intentions.
In worship, though, we can trace some odd and interesting patterns through history that give us hints, if not clear direction on how to do our services "the right way." Among Protestants, I can point out five or six different distinct eras over just the last few centuries where one generation innovated in terms of music and preaching, in the next few decades it became a norm, and then a rising generation comes along to look at the last innovations as dated and uninspiring while their elders defend that now beleaguered model as "tradition." Lather, rinse, repeat. Congregational singing versus professional choirs, or open air preaching with popular songs adapted, jostling alongside of Psalmody which gives way to Watts's hymnbook, organs displacing ad hoc instrumentals, electronic amplification and backing instrumentals on cassette tape, Singspiration and "Gaither music" to praise bands to . . . whatever is next.
I did not grow up in a liturgical tradition, but in a tradition that had many givens which were a de facto liturgy. Total improvisation and spontaneity were considered a mode for different churches, not for us. Now many of the churches I've guest preached at in the last two decades have had effectively no order of worship or set prayers, just an outline of "music, prayer, offering, more prayer, preaching, last song." I miss sometimes a style I've never really known, some ancient elements and parts of worship that connect us to generations before, which can offer continuity with those yet to come.
One of my phrases about what worship is for, when I'm in a space where that question can be discussed, is that at heart I think regular worship is made up of equal parts "birthing classes and funeral rehearsals."
If you've not had the opportunity either as a male partner or female directly involved party to attend birthing classes, they spend a fair amount of time teaching you how to breathe. Yes, even the man. Practice now, because you don't want to try to learn this later. Things will happen fast! But you are preparing with expectation for new life to join the family.
Funeral rehearsals are less something anyone has gotten to do, I suspect, but in a sense we are doing it every time we think about eternity, after us, the time to come. Preparing ourselves and those around us for the hard reality of what happens after life goes on, without us.
Birthing classes and funeral rehearsals. Every faith community is doing this in their gatherings, and it's where you really need the perspectives of both the old and the young present and participating. How do we make meaning out of our journey in the light of God, and honor each other along the way?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still not sure what the best way to worship is, but he's got a strong bias towards communion at the heart of it. Tell him where you find the heart of worship without quoting Matt Redman at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Sunday, January 23, 2022
Faith Works 1-29-22
Faith Works 1-29-22
Jeff Gill
Cross sections and cross country living
___
65, 62, 34, 62, 70, 85.
That's the story of the Gill men from the first to arrive here from England in 1777 to my father as that last figure, in terms of how many years each lived.
6, 8, 2, 11, 6, 4 . . . 1.
And on my paternal side, that's the story of how many children each had. To be honest, 6 & 8 are guesses; my dad and I tried to pin down just how many were born to John & Margaret and then to James & Rachel, but between spotty records and broken tombstones, we're not sure.
The one who only made it to 34 was a Civil War soldier who died three years after the shooting stopped, but we believe in part because of the impact of his service, and so William & Elizabeth had only 2 children.
That concluding "1" is me, with one child. There's a whole narrative of America's demographic history in those sequences of ages and family size. In general, people are living longer; in general, families are getting smaller. And I could add one more illustrative sequence: Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Texas by way of Indiana. After leaving Leeds in West Yorkshire in 1777, the Gills were in the Keystone State for four generations, but then young Harry went west with the railroads and his six children began to scatter across the country after World War II, and you know where one of Ron's kids ended up.
All of which is to say: we've never done this before. If caring for increasingly elderly parents even as we're starting to feel the bite of aging ourselves, across state lines and time zones, with changes in how estates are set up and powers of attorney operate, seems challenging and unprecedented, it's because this set of circumstances is pretty much unique in human history. We're making it up as we go, hoping our children are taking notes because we barely have time to stop and take stock.
Yes, people have lived to 100 centuries ago — but not so many. Yes, memory loss has been problematic before in human history, but it tended to start earlier, back when turning 50 was considered getting old, and such issues lasted a shorter period of someone's life, because life expectancy was shorter. You may have heard it noted that the original age for Social Security at 65 was established in the 1930s because the average lifespan was 67.
As individuals and families are learning how to cope with situations that are, at scale, essentially new and unprecedented, so too have faith communities had to figure some things out from scratch. In terms of buildings, we've retrofitted with ramps and elevators, and new construction tends to emphasize grade level plans and wider doorways, but the challenges we're still sorting out have to do with worship and congregational culture and community.
Again, if it feels like we're into new territory, we really are. Having such a range of ages and experiences in the church family, along with the tensions of increased mobility and access, means a "typical" church looks very different than my grandfather's did in Anita, Iowa. Big families and generational stability have given way to more scattered and blended households, with new faces the norm rather than the exception.
What churches of all sorts still offer, for all the change we've had in our culture and communities, is the opportunity to have intergenerational experiences. Even newer contemporary worship oriented churches tend to attract at least a critical mass of older persons, and in whatever setting, the reality in our modern society is that it's incredibly easy for children to grow up not only without being around older people very much, they may well not even be around their own grandparents much. As we celebrate the new investment and employment coming to Licking County, it occurs to me that it will also mean hundreds and even thousands of people leaving family and roots behind elsewhere to come here, looking not only for work but also for a place to put down new roots.
Churches can and should and must be a place for putting down roots. Like a tree planted by the water. Jeremiah 17:8 tells us about our personal basic commitments, and how we need to find the right place, a location that promotes healthy growth in relationship to God. I believe we do better with that when we are surrounded by people from a variety of backgrounds, and that includes a diversity of ages.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got one more installment on this theme in mind. Tell him about how you see intergenerational encounters as important for growth at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
Cross sections and cross country living
___
65, 62, 34, 62, 70, 85.
That's the story of the Gill men from the first to arrive here from England in 1777 to my father as that last figure, in terms of how many years each lived.
6, 8, 2, 11, 6, 4 . . . 1.
And on my paternal side, that's the story of how many children each had. To be honest, 6 & 8 are guesses; my dad and I tried to pin down just how many were born to John & Margaret and then to James & Rachel, but between spotty records and broken tombstones, we're not sure.
The one who only made it to 34 was a Civil War soldier who died three years after the shooting stopped, but we believe in part because of the impact of his service, and so William & Elizabeth had only 2 children.
That concluding "1" is me, with one child. There's a whole narrative of America's demographic history in those sequences of ages and family size. In general, people are living longer; in general, families are getting smaller. And I could add one more illustrative sequence: Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Texas by way of Indiana. After leaving Leeds in West Yorkshire in 1777, the Gills were in the Keystone State for four generations, but then young Harry went west with the railroads and his six children began to scatter across the country after World War II, and you know where one of Ron's kids ended up.
All of which is to say: we've never done this before. If caring for increasingly elderly parents even as we're starting to feel the bite of aging ourselves, across state lines and time zones, with changes in how estates are set up and powers of attorney operate, seems challenging and unprecedented, it's because this set of circumstances is pretty much unique in human history. We're making it up as we go, hoping our children are taking notes because we barely have time to stop and take stock.
Yes, people have lived to 100 centuries ago — but not so many. Yes, memory loss has been problematic before in human history, but it tended to start earlier, back when turning 50 was considered getting old, and such issues lasted a shorter period of someone's life, because life expectancy was shorter. You may have heard it noted that the original age for Social Security at 65 was established in the 1930s because the average lifespan was 67.
As individuals and families are learning how to cope with situations that are, at scale, essentially new and unprecedented, so too have faith communities had to figure some things out from scratch. In terms of buildings, we've retrofitted with ramps and elevators, and new construction tends to emphasize grade level plans and wider doorways, but the challenges we're still sorting out have to do with worship and congregational culture and community.
Again, if it feels like we're into new territory, we really are. Having such a range of ages and experiences in the church family, along with the tensions of increased mobility and access, means a "typical" church looks very different than my grandfather's did in Anita, Iowa. Big families and generational stability have given way to more scattered and blended households, with new faces the norm rather than the exception.
What churches of all sorts still offer, for all the change we've had in our culture and communities, is the opportunity to have intergenerational experiences. Even newer contemporary worship oriented churches tend to attract at least a critical mass of older persons, and in whatever setting, the reality in our modern society is that it's incredibly easy for children to grow up not only without being around older people very much, they may well not even be around their own grandparents much. As we celebrate the new investment and employment coming to Licking County, it occurs to me that it will also mean hundreds and even thousands of people leaving family and roots behind elsewhere to come here, looking not only for work but also for a place to put down new roots.
Churches can and should and must be a place for putting down roots. Like a tree planted by the water. Jeremiah 17:8 tells us about our personal basic commitments, and how we need to find the right place, a location that promotes healthy growth in relationship to God. I believe we do better with that when we are surrounded by people from a variety of backgrounds, and that includes a diversity of ages.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got one more installment on this theme in mind. Tell him about how you see intergenerational encounters as important for growth at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Sunday, January 16, 2022
Faith Works 1-22-22
Faith Works 1-22-22
Jeff Gill
Faith communities and who's in the pews
___
Talking about how to talk to persons, family or friends, who are losing their short term memory is clearly a subject many readers are interested in.
Thank you for the many kind messages and emails, and I do try to respond to all of them; the response these last two weeks reaffirms what really got me writing about this, which is that there are many, many, many of us who are in this situation.
I've read (and had sent to me these last few weeks) some very useful, pointed articles about how to read the warning signs about when a person, usually but not always elderly, is no longer able to live safely on their own. It's both grim and familiar reading.
But the bigger picture I'm trying to sketch is just how often you might find yourself dealing with someone who is not incompetent, not easily maneuvered (not to say manipulated), and who in many cases knows just as well as you do that they are no longer safe living on their own, but is just rational enough to be able to keep you at bay (not to say lying to you).
Which is also why I want to turn to the question of the wider community, and faith communities in particular. These last few columns were much more personal, though I noted and do see an aspect of spiritual discipline in what the experience of helping someone is like for the helper. Slowing down, taking time, being patient: all of us can benefit from these practices, and if you haven't been able to engage in them on your own, caring for someone whose cognitive skills are declining will give you a boost in a hurry. Because you have to slow down right now (irony, anyone?) to be of true service to someone who is walking and moving and thinking more slowly than they once did. Right now. Slow it on down.
Churches and pastors have been out in front on these questions for a very long time. I had my first experience with a family asking me to help them "talk to mom" in 1985, about car keys and steps and food. I like to think I've gotten better at those conversations, but they're never easier.
But before World War II, the assumptions about aging and the elderly and infirm were very, very different. We kept putting steps on churches long after we no longer needed to keep the front door up above the dust cloud from passing carriages and buggies. Sound levels and temperature controls weren't the same sort of issue, choir lofts were often in very hard to access locations for the young and mobile, and including people in wheelchairs or walkers wasn't on the drafting table until well into, well, my era.
In part, because we didn't live as long. In large part, because if you did get old, it was assumed you stayed home. No cataract surgeries or hip replacements, and aging tended to equal being home-bound.
In more recent decades, having lots of people in their eighties and nineties in church became not only more common, but an imperative to support. Older people after Medicare were more likely to not just stay living on their own but even to travel (insert long economic discussion here that we can't have right now), and with medical advances and simply general social acceptance — all good things, mind you! — if stores and businesses and restaurants made it possible for physically limited people to be present, so should churches, and we did.
This launched two complementary shifts in church life: on the one hand, the increasing presence and role of very old people in church life changed how we did corporate worship. Again, there's a volume to be written on this, but I know many ideas in my time in ministry have been shot down with "the older people can't do that." So we adapt and adjust, and there's an important aspect of inclusion in those cautions.
But it also helped spur the other shift: to youth ministry and youth worship. If the median age on many Sunday mornings after the 1950s started to increase, that helped support the idea of "a service for the young people." And to jump ahead again, those services led directly to the rise of contemporary style worship.
I'm perfectly aware that there are 99 year olds who seek out and prefer contemporary worship with praise bands, and 20-somethings who crave liturgy and quiet. What I'm inviting us to reflect on is how there are general trends at work, with certain outcomes we'll come back to.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not as young as he used to be, but youthful enough to look over both sides of the fence. Tell him how you find worship fulfilling at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
Faith communities and who's in the pews
___
Talking about how to talk to persons, family or friends, who are losing their short term memory is clearly a subject many readers are interested in.
Thank you for the many kind messages and emails, and I do try to respond to all of them; the response these last two weeks reaffirms what really got me writing about this, which is that there are many, many, many of us who are in this situation.
I've read (and had sent to me these last few weeks) some very useful, pointed articles about how to read the warning signs about when a person, usually but not always elderly, is no longer able to live safely on their own. It's both grim and familiar reading.
But the bigger picture I'm trying to sketch is just how often you might find yourself dealing with someone who is not incompetent, not easily maneuvered (not to say manipulated), and who in many cases knows just as well as you do that they are no longer safe living on their own, but is just rational enough to be able to keep you at bay (not to say lying to you).
Which is also why I want to turn to the question of the wider community, and faith communities in particular. These last few columns were much more personal, though I noted and do see an aspect of spiritual discipline in what the experience of helping someone is like for the helper. Slowing down, taking time, being patient: all of us can benefit from these practices, and if you haven't been able to engage in them on your own, caring for someone whose cognitive skills are declining will give you a boost in a hurry. Because you have to slow down right now (irony, anyone?) to be of true service to someone who is walking and moving and thinking more slowly than they once did. Right now. Slow it on down.
Churches and pastors have been out in front on these questions for a very long time. I had my first experience with a family asking me to help them "talk to mom" in 1985, about car keys and steps and food. I like to think I've gotten better at those conversations, but they're never easier.
But before World War II, the assumptions about aging and the elderly and infirm were very, very different. We kept putting steps on churches long after we no longer needed to keep the front door up above the dust cloud from passing carriages and buggies. Sound levels and temperature controls weren't the same sort of issue, choir lofts were often in very hard to access locations for the young and mobile, and including people in wheelchairs or walkers wasn't on the drafting table until well into, well, my era.
In part, because we didn't live as long. In large part, because if you did get old, it was assumed you stayed home. No cataract surgeries or hip replacements, and aging tended to equal being home-bound.
In more recent decades, having lots of people in their eighties and nineties in church became not only more common, but an imperative to support. Older people after Medicare were more likely to not just stay living on their own but even to travel (insert long economic discussion here that we can't have right now), and with medical advances and simply general social acceptance — all good things, mind you! — if stores and businesses and restaurants made it possible for physically limited people to be present, so should churches, and we did.
This launched two complementary shifts in church life: on the one hand, the increasing presence and role of very old people in church life changed how we did corporate worship. Again, there's a volume to be written on this, but I know many ideas in my time in ministry have been shot down with "the older people can't do that." So we adapt and adjust, and there's an important aspect of inclusion in those cautions.
But it also helped spur the other shift: to youth ministry and youth worship. If the median age on many Sunday mornings after the 1950s started to increase, that helped support the idea of "a service for the young people." And to jump ahead again, those services led directly to the rise of contemporary style worship.
I'm perfectly aware that there are 99 year olds who seek out and prefer contemporary worship with praise bands, and 20-somethings who crave liturgy and quiet. What I'm inviting us to reflect on is how there are general trends at work, with certain outcomes we'll come back to.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not as young as he used to be, but youthful enough to look over both sides of the fence. Tell him how you find worship fulfilling at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Monday, January 10, 2022
Notes from my Knapsack 1-20-22
Notes from my Knapsack 1-20-22
Jeff Gill
Something about a bridge
___
My personal and professional bias has long been to emphasize the positive.
One reason is that there seems to be plenty of negativity out there, so I can stand out in what I like to think of as useful ways by looking on the bright side. Annoyingly so, I've been told, but I'm an unrepentant optimist, at least in public persona.
Internally, I can whine and complain with the best of y'all. Seriously, it's not hard, and the fact that it comes so easily is what makes me work at being chipper and upbeat. Curmudgeonly is an easy riff for a columnist, and that's a rut I want to avoid, since it might just become all consuming.
But then I heard or read a few comments about "our beautiful new bridge," and my inner Andy Rooney rose up in high dudgeon.
The bridge over Rt. 16, the Rt. 37 aka Lancaster Road bridge, is wider. It's better, that I wouldn't dispute. We needed more lanes, improved ramps. I'm glad it was built.
But beautiful?
Louis Sullivan said in 1896 "that form ever follows function." This architectural principle boiled down to "form follows function" has a Wikipedia page, and if you look up that page, you find a picture of a building on Newark's courthouse square. Go ahead, look it up.
Modernism and brutalism have their strengths and weaknesses as architectural schools, but one key element they communicate is that if you use glass and steel or concrete, let it show. Don't try to pretend your structure is something it isn't.
The attempts to pretend in pseudo-ornament that the new highway bridge at our village gateway is stonework manages to insult the viewer even as it fools no one. I don't get it, and I fear money was spent to make it look "pretty" when letting it look plain and honest might just wear better over time.
Alligator skin is more what the concrete panels bring to mind, inscribed to "resemble" stones, or a very small child's drawing of a stone wall. The similar panels to our west, on the Rt. 37 & 310 overpasses, are not improved by the mildew stains they tend to nurture and display to passersby.
And along with what the project description said would be "aesthetic harmonization" with nearby overpasses, there's how the name "Granville" was placed. The bridge slopes fairly significantly down from the south to the north, so a word put in alignment with the deck means it views from the road at an angle. To me, it just looks a bit . . . off. There's some humor in that the proclamation "Granville" leans to the right if you're driving west, but to the left heading east, and that might sum up our divided politics in some ways, but it just doesn't quite work for me. I get that if it's to be embossed in the concrete, that's how it had to go, but . . . could we have passed on the concrete, put up a sign on the level, even if we had to repaint or replace it every ten years or so?
So of course the lamps, the "ornamental lamps" on the bridge, are installed perpendicular to the deck, angled as it is. Meaning they aren't perpendicular to gravity, which makes me wonder long term how wise that was. Maybe there's not much metal or bolt strain compared to wind and rain, but again they just look a bit . . . off. Leaning, not in a Pisan sort of way.
In time, I'm sure this all will settle into the landscape as how it's always been, unremarkable and not worth comment. But for now, I felt a need to say this in print: vertical lamps, plain concrete, no fake stone marks, and at most some Ionic capital outlines lightly embossed at the tops of the pillars. Less would be more, along with form a little more closely following function.
What we have is trying to hard to be something it's not, and too late to change it. Which might be a lesson if not a metaphor for our community in its own right.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's no architect but he knows what he likes. Tell him why he's wrong if you like at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
Something about a bridge
___
My personal and professional bias has long been to emphasize the positive.
One reason is that there seems to be plenty of negativity out there, so I can stand out in what I like to think of as useful ways by looking on the bright side. Annoyingly so, I've been told, but I'm an unrepentant optimist, at least in public persona.
Internally, I can whine and complain with the best of y'all. Seriously, it's not hard, and the fact that it comes so easily is what makes me work at being chipper and upbeat. Curmudgeonly is an easy riff for a columnist, and that's a rut I want to avoid, since it might just become all consuming.
But then I heard or read a few comments about "our beautiful new bridge," and my inner Andy Rooney rose up in high dudgeon.
The bridge over Rt. 16, the Rt. 37 aka Lancaster Road bridge, is wider. It's better, that I wouldn't dispute. We needed more lanes, improved ramps. I'm glad it was built.
But beautiful?
Louis Sullivan said in 1896 "that form ever follows function." This architectural principle boiled down to "form follows function" has a Wikipedia page, and if you look up that page, you find a picture of a building on Newark's courthouse square. Go ahead, look it up.
Modernism and brutalism have their strengths and weaknesses as architectural schools, but one key element they communicate is that if you use glass and steel or concrete, let it show. Don't try to pretend your structure is something it isn't.
The attempts to pretend in pseudo-ornament that the new highway bridge at our village gateway is stonework manages to insult the viewer even as it fools no one. I don't get it, and I fear money was spent to make it look "pretty" when letting it look plain and honest might just wear better over time.
Alligator skin is more what the concrete panels bring to mind, inscribed to "resemble" stones, or a very small child's drawing of a stone wall. The similar panels to our west, on the Rt. 37 & 310 overpasses, are not improved by the mildew stains they tend to nurture and display to passersby.
And along with what the project description said would be "aesthetic harmonization" with nearby overpasses, there's how the name "Granville" was placed. The bridge slopes fairly significantly down from the south to the north, so a word put in alignment with the deck means it views from the road at an angle. To me, it just looks a bit . . . off. There's some humor in that the proclamation "Granville" leans to the right if you're driving west, but to the left heading east, and that might sum up our divided politics in some ways, but it just doesn't quite work for me. I get that if it's to be embossed in the concrete, that's how it had to go, but . . . could we have passed on the concrete, put up a sign on the level, even if we had to repaint or replace it every ten years or so?
So of course the lamps, the "ornamental lamps" on the bridge, are installed perpendicular to the deck, angled as it is. Meaning they aren't perpendicular to gravity, which makes me wonder long term how wise that was. Maybe there's not much metal or bolt strain compared to wind and rain, but again they just look a bit . . . off. Leaning, not in a Pisan sort of way.
In time, I'm sure this all will settle into the landscape as how it's always been, unremarkable and not worth comment. But for now, I felt a need to say this in print: vertical lamps, plain concrete, no fake stone marks, and at most some Ionic capital outlines lightly embossed at the tops of the pillars. Less would be more, along with form a little more closely following function.
What we have is trying to hard to be something it's not, and too late to change it. Which might be a lesson if not a metaphor for our community in its own right.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's no architect but he knows what he likes. Tell him why he's wrong if you like at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Faith Works 1-15-22
Faith Works 1-15-22
Jeff Gill
Stories and memories both near and far
___
Last week I talked about a wonderful community, a welcoming fellowship, of adult children who are working through the challenges of caring for aging, medically frail but insistently independent parents.
When I say independent, I'm tempted to put quotes around the word, and not doing so is part of the dance around dignity that is what so many of us working to support elderly parents know so well about each other. It's a dance around confrontation and pivots around the truth, including the most difficult maneuver of all: how to answer the direct question "I'm doing pretty well on my own, don't you agree?"
A few folks have counseled candor, a direct "no, you are not." Column lengths don't allow me to outline why that's not an effective strategy, at least in our case (other than to note that someone who's never been wrong in nine decades previously isn't likely to respond warmly to contradiction at 92).
Indirection and misdirection and redirection, though: these are strategies which almost anyone can use. Confrontation with someone whose short term memory is mostly gone is frankly a useless strategy, and I've surprised myself at some of the remarkable statements it turns out I can agree with, facts to the contrary. If a confused and anxious elder wants to insist Daniel D. Tompkins was the Vice President under John Quincy Adams, sometimes you just smile and agree (to you, dear reader, I am forced to note he served under James Monroe; that's right, Kris Kringle was incorrect, make of it what you will).
A much more rewarding approach is to find solid ground and go for a walk there. By which I mean the more distant past. There is an interval, for those who are slowly losing their ability to navigate the recent past, where their memories of the 1930s or 40s or 50s is sharp, detailed, and vivid. Ask whether they took their morning medications (okay, ask ME) and you might get a blank look, but ask what color the old farmhouse on 30th Street was, and you might just get the trim, shutters, stoop, and shed thrown in for good measure.
But I have to tell you, whether you've done this sort of supportive caregiving or not, there's a trick or two to this process of entering the past. And for we who are at least a bit younger, it might be where there's more than a bit of spiritual discipline for us to learn and grow from, not just in the historical and genealogical tidbits you'll gain.
For many elderly persons, when an adult child or inquisitive grandchild or interested third party asks about events, say, in 1943, the first response is very likely to be "Oh, that's a long time ago." Or "my, I don't remember much about back then."
This is where you have to trust me. If there's a rationale to why you're asking, if you're a relative or someone with a personal connection to the person you're asking, here's the key. If a question gets you an initial "can't imagine I'd remember something from those days," you need to wait. In silence. Patiently. If you poke and prod and push, you'll likely get the mental heels digging in. But again and again over the years, I've learned that "son, that was a long time ago, can't recall very well" isn't an ending, but a prelude.
You sit with them, calmly, and let the silence sit. And more often then not, you'll start to hear a story. Be patient. Oh, and don't be picky. I've started out trying to learn more about his older brothers, and ended up hearing riveting details about a Navy blimp landing across the street from his house when he was six. You eat what is set before you on the memory buffet. Maybe you get to go back for seconds, or possibly you'll ultimately get back around to the brothers, but you learn to delight in and even be thankful for what you get.
Ask questions, accept the initial hesitation, and just listen. Listen, listen, listen. I've done this with people who can't quite recall the year, their location, even their own name, but a few gentle cues and a starting "that was long ago indeed" and suddenly you're hearing a rich and detailed tale. It may not be the one you thought you were looking for, but it's almost always one worth hearing.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he isn't always sure about his memory, either. Tell him how you've learned to listen at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
Stories and memories both near and far
___
Last week I talked about a wonderful community, a welcoming fellowship, of adult children who are working through the challenges of caring for aging, medically frail but insistently independent parents.
When I say independent, I'm tempted to put quotes around the word, and not doing so is part of the dance around dignity that is what so many of us working to support elderly parents know so well about each other. It's a dance around confrontation and pivots around the truth, including the most difficult maneuver of all: how to answer the direct question "I'm doing pretty well on my own, don't you agree?"
A few folks have counseled candor, a direct "no, you are not." Column lengths don't allow me to outline why that's not an effective strategy, at least in our case (other than to note that someone who's never been wrong in nine decades previously isn't likely to respond warmly to contradiction at 92).
Indirection and misdirection and redirection, though: these are strategies which almost anyone can use. Confrontation with someone whose short term memory is mostly gone is frankly a useless strategy, and I've surprised myself at some of the remarkable statements it turns out I can agree with, facts to the contrary. If a confused and anxious elder wants to insist Daniel D. Tompkins was the Vice President under John Quincy Adams, sometimes you just smile and agree (to you, dear reader, I am forced to note he served under James Monroe; that's right, Kris Kringle was incorrect, make of it what you will).
A much more rewarding approach is to find solid ground and go for a walk there. By which I mean the more distant past. There is an interval, for those who are slowly losing their ability to navigate the recent past, where their memories of the 1930s or 40s or 50s is sharp, detailed, and vivid. Ask whether they took their morning medications (okay, ask ME) and you might get a blank look, but ask what color the old farmhouse on 30th Street was, and you might just get the trim, shutters, stoop, and shed thrown in for good measure.
But I have to tell you, whether you've done this sort of supportive caregiving or not, there's a trick or two to this process of entering the past. And for we who are at least a bit younger, it might be where there's more than a bit of spiritual discipline for us to learn and grow from, not just in the historical and genealogical tidbits you'll gain.
For many elderly persons, when an adult child or inquisitive grandchild or interested third party asks about events, say, in 1943, the first response is very likely to be "Oh, that's a long time ago." Or "my, I don't remember much about back then."
This is where you have to trust me. If there's a rationale to why you're asking, if you're a relative or someone with a personal connection to the person you're asking, here's the key. If a question gets you an initial "can't imagine I'd remember something from those days," you need to wait. In silence. Patiently. If you poke and prod and push, you'll likely get the mental heels digging in. But again and again over the years, I've learned that "son, that was a long time ago, can't recall very well" isn't an ending, but a prelude.
You sit with them, calmly, and let the silence sit. And more often then not, you'll start to hear a story. Be patient. Oh, and don't be picky. I've started out trying to learn more about his older brothers, and ended up hearing riveting details about a Navy blimp landing across the street from his house when he was six. You eat what is set before you on the memory buffet. Maybe you get to go back for seconds, or possibly you'll ultimately get back around to the brothers, but you learn to delight in and even be thankful for what you get.
Ask questions, accept the initial hesitation, and just listen. Listen, listen, listen. I've done this with people who can't quite recall the year, their location, even their own name, but a few gentle cues and a starting "that was long ago indeed" and suddenly you're hearing a rich and detailed tale. It may not be the one you thought you were looking for, but it's almost always one worth hearing.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he isn't always sure about his memory, either. Tell him how you've learned to listen at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Tuesday, January 04, 2022
Faith Works 1-8-22
Faith Works 1-8-22
Jeff Gill
Time and again, then and now
___
In the last couple of years, my wife and I have been introduced to a wonderful community, a welcoming fellowship.
They were all around us all along, but we didn't have the invocation ready before, we didn't know the liturgy or the terminology or the gestures. Now, what's amazing is how easy it is to feel included, how quickly we find fellow members in the most unexpected situations.
At work, in stores, getting our hair cut, just random encounters, it comes up: people our age who are caring for elderly parents who are losing their full range of abilities, physically or cognitively, but who are insistent, even angry about how they're doing just fine. Folks like us who are helping to keep multiple residences and vehicles and utilities going while having to support a general impression of independence, with regular imprecations about "living in an institution."
(General pastoral note to any and all who are reading this: friends, please, I beg you, never ask your children to promise never to place you into a nursing home, assisted living, care facility, or even institution. Because the odds are that most of us will have to spend some time in such a non-ideal location for our care, and it's also true that something like 75% or more of all who go into one do not, in fact, die there. They are means to an end, and the end is not always ours to determine, but please, just promise me you won't make your children promise you'll never have to leave your home.)
It is startling to realize just how many people in the 45 to 65 range are dealing with these issues, and it's rewarding to talk, even in passing with relative strangers, about how others are dealing with the same challenges. Getting bills paid on time, doing laundry, handling major household repairs. There's respecting elders and protecting personal pride, and there's health and safety and basic dignity. And yes, it often involves having to, um, not tell the truth. Which itself involves a number of personal compromises and conflicts between reality and loudly argued insistence as to how things once were, should be, or are even in the face of obvious contradiction.
You don't want to embarrass or humiliate anyone, let alone parents or beloved relatives, but you also have to find a path to deal with rock bottom realities that have to be treated as the hard facts that they are. Even if you're told that black is white and up is down and the year is 1972, or at least it ought to be and darn it, it is. So you nod and agree and make agreeable noises as you deal with 2022 and messes and wear and tear and decay, starting in the fridge.
And pray you don't have to replace the thirty year old fridge making ominous noises because you're not sure what other emotional eruptions it will evoke when strange men come in and take it away and put something new and not the same in its place.
These are odd challenges to deal with, but many, MANY are dealing with them. Or their first cousins. And the moment you mention something about an older parent living on their own who needs help to do so, you find there's someone a few feet away who is playing the same tune in a different key. Quickly, you start to sing together a song that you both know, and sometimes you even pick up a trio or a quartet before you're done.
Harmony isn't quite the word for it, but community is. We are many, and we're doing the best we can, and sometimes that's not quite enough. But it's true that learning you're not alone is incredibly redemptive, reassuring, even restorative. It's a strange kind of church we've joined, the fellowship of the facilitators. Let all God's people say: Amen.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's happy to hear from anyone who's in the same circumstance as he and his wife are. Tell him how you're making the implausible work out at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
Time and again, then and now
___
In the last couple of years, my wife and I have been introduced to a wonderful community, a welcoming fellowship.
They were all around us all along, but we didn't have the invocation ready before, we didn't know the liturgy or the terminology or the gestures. Now, what's amazing is how easy it is to feel included, how quickly we find fellow members in the most unexpected situations.
At work, in stores, getting our hair cut, just random encounters, it comes up: people our age who are caring for elderly parents who are losing their full range of abilities, physically or cognitively, but who are insistent, even angry about how they're doing just fine. Folks like us who are helping to keep multiple residences and vehicles and utilities going while having to support a general impression of independence, with regular imprecations about "living in an institution."
(General pastoral note to any and all who are reading this: friends, please, I beg you, never ask your children to promise never to place you into a nursing home, assisted living, care facility, or even institution. Because the odds are that most of us will have to spend some time in such a non-ideal location for our care, and it's also true that something like 75% or more of all who go into one do not, in fact, die there. They are means to an end, and the end is not always ours to determine, but please, just promise me you won't make your children promise you'll never have to leave your home.)
It is startling to realize just how many people in the 45 to 65 range are dealing with these issues, and it's rewarding to talk, even in passing with relative strangers, about how others are dealing with the same challenges. Getting bills paid on time, doing laundry, handling major household repairs. There's respecting elders and protecting personal pride, and there's health and safety and basic dignity. And yes, it often involves having to, um, not tell the truth. Which itself involves a number of personal compromises and conflicts between reality and loudly argued insistence as to how things once were, should be, or are even in the face of obvious contradiction.
You don't want to embarrass or humiliate anyone, let alone parents or beloved relatives, but you also have to find a path to deal with rock bottom realities that have to be treated as the hard facts that they are. Even if you're told that black is white and up is down and the year is 1972, or at least it ought to be and darn it, it is. So you nod and agree and make agreeable noises as you deal with 2022 and messes and wear and tear and decay, starting in the fridge.
And pray you don't have to replace the thirty year old fridge making ominous noises because you're not sure what other emotional eruptions it will evoke when strange men come in and take it away and put something new and not the same in its place.
These are odd challenges to deal with, but many, MANY are dealing with them. Or their first cousins. And the moment you mention something about an older parent living on their own who needs help to do so, you find there's someone a few feet away who is playing the same tune in a different key. Quickly, you start to sing together a song that you both know, and sometimes you even pick up a trio or a quartet before you're done.
Harmony isn't quite the word for it, but community is. We are many, and we're doing the best we can, and sometimes that's not quite enough. But it's true that learning you're not alone is incredibly redemptive, reassuring, even restorative. It's a strange kind of church we've joined, the fellowship of the facilitators. Let all God's people say: Amen.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's happy to hear from anyone who's in the same circumstance as he and his wife are. Tell him how you're making the implausible work out at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Monday, December 27, 2021
Faith Works 1-1-22
Faith Works 1-1-22
Jeff Gill
Thinking about a cup of sugar
___
If you read my four part story through December, you followed a young mother up and down the street she'd lived on for a few years, looking for a cup of sugar.
The story, a work of fiction built of scraps tugged out of my own reality, had a beginning in a staff training session I was asked to help with years ago, for a group working on housing issues in Licking County.
There were a number of elements to the visioning and planning day I was part of, but what's stuck with me was a group conversation I started with talking about the memory I had, growing up, of being sent across the street by my mom with a measuring cup in hand to get a cup of milk for making biscuits. Sometimes, it was Mrs. Stone coming over to our house for one egg because she needed three and found she only had two left, or Mrs. Glinski asking on the phone if Mom could send me over with two cups of flour.
I'm not saying it happened every day, or even every week, but it wasn't odd or unusual. And then at some point . . .
This is where the conversation really took off. Because the folks my age or older (I'm 60 now, but this was 10-15 years ago) all had variations on the same sort of memories from their childhood. Those who were younger, in their twenties and thirties, were kind of bemused by the whole idea. Go to a neighbor's house for supplies? Seriously?
What we both uncovered and bridged in the next few minutes was a bit of a generational gap in assumptions and expectations: a time when many families had one car, so if Dad wasn't home from work, "running to the store" wasn't even an option; a time when baking not only happened, but wasn't always from a pre-mixed box; a time when houses and fridges were smaller, when a few of us even recalled milk delivery in the morning, and the homes were closer together and even had sidewalks between them.
To be honest, I haven't asked a neighbor for baking ingredients in . . . decades. (I did have a bottle of wine show up on my front porch recently.) And both my wife and I have cars, we have a pantry and cupboards and if anything, I might find my supplies are dried or hardened or rancid, not used up. But there are still makers and bakers and grandmothers on many (most?) blocks in our communities, and while home-made snacks are out of bounds for most school events, there's still times and places where a plateful of homemade cookies are welcome sights, let alone tastes.
For all of the popularity of cooking shows and bake-offs and Martha Stewart with Snoop Dogg, it's not clear if actual food preparation is on the upswing in homes. The early pandemic period saw shortages of yeast packets and A-P flour and other home baking goods, but that demand seems to have settled back down to previous levels. Drive-up carryout pickup of food, home delivery services, and even resurgent inside dining all are showing our eating habits to be back to a fairly retail and individualized status.
So what's the path for what my story was really meant to be about, which is rebuilding community? What is the best recipe for mixing together our own memories of pies and cakes and cookies, punch and egg nog, potlucks and pitch-ins, to where the interest would rise for us to get together and share meals?
This is something that faith communities perhaps do best. For many of us, a shared meal, even with modest amounts of bread and wine, is the heart of our worship. And even traditions which make less of communion know the communing that can take place around covered dish dinners or after funeral luncheons. Sharing food is a taste of the holy, an eternal moment that can come during the lunch hour, and we need to find more ways to break bread together. Or to make cookies!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's enjoyed hearing from so many of you about your cookie recipes. Let him know how you'd get more people eating together at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Friday, December 24, 2021
Notes From My Knapsack 1-6-22
Notes From My Knapsack 1-6-22
Jeff Gill
St. Murphy, preserve us
___
Perhaps you've heard of St. Murphy, the apostle of low expectations.
Perhaps you've heard of St. Murphy, the apostle of low expectations.
No, he's not real, but the reality of low expectations leading to less disappointment certainly sums up 2021.
Tony Hillerman wrote a whole autobiography titled "Seldom Disappointed," from an impoverished Oklahoma rural upbringing through World War II and ultimately a successful career as a journalist and professor, let alone as a best-selling author. But in his youth, he learned that it was essential to keep your expectations in check.
That approach can sound somewhat depressing, except for how Hillerman made it clear that low expectations keeps some mental and spiritual space open for occasionally being pleasantly surprised. You aren't always going to get pleasant surprises in life, not even every day, but if you're open to the possibility while working with that which is — the unpleasant realities and everyday inconveniences — you might even be surprised by how often you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Murphy's Law says "whatever can go wrong, will." Finagle's Corollary adds "and at the worst possible time." Most engineers and technicians of my acquaintance tell me they live by these principles right up there with OSHA and NIOSH. If you're a devotee of St. Murphy, you expect stuff to break or wear out or not work, and when things do go right you're properly thankful for the occasion, as opposed to expecting that as a usual outcome.
More importantly, you are more likely to be prepared in advance for adverse outcomes when you expect them. You will seldom be disappointed at yourself by making ready for problems. "Be prepared" is the Scout motto, and always having two sources of illumination in your baggage on the road, or checking your tires and oil regularly, and keeping an extra coat and gloves and even a blanket in the back seat during the winter: you may never need them, but when you do, you're going to feel very thankful indeed that you put them there. A power outage in a strange bedroom, a breakdown on a lonely stretch of road, unexpected occurrences along the way can best be dealt with in advance, or at least better than in the moment when unprepared.
On a broader scale, this is why we have an NIH and a CDC for the national interest. We can debate, and no doubt will, how ready those agencies and scientists and bureaucrats were for the arrival of a "novel coronavirus," but the record shows that people like Anthony Fauci said years ago that their greatest fear looking ahead was something like what just happened. In the same way, journalists and even a few politicians talked in the 1990s about their concerns over what would happen in New Orleans if its levee system got a direct hit from a hurricane. It wasn't unanticipated, but we were unprepared . . . or at least not as prepared as we could have been.
How could we have been better prepared for COVID? I honestly don't know, but I know we need to look into how well we were prepared (which may be better than we think we were) and how we could have been better prepared (which likely would have been expensive, which always has to be taken into consideration).
Meanwhile, what will the rest of January look like? Let's just say . . . I have low expectations. But I'm open to being pleasantly surprised.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's a big believer in being prepared. Tell him about your expectations, great or otherwise, at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Notes from my Knapsack 12-23-21
Notes from my Knapsack 12-23-21
Jeff Gill
O little town on Raccoon Creek, how still…
___
Bishop Phillips Brooks went on a post-Civil War pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1868. Along the way from Jaffa to Jerusalem and on to the Dead Sea, his party visited Bethlehem, spending the night in a hostel just off Manger Square, near the Church of the Nativity built by the Emperor Justinian over the grotto where tradition says Jesus was born.
Late at night, Brooks looked out of his window onto the dark and quiet streets of that little town in the Judean hills. He saw the heavens above, and the stone below, the candle light flickering in the church windows across the way. And then he sat back down and began to write what was at first a poem.
"Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by."
Bethlehem 150-plus years ago was quiet after the sun went down and folks went to bed. During the day, pilgrims came and went, caravans were still passing through on their way from Hebron to Jerusalem, shepherds from the rural countryside passed tourists from Massachusetts and even farther afield. Manger Square and the road past Rachel's Tomb were bustling places. After dark, storefronts closed down and the streets cleared.
Two thousand years ago, how was it? The census staff closed down at dusk, the inns barred their doors, and families retreated to their homes and stables. Roads were empty, and the marketplace was quiet. Somewhere along a side street, a home for a relative of Joseph's hosted him and his betrothed, opening up a temporary lodging where her child could be born.
"The hopes and fears of all the years, are met in thee to-night."
Seventeen years ago, I remember driving slowly into Granville on Christmas Eve. The ice storm of December 23, 2004 had brought down power lines, added a thick coat of snow to pretty much everything, and by late in the day on the 24th, little light or heat was available to most people. Generators here and there allowed some Christmas Eve services to happen, along with the traditional candles. Power had been out for a while, but we knew that it would return in time.
The four corners church buildings showed varying amounts of feeble light through their glass, stained and otherwise, as did a few more on beyond the downtown core. The plows and shovelers had piled high along sidewalks and street sides the former obstacles in the roadways, and what light there was glittered off of ice and snow in equal measure coating trees and buildings and vehicles.
Twenty years before "O Little Town" was written as a poem, so too was "O Holy Night" drafted in France, by Placide Cappeau. Adolphe Adam wrote the music for it later, and John Sullivan Dwight translated the French words into English. There's a phrase in it I see alternatively "the weary world rejoices" or "the weary soul rejoices."
That's what I felt, for myself and for others, as I maneuvered around Christmas Eve that night. Power was far from restored in most homes, but the roads were cleared, and generators were out and operating, plus a night always beloved for candlelight now came into its own.
Granville was quiet and mostly still, but I could feel our weary souls rejoice. Above the deep snow-walled streets the silent stars twinkled brightly, and between them the glow of fellowship was streaming out of windows, giving hope to the wanderer.
May this Christmas Eve do the same for you in our little town.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's happy to skip the ice part of the story repeating itself. Tell him how you've found hope in the holiday season at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
O little town on Raccoon Creek, how still…
___
Bishop Phillips Brooks went on a post-Civil War pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1868. Along the way from Jaffa to Jerusalem and on to the Dead Sea, his party visited Bethlehem, spending the night in a hostel just off Manger Square, near the Church of the Nativity built by the Emperor Justinian over the grotto where tradition says Jesus was born.
Late at night, Brooks looked out of his window onto the dark and quiet streets of that little town in the Judean hills. He saw the heavens above, and the stone below, the candle light flickering in the church windows across the way. And then he sat back down and began to write what was at first a poem.
"Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by."
Bethlehem 150-plus years ago was quiet after the sun went down and folks went to bed. During the day, pilgrims came and went, caravans were still passing through on their way from Hebron to Jerusalem, shepherds from the rural countryside passed tourists from Massachusetts and even farther afield. Manger Square and the road past Rachel's Tomb were bustling places. After dark, storefronts closed down and the streets cleared.
Two thousand years ago, how was it? The census staff closed down at dusk, the inns barred their doors, and families retreated to their homes and stables. Roads were empty, and the marketplace was quiet. Somewhere along a side street, a home for a relative of Joseph's hosted him and his betrothed, opening up a temporary lodging where her child could be born.
"The hopes and fears of all the years, are met in thee to-night."
Seventeen years ago, I remember driving slowly into Granville on Christmas Eve. The ice storm of December 23, 2004 had brought down power lines, added a thick coat of snow to pretty much everything, and by late in the day on the 24th, little light or heat was available to most people. Generators here and there allowed some Christmas Eve services to happen, along with the traditional candles. Power had been out for a while, but we knew that it would return in time.
The four corners church buildings showed varying amounts of feeble light through their glass, stained and otherwise, as did a few more on beyond the downtown core. The plows and shovelers had piled high along sidewalks and street sides the former obstacles in the roadways, and what light there was glittered off of ice and snow in equal measure coating trees and buildings and vehicles.
Twenty years before "O Little Town" was written as a poem, so too was "O Holy Night" drafted in France, by Placide Cappeau. Adolphe Adam wrote the music for it later, and John Sullivan Dwight translated the French words into English. There's a phrase in it I see alternatively "the weary world rejoices" or "the weary soul rejoices."
That's what I felt, for myself and for others, as I maneuvered around Christmas Eve that night. Power was far from restored in most homes, but the roads were cleared, and generators were out and operating, plus a night always beloved for candlelight now came into its own.
Granville was quiet and mostly still, but I could feel our weary souls rejoice. Above the deep snow-walled streets the silent stars twinkled brightly, and between them the glow of fellowship was streaming out of windows, giving hope to the wanderer.
May this Christmas Eve do the same for you in our little town.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's happy to skip the ice part of the story repeating itself. Tell him how you've found hope in the holiday season at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Saturday, December 11, 2021
Faith Works 12-25-21
Faith Works 12-25-21
Jeff Gill
A cup of sugar, a story for the season
___
[In the Saturdays of December, a story is being told on the installment plan; this is the last of four parts.]
Mrs. Schaeffer at 642 was so happy to get her cookies from Mrs. Kern; as Melanie had been warned, it took a while, but from the front step she could see the procession of lights turned on one at a time inside until the older lady opened up her door.
"You're the young woman Mrs. Kern called me about, aren't you?"
"Yes, ma'am," was the instinctive reply. Mrs. Schaeffer was on a walker, but there was authority and strength in her voice that made her think of a teacher or professor of some sort.
"It's good of you to deliver these for her. If you could come on back to the kitchen and set them down; as you can see, I can't carry much." Pivoting around on the two wheels in the front of her walked, Mrs. Schaeffer made her way through the front room to the kitchen just through a wide archway.
"I'd make you a cup of coffee, but it's too late for either of us to be drinking that, even on a cold night." Mrs. Schaeffer stood herself up while standing within the security of the walker. "Can I invite you to come back some time and I promise you a good mugful, not that instant powder and hot water."
"Yes, certainly; I just have to get back to my boys tonight anyhow. But sure, sometime soon, I'd be happy to." Melanie realized she meant it, too.
"You still have some baking to do tonight, at any rate. Well, Merry Christmas to you and your sons, and I look forward to seeing you again. If you don't mind, just tug the door until it clicks behind you."
Melanie balanced the other two boxes she still had, and pulled the door shut, thinking about how she'd met more strangers tonight than she probably had in the last year, and both had felt like people she'd known for years. How odd, and all because of a cup of sugar.
She dropped the one box of cookies off at Mrs. Morley's at the door, the bag of sugar still under one arm, with a promise to check back in with her later, then finally back through her own front door.
The boys were in the back bedroom on a game console, and she sat down on a chair in her own kitchen, glancing up at the clock. It had felt like an epic adventure of a neighborhood sort, but barely half an hour had passed. Next to the stove already set to warm, the sifted flour and dry ingredients were there, and the bowl with softened butter waiting for the sugar was ready.
"Boys," Melanie called out. "Boys, come on into the kitchen."
"Boys," Melanie called out. "Boys, come on into the kitchen."
Another half hour later, it was bedtime, and a first batch of sugar cookies were out of the oven. "These smell great!" was the unanimous opinion. Then the remembered bag of sprinkles and colored sugar in the coat pocket came out, and a last delay of bedtime with a festival of decorating (and some sprinkles on the floor to sweep up later).
Each got to eat one warm, and then a reminder to brush teeth before getting into bed. Melanie asked them, before they left the kitchen, "How would you like to bake a few more batches and take them to our neighbors?" They agreed that would be cool, especially if they could decorate them, too.
With the boys off to sleep, Melanie sat at the kitchen table thinking about cups and pounds and batches, how much waxed paper she had plus a few shoeboxes in the hall closet. With that five pound bag of sugar less one cup from her first batch, she had nine cups left. Maybe six more batches of cookies to share? For Mrs. Morley next door and Mrs. Kern at 648 and Mrs. Schaeffer at 642, plus her office mate at work, and maybe one for each of the boys's teachers?
Suddenly, somehow, the holiday ahead seemed brighter, bigger, and just a bit more merry. She started in on the next batch; maybe two more before turning in tonight, and a couple more with the boys after school.
If she ran out of anything else, she'd just go down to Mrs. Kern's to ask. And she found herself hoping that she'd have to.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he hopes these columns have led a few people into baking their own batches of cookies. Let him know how you've gotten to share Christmas at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Faith Works 12-18-21
Faith Works 12-18-21
Jeff Gill
A cup of sugar, a story for the season
___
[In the Saturdays of December, a story is being told on the installment plan; this is part three of four.]
Melanie had never met Mrs. Kern at 648, but now she was expecting her.
Mrs. Morley, Melanie's next-door neighbor, she knew . . . well, as she walked down the street it occurred to her she didn't really know Mrs. Morley all that well. As a mother of two boys, she'd moved in a few years ago to this quiet residential street, looking for a good peaceful place to bring them up, but between her job and school and sports and then COVID, she'd really hardly met anyone in her neighborhood, and only knew Mrs. Morley because of her having taken the initiative to say hello, offer a hand at times, to simply smile and wave. That's why she'd found the nerve to walk over looking for a cup of sugar to finish a cookie recipe she'd started.
But those pictures on the piano? How long had her husband been gone, and where did her children live now, grown? Melanie realized she didn't know. Even so, the welcome that night included a bag of cookie toppings in one hand and a call to a neighbor Mrs. Morley did know promised to fill the measuring cup in her other hand.
Shifting the cup handle along with the dangling bag, she knocked at 648, and immediately the door inside the storm door swung in, steam clouding the glass. Then the outer door swung open, and a voice inside saying "come in, come in!"
Entering, Melanie saw a short, round little woman in a wide and long apron, white hair in a bun on the back of her head, who said as the storm door closed "You are just in the nick of time, I have cookies coming out, more going in, and all my supplies out on the counter! Follow me."
Mrs. Kern bustled through the living room into a brightly lit kitchen, tidy underneath but busy with bowls and trays and cookie sheets and wire racks everywhere.
"Now, dear," she went on, "you needed a cup of sugar, Martha said?" Melanie nodded, looking around at what seemed to be a veritable cookie factory. Then feeling rude, she added "yes, that's right, and you're so kind to offer to help."
"Oh, my, dear, cookies are my life. I was a school cook for years, and especially at Christmas, I just have to have a big project to make me feel at home in the season. So here…"
The older lady was holding out a bag, a full sack of five pounds of sugar. Melanie flinched, and said "oh, but I just need a cup!"
"Nonsense, dear," replied Mrs. Kern. "What about your next batch? Don't worry, I have plenty more in the pantry; it's easier for me to give you that little bagful than to parcel out a cup, easier for you to carry home. And as you go . . ."
"Nonsense, dear," replied Mrs. Kern. "What about your next batch? Don't worry, I have plenty more in the pantry; it's easier for me to give you that little bagful than to parcel out a cup, easier for you to carry home. And as you go . . ."
Melanie tucked the bag under one arm, and stuck the measuring cup back into her coat pocket, the bag of sprinkles into the other one. Looking up, she saw Mrs. Kern holding three boxes, bright with ribbon and stickers, out to her.
"If you would be so kind, I wanted to get a box of fresh cookies to Mrs. Morley, and also to old Mrs. Schaeffer at 642, if you wouldn't mind delivering those with my compliments. She may take a bit to get to the door, so be patient. And that third box is for you and your boys; if you'll send one of them over after school tomorrow, I'll have another boxful for you, but these over here are spoken for first thing in the morning. But one box worth won't be enough for two growing boys, not by half! I'm doing chocolate butterscotch chip cookies tomorrow, those in the box are just chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin."
"If you would be so kind, I wanted to get a box of fresh cookies to Mrs. Morley, and also to old Mrs. Schaeffer at 642, if you wouldn't mind delivering those with my compliments. She may take a bit to get to the door, so be patient. And that third box is for you and your boys; if you'll send one of them over after school tomorrow, I'll have another boxful for you, but these over here are spoken for first thing in the morning. But one box worth won't be enough for two growing boys, not by half! I'm doing chocolate butterscotch chip cookies tomorrow, those in the box are just chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin."
"Mrs. Kern," Melanie said taking the stack of boxes, "I just don't know what to say, but thank you . . ."
"Oh, no, dear, thank you for giving me a chance to help. It makes me happy to see a young woman in the neighborhood, and a baker, too! Anything you run out of, just come on by and ask. My boys keep me supplied: they say it keeps me off the streets."
"Oh, no, dear, thank you for giving me a chance to help. It makes me happy to see a young woman in the neighborhood, and a baker, too! Anything you run out of, just come on by and ask. My boys keep me supplied: they say it keeps me off the streets."
And so Melanie found herself walking down to 642 with a stack of cookie boxes in her arms.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been checking his pantry supplies as this story unfolds. Let him know what you are baking this Christmas at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Sunday, December 05, 2021
Faith Works 12-11-21
Faith Works 12-11-21
Jeff Gill
A cup of sugar, a story for the season
___
[In the Saturdays of Advent, a story is being told on the installment plan; this is part two of four.]
"Hello, Mrs. Morley," said Melanie. "Sorry to bother you this time of day."
It was dark out, but in December that didn't make it very late. Mrs. Morley smiled at her and said without a question "Come on in, dear."
Standing in the older lady's living room, she felt even more awkward than she had pausing at the door before she knocked, but the only way out is forward, as her dad used to say.
"Mrs. Morley, I hate to be a bother, but I'm in the middle of trying to make some sugar cookies with my boys, and like a fool…" Melanie pulled her hand out of her coat pocket, with the measuring cup in her hand. "I thought I had more sugar than I did, and I wondered if I could borrow a cup of sugar from you?"
"Mrs. Morley, I hate to be a bother, but I'm in the middle of trying to make some sugar cookies with my boys, and like a fool…" Melanie pulled her hand out of her coat pocket, with the measuring cup in her hand. "I thought I had more sugar than I did, and I wondered if I could borrow a cup of sugar from you?"
If anything, the neighbor's smile grew larger. "Oh, how sweet. What a lovely Christmas tradition for your sons to remember; just have a seat and let me go look."
Melanie sat down, and looked around the small and tidy living room, thinking of her own toy strewn family room next door. There was an upright piano across from the door, and a row of framed pictures across the top: a young man in an old hand-tinted picture wearing a military uniform of some kind, a couple in front of a Christmas tree (was that Mrs. Morley?), and a series of candid or school photos of a few young people who got older, left to right, until a wedding photo anchored the far end.
Shaking her head, Mrs. Morley came back into the room with a small bag in her hand. "If only you had needed eggs or flour! I'm exactly where you are, dear, I thought I had sugar and I don't except a few spoonfuls on the bottom of the crock. I am so sorry…"
Melanie got up and said "Please don't apologize. It was just on the chance you might, it will keep until tomorrow I guess."
Holding out the bag, Mrs. Morley replied "I do have just the solution. Mrs. Kern two doors down has plenty; I just called her. She's at 648, and will be waiting for you."
"Oh my, don't go to the bother of…" stuttered Melanie.
Mrs. Morley laughed. "Too late! I called her on the kitchen phone, it's the one she and I gossip on all the time. She's a baker; she used to be a school cook and can't stop making things for all sorts of events. Almost a caterer, she is, except her cooking is always a pleasant surprise."
"But before you go, just to contribute to your holiday project," she said holding the bag out more insistently, "I had some sprinkles and sparkles in red and green sugar that I'm not likely to use soon, which will be perfect for what you're doing. You'll do me a favor by taking them."
"But before you go, just to contribute to your holiday project," she said holding the bag out more insistently, "I had some sprinkles and sparkles in red and green sugar that I'm not likely to use soon, which will be perfect for what you're doing. You'll do me a favor by taking them."
Slowly accepting the bag, Melanie got up, and nodded. "Well, if she's waiting for me, I guess . . ."
"That's exactly right, dear. She's happy to hear about a mother wanting to bake cookies for her sons at Christmas, and delighted to help."
"That's exactly right, dear. She's happy to hear about a mother wanting to bake cookies for her sons at Christmas, and delighted to help."
After a few more wishes of the season, Melanie was back out the door, down the walk, then turning towards 648, to a nearly neighbor she'd never even met. What had she gotten herself into, she asked herself.
A bag in one pocket, and a measuring cup in the other, Melanie pulled her coat tightly around herself, and headed on down to the house after next, looking for that elusive cup of sugar.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's ready for some fresh baked cookies just writing this. Let him know what you think happens next at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Wednesday, December 01, 2021
Notes from my Knapsack 12-9-21
Notes from my Knapsack 12-9-21
Jeff Gill
Denison celebrates 190 years
___
In 1831, Ohio Baptists looked at their losses to competing religious groups in northeast Ohio, also known as the "Western Reserve", and in the southwestern part of the state around Cincinnati, and they took steps to create educational institutions to build up their tradition.
There weren't a great many Baptists in east central Ohio, but just enough, especially around Zanesville, to make a pitch for a proposed "Literary and Theological Institution" in their neck of the woods, in as yet uncontested ground by the competitors so common up around Kirtland and Mentor or down in Carthage and Mt. Healthy.
So it began, the Granville Literary and Theological Institution, formally launched December 13, 1831 by Ohio Baptists.
Obviously, the name was long and somewhat unwieldy, and even after they moved across Raccoon Creek through "miles of mud," from their former location to their new and lasting home atop Prospect Hill, it just wasn't a name to conjure with.
Financial struggles in the 1850s nearly closed down the relocated college, but a bachelor farmer who had cared for aging parents beyond the age of marriage and offspring offered, at the urging of his Muskingum County Baptist preacher, to fund a renewed university if they preserved his family name.
Ironically, William S. Denison at nearly 60 found a teenage bride willing to marry him and bless their union with children, and he fought paying off the full amount pledged right into the Civil War years, but the state Supreme Court agreed that he'd made a binding promise, and in the end his heritage didn't last through children, but Denison University did.
This puts Denison in an interesting category with Harvard and Vanderbilt as institutions of higher education named for people who never physically visited their campuses . . . but Denison is unique in having to sue in court to get their bequest.
Denison was a university well before the time when many private residential colleges have more recently looked to change their name to a more attractive "university" label. Doane Academy as a private secondary school, Granville Female Seminary, and Shepardson College for Women all were part of the collection of institutions that meant Denison truly was a university from the late 1800s on into the present day. Locally, residents and students alike refer to "the college" but the full name has been Denison University since the 1850s.
Brown University in Rhode Island was a template from Denison's earliest days, another Baptist school which became an independent and influential academic institution in their region. Preachers and teachers and leaders were the result of the curriculum, at Brown and at Denison, with the Twentieth century ushering in an era a further independence from sectarian ties, first from exclusively Baptist affiliations to a more general "Christian college" model, and to the private residential liberal arts undergraduate program of today.
A college which trained missionaries for places like Japan, China and Myanmar is today a university whose graduates are still catapulted around the world. The mission of today's Denison University is "to inspire and educate our students to become autonomous thinkers, discerning moral agents and active citizens of a democratic society." The program is more secular in nature, but the intention is still one of inspiration, rooted in "a firm belief in human dignity and compassion unlimited by cultural, racial, sexual, religious or economic barriers, and directed toward an engagement with the central issues of our time."
Happy 190th birthday, Denison University!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's learned much at the fair college on the hill, and even gotten to teach a little there. Tell him what you've learned about educational institutions at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
Denison celebrates 190 years
___
In 1831, Ohio Baptists looked at their losses to competing religious groups in northeast Ohio, also known as the "Western Reserve", and in the southwestern part of the state around Cincinnati, and they took steps to create educational institutions to build up their tradition.
There weren't a great many Baptists in east central Ohio, but just enough, especially around Zanesville, to make a pitch for a proposed "Literary and Theological Institution" in their neck of the woods, in as yet uncontested ground by the competitors so common up around Kirtland and Mentor or down in Carthage and Mt. Healthy.
So it began, the Granville Literary and Theological Institution, formally launched December 13, 1831 by Ohio Baptists.
Obviously, the name was long and somewhat unwieldy, and even after they moved across Raccoon Creek through "miles of mud," from their former location to their new and lasting home atop Prospect Hill, it just wasn't a name to conjure with.
Financial struggles in the 1850s nearly closed down the relocated college, but a bachelor farmer who had cared for aging parents beyond the age of marriage and offspring offered, at the urging of his Muskingum County Baptist preacher, to fund a renewed university if they preserved his family name.
Ironically, William S. Denison at nearly 60 found a teenage bride willing to marry him and bless their union with children, and he fought paying off the full amount pledged right into the Civil War years, but the state Supreme Court agreed that he'd made a binding promise, and in the end his heritage didn't last through children, but Denison University did.
This puts Denison in an interesting category with Harvard and Vanderbilt as institutions of higher education named for people who never physically visited their campuses . . . but Denison is unique in having to sue in court to get their bequest.
Denison was a university well before the time when many private residential colleges have more recently looked to change their name to a more attractive "university" label. Doane Academy as a private secondary school, Granville Female Seminary, and Shepardson College for Women all were part of the collection of institutions that meant Denison truly was a university from the late 1800s on into the present day. Locally, residents and students alike refer to "the college" but the full name has been Denison University since the 1850s.
Brown University in Rhode Island was a template from Denison's earliest days, another Baptist school which became an independent and influential academic institution in their region. Preachers and teachers and leaders were the result of the curriculum, at Brown and at Denison, with the Twentieth century ushering in an era a further independence from sectarian ties, first from exclusively Baptist affiliations to a more general "Christian college" model, and to the private residential liberal arts undergraduate program of today.
A college which trained missionaries for places like Japan, China and Myanmar is today a university whose graduates are still catapulted around the world. The mission of today's Denison University is "to inspire and educate our students to become autonomous thinkers, discerning moral agents and active citizens of a democratic society." The program is more secular in nature, but the intention is still one of inspiration, rooted in "a firm belief in human dignity and compassion unlimited by cultural, racial, sexual, religious or economic barriers, and directed toward an engagement with the central issues of our time."
Happy 190th birthday, Denison University!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's learned much at the fair college on the hill, and even gotten to teach a little there. Tell him what you've learned about educational institutions at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Faith Works 12-4-21
Faith Works 12-4-21
Jeff Gill
A cup of sugar, a story for the season
___
[In the Saturdays of Advent, a story will be told on the installment plan; this is part one of four.]
Melanie wanted her two children to have a lovely, memorable Christmas.
The last year had been memorable, but not in good ways. Melanie's mother had died after a long illness, and she wasn't sure the boys even remembered her when she was still up and around and making cookies in the kitchen. Their father had stopped calling even on their birthdays as he traveled with his work out of state. She was thankful for a promotion at work and a pay raise, but it meant longer hours and she covered shifts more than she wished.
So tonight she planned to make sugar cookies for Christmas. It was something her mother did when Melanie was a child, and she realized they hadn't ever done that in this home, and it was five years since the divorce and their move to this neighborhood.
She pulled up a simple sugar cookie recipe on her phone, and checked the canisters, dusty along the back of the kitchen counter, and was relieved to find a hardened container of baking powder in the back of the cabinets. There were eggs in the fridge, and she knew vanilla and flour were sufficient because she did make pancakes fairly often . . . well, often enough. (Make pancakes every Saturday this December, she thought to herself as she got out the big bowl.)
The butter was softening in a ceramic bowl, and she sifted together the flour and baking soda and baking powder which she'd chipped loose enough for a half teaspoon, with the oven heating up to 375. Melanie started thinking about having the boys come in and help put the dough on the cookie sheets.
For the next step, the two sticks of butter got mashed and mixed in with the cup and a half of sugar. She opened up the canister and reached in to scoop out the measuring cup's worth, but heard not a scoop but a scrape.
There was just enough sugar to cover the bottom; the while interior fooled her into thinking there was plenty, when there was nowhere near enough. Maybe a half cup at most, and she needed a cup and a half. And these were sugar cookies: it's not like there's a workaround.
She spent some time ransacking cupboards, thinking there might be an old bag of brown sugar she kept for oatmeal (when was the last time they had oatmeal for breakfast?), and maybe that could work? But it had either been eaten or thrown out. No sugar. She found an extra blue canister of salt, sighed and shrugged.
It was late, looked like rain on the forecast, and too near the boys' bedtime. So much was mixed and ready, but she just needed a cup of sugar. The butter could go back in the fridge, the bowl of flour and dry ingredients could go back in the cabinet and would probably be okay . . .
Or she could ask Mrs. Morley next door. Melanie remembered how when she was little, sometimes her mom and neighbors would call and borrow an egg or two, or a cup of buttermilk, but that was when people cooked and neighbors talked to each other. She'd never asked a neighbor for a cup of anything.
But Mrs. Morley looked like a lady who might bake occasionally. She could offer her half the batch, maybe? What would that be, two dozen cookies for her, still plenty for the three of them. Sighing again, she grabbed the measuring cup, shrugged on her coat, and stuck her head around the doorway into the living room to tell the boys she'd be right back. They barely nodded.
Out the front door, around on the walk since the grass was soggy and probably muddy, and up the neighbor's driveway. The lights were on, her car was in the carport behind the house, it didn't seem too late, but Melanie was nervous. It seemed odd, but then it came to her that she had never in these last few years come over to her neighbor's house. She'd always come over to her to offer a hand or to say hello. How odd, but that's how it had turned out.
Feeling uneasy enough she almost didn't, but then she thought about her mom, the boys, and those cookies she wanted them to have, and she knocked on the door.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's pretty sure he knows where this story will go, but you never know. Let him know what you think happens next at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Advent Devotional Dec. 6, 2021
CCIO Advent Devotional
Dec. 6, 2021
…When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
~ Matthew 6:3-4 (NRSV)
~ Matthew 6:3-4 (NRSV)
Myra was a Greek city on the southern coast of what's now Turkey, in which it's a small town called Demre. But as part of Lycian Greece, it was an outpost of Grecian culture, a seaport with cosmopolitan connections, and in the early Fourth Century the Christian community of Myra had its own bishop, a fellow named Nicholas.
There's a long journey from Nicholas of Myra to Santa Claus, and some might even argue there's no real connection anymore between the two. This is where the wider Christian tradition of acknowledging saints has been less accepted in more austere branches of our faith community, because the historic person and the legends that can entwine their image can in truth end up at some distance from each other.
Saint Nicholas is honored in the ancient Christian calendar on December 6, traditionally the date of his passing in the year 343. The week between St. Nicholas's Day and St. Lucy's on the 13th is where many northern European traditions of trees and candles and wreaths and gifts have their actual roots, grafted onto the celebration of the birth of Jesus a little later in the month.
December 6 as a time for gift giving has the longest heritage, although it might be worth recalling that for many centuries while there were gifts in the Advent season, they were no more than could be stuffed into a stocking or stuck in a shoe left at a child's bedroom door. This would seem to leave out ponies and bicycles and game consoles, let alone automobiles with giant red bows.
But the idea of a secretly given gift, without the giver seeking credit for having left it, has a very long and honorable heritage going back at least to Nicholas himself. The legends go back nearly to his era, that the bishop of Myra was, as a good Christian pastor would be, attentive to the hurts and needs of the congregation. Nicholas knew of certain challenges faced by various families in his parish, and found a way to make the practical side of a solution (gold coins, or a ransom in a pouch, or some other tangible way to pay off a debt) show up in their house. He never climbed down a chimney in those first stories out of Myra, but sometimes stockings or shoes by a fireplace were the receptacle of the needed gold bags.
The semi-ironic point of them all was that the receivers didn't know who their benefactor was, though if that really was the case, why do we know it was Bishop Nick here some seventeen centuries later? Ah, saints stories. Like a modern superhero movie, you may not want to pick at the details too closely, let alone the physics. The through-line of the story is that there was a family in need, a church ready to respond, and a gift given not to receive thanks in return, but to honor Jesus's call to love one another.
And isn't the clear origin of the impulse of Saint Nicholas that caution from Christ in the Sermon on the Mount: that in giving gifts to aid and uplift others, don't tell people. Don't put your name on a plaque. Don't make a big deal about it to others. In fact, don't even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. A warning I read this way: when you give a gift? Give, and let it go. If you give something to someone, and you find yourself worrying about their reaction, their response, how thankful they are or whether it's getting used the way you think it should? You need to forget about it. That's the left side of your brain knowing too much about what the right half got going on. Drop it.
Leaving aside the puzzle of how we know, but letting it be one of those artistic license moments, Bishop Nicholas in helping his community members was truly a Secret Santa. That was clearly his intention, and that seems to be a scriptural intention, too. May all our giving and sharing and helping this Advent be done in that same spirit.
Prayer: God of grace, giver of every good and perfect gift, help us to give freely, to receive thankfully, and to share in the joys of this season as people of grace, a family of faith, with a witness to the world. Amen!
[Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher living in Granville, Ohio; his email is knapsack77@gmail.com but he's fairly slow about replying, so please be patient.]
Monday, November 15, 2021
CCIO Advent 2021 devotional text
CCIO Advent devotional
Dec. 13, 2021
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
~ James 1:17 (NRSV)
Before the reforms of the Western calendar, December 13 was effectively the winter solstice date, the shortest day and longest night of the year.
It was also the feast of Sancta Lucia, St. Lucy's Day, and the connections of "lux" or light with Lucia meant that from Sicily to Sweden, in early Europe the celebration of this date meant folk traditions to ask for vision, light, and the rebirth of the daytime hours which would become visibly longer about December 25th, at Christmas.
We have other ways to mark the month and the days, and light switches to banish the gloom of evening coming shortly after lunchtime, but for all our modern innovations, we still seek vision. To see, and see clearly.
James speaks in his letter about light from above; Alexander Campbell cited this verse to explain his windowless study with a six-sided cupola allowing only "light from above." The message of James is that every self-giving act, every perfect gift, brings us something of God, of the divine intention, into our everyday life.
St. Lucy in her martyr's tale from the third century tells us about a young woman who chooses to see God's love as the most important love in her life; there are many myths about her, all of them eloquent (and some creepy), but I most like the stories that talk about how she could not be moved, even by a team of oxen. She was barely more than a little girl in the midst of the Roman Empire at its height, but they could not move her. God and the love of charity and chastity and compassion came first, and not wild horses or well trained draft animals could move her. She could not be moved.
In Advent, we look for the light of God to grow on us and around us, and we pray that when God's anointed comes to lead us, that we will follow, that we will not be moved from that faithfulness. Advent is about the promise God has given, again and again, to offer guidance when we need it, to lead us for a season, to transform us for eternity. Lucy heard and saw and believed that promise, which gave her enough light to follow step by step. On St. Lucy's Day, we can remember that witness, her martyrdom, as a light for us which "comes from above."
As saint's tales do, from St. Nicholas to Sancta Lucia, her image and story becomes in the north of Europe a procession of young women walking slowly, deliberately, with a crowning wreath studded with lit candles, avatars of a coming dawn made real on the "longest night" as Dec. 13 once was in Sweden. Those illuminated acolytes cast flickering shadows on the snow, a tribute to a young woman who likely never saw snow in her life.
The Christian journey, the story within the story of Advent, is one where we find ourselves made one family, siblings of the Christ, children of the Most High, alongside of Sicilian princesses and Scandinavian children. We are ancient modern people, brought together from the east to the west, the arctic to the antarctic, from Romans to Americans, empires lost and rising and falling again, but all made one in a redeemed and resurrected hope.
May we all find light from above that illumines our inmost thoughts, our late night reflections, well before the reassurance of the dawn a light that comes from above but shines out within. Sancta Lucia, shine your light upon us!
And may we remember that all light comes from above, from God.
Prayer: Illumine Thou our hearts, O God, and shine not only on us, but through us, that we might show a light which helps others find a path that leads towards your love. Amen!
[Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher living in Granville, Ohio; his email is knapsack77@gmail.com but he's fairly slow about replying, so please be patient.]
Notes from my Knapsack 11-25-21
Notes from my Knapsack 11-25-21
Jeff Gill
Thankful for losses, large and small
____
Being thankful is one of the usual duties of the season, and certainly an expectation for columnists. Most of us find at one point or another as November winds its way towards December thinking about what we are thankful for.
You can make quite a list, some years, of gifts and events and occasions, of people and relationships, of all that has made us thankful in the last year, or at least as much of it as we can recall from the vantage point of the eleventh month.
My thoughts are going in a somewhat different direction, not that I don't have a number of wonderful reasons to be freshly thankful. But after the last few years I've had work to do heading into Thanksgiving Day on being thankful for . . . well, let's put it this way: for things I generally didn't start out being thankful for.
I'm still slowly adjusting to not being a parish minister, a settled preacher in a church where I go to the same pulpit each Sunday and preach to a largely similar congregation week after week. That is the life I had been used to for decades before, and like most people, I liked what I was used to.
Yet there are blessings to having the freedom, which I had to push myself to claim, of being able to care for family members in the middle of the complications of COVID. There are pleasures of meeting new faces, masked or otherwise, and preaching to a completely different group than you did the last time you got up to share good news as a preacher. It stretches different preaching muscles to craft a message that way, and I've learned some things about myself, about churches, about faith.
And as I've written about before, the aftermath of my father's passing and the closing down of the family house in Indiana has brought me home taking a different eye to my own possessions, some of them with strong sentimental attachments. Aside from the truism of "you can't take it with you," you can't even get much of it into a retirement community, and most of it my son is not going to want to inherit. I'm thankful I've been coming to a new relationship to my stuff, to memorabilia, to what I (think I) can't do without.
With this year's new version of some of the same struggles we had last year, not to get into too many personal details, it's also been a time to confront some limits. In myself, in others, and as we (in our family, anyhow) start to assess what we can and can't do it's a healthy time to figure out what is possible, even if it's not exactly what we wanted to do. Clarity is a gift, one with sharp edges but a useful reflection.
So I find myself thankful, in a way, for losses, for paring down, cutting back, getting focus even if on a smaller field of view. Clarity is indeed a gift, and I want to be thankful for it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's thankful for a whole lot of people but that's a different column. Tell him about how you've been thankful for unexpected things at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
Thankful for losses, large and small
____
Being thankful is one of the usual duties of the season, and certainly an expectation for columnists. Most of us find at one point or another as November winds its way towards December thinking about what we are thankful for.
You can make quite a list, some years, of gifts and events and occasions, of people and relationships, of all that has made us thankful in the last year, or at least as much of it as we can recall from the vantage point of the eleventh month.
My thoughts are going in a somewhat different direction, not that I don't have a number of wonderful reasons to be freshly thankful. But after the last few years I've had work to do heading into Thanksgiving Day on being thankful for . . . well, let's put it this way: for things I generally didn't start out being thankful for.
I'm still slowly adjusting to not being a parish minister, a settled preacher in a church where I go to the same pulpit each Sunday and preach to a largely similar congregation week after week. That is the life I had been used to for decades before, and like most people, I liked what I was used to.
Yet there are blessings to having the freedom, which I had to push myself to claim, of being able to care for family members in the middle of the complications of COVID. There are pleasures of meeting new faces, masked or otherwise, and preaching to a completely different group than you did the last time you got up to share good news as a preacher. It stretches different preaching muscles to craft a message that way, and I've learned some things about myself, about churches, about faith.
And as I've written about before, the aftermath of my father's passing and the closing down of the family house in Indiana has brought me home taking a different eye to my own possessions, some of them with strong sentimental attachments. Aside from the truism of "you can't take it with you," you can't even get much of it into a retirement community, and most of it my son is not going to want to inherit. I'm thankful I've been coming to a new relationship to my stuff, to memorabilia, to what I (think I) can't do without.
With this year's new version of some of the same struggles we had last year, not to get into too many personal details, it's also been a time to confront some limits. In myself, in others, and as we (in our family, anyhow) start to assess what we can and can't do it's a healthy time to figure out what is possible, even if it's not exactly what we wanted to do. Clarity is a gift, one with sharp edges but a useful reflection.
So I find myself thankful, in a way, for losses, for paring down, cutting back, getting focus even if on a smaller field of view. Clarity is indeed a gift, and I want to be thankful for it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's thankful for a whole lot of people but that's a different column. Tell him about how you've been thankful for unexpected things at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
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