Faith Works 4-2-22

Faith Works 4-2-22

Jeff Gill

Answered prayers are two edged tools

___

"More tears have been shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."

This saying has been attributed to St. Teresa of Avilá, and it certainly sounds like her, but it's not found in her writings, at least not that pithily.

Truman Capote used the line for his last novel, but his relationship with facts was always a creative one. Let's just call it folk wisdom of a sort. 

We think we know what we want, and when we get it, things don't always work out as we might have hoped. Our unanswered prayers, the times we knew what we wanted and didn't get it, can end up opening doors we never knew we could go through. Sometimes it takes a closing down of options before we can narrow things down to the one thing we really ought to choose.

But answered prayers? Those really can be tricky. Especially if it's the culmination of a long held hope, a plan much anticipated. Our fondest wish is granted, and then . . . as certain fairy tales point out, both ancient or modern, there's what happens after happily ever after.

At the risk of sounding cavalier about some sincerely voiced concerns, I think much of the reaction to the Intel announcement for Jersey Township (or New Albany) in Licking County fits into the category of answered prayers evoking some weeping and wailing.

We've all said that it's too bad so much industry and manufacturing has closed, and how good it would be to see new production facilities open up in our area. It's a commonplace in political campaigns not just to say they're going to create jobs but to make opportunities for our young people to stay nearby. Economic development has been the core of most of the community planning and visioning I've been privy to since I first moved here in 1989.

Twenty billion dollars is quite a lot of economic development. I had to look that up just to make sure I was remembering it correctly, and saw Kent Mallett's reminder that Intel has suggested it could be $100 billion by the time they're done. And that's not counting the affiliated businesses that undoubtedly will move in next door. Economic development? The question isn't about calling in the wave now, it's learning how to surf it as the wave washes over us.

This is a dramatic and region-wide version of what happens in a faith community, to a congregation that wishes and plans and prays for growth, and then reacts awkwardly to new people and different practices and the dynamics of larger numbers, let alone a significant percentage of strangers. Thom Rainer talks about "the berry bucket" and what happens at a certain moment for clergy when the number of people in a church shifts from everyone having been there before you came, which is always the case at the start, to the tipping point that comes when after enough losses and departures and funerals versus new members who came since the preacher arrived, you have a new equilibrium.

Rainer actually notes that it's often not an equilibrium that comes when the older berries are equalled by the new pickings (and I don't love the metaphor, but it's a well known one). Sometimes the previous critical mass reacts against the new cohort, both consciously and unconsciously, to reassert how things "used to be" or even "should be." 

The problem for a church in a time of change is that the existing congregation can, at least for a while, stop it. Now, the outcome is usually not for a different sort of growth, but to freeze it in place, if not roll things backwards. Leaving the question of God's vision for growth to one side for the moment, we'll just stipulate that congregations can halt growth when it gets uncomfortable.

Our region can't do that. The floodgate is already open, and the changes are already happening. No amount of angst will alter the short-term reality, which is growth. New people, new jobs, new buildings, new traffic, new money.

It's what we wanted, right? Yeah, we can say now "but not quite like this" or even "not this much!" for all the good it will do. Growth, and fairly dramatic growth, is coming. How will we be good stewards of this opportunity?

I believe this is an opportunity for faith communities, and hope to share more about how our impending future can bless both our existing religious landscape, and the one that is coming into being.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's never seen anything like this, either. Let's share our ignorance and scraps of knowledge through knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 3-31-22

Notes from my Knapsack 3-31-22
Jeff Gill

Going on a trip, returning home
___

Spring break is back after a two year hiatus, and if my social media is any guide, there's a great deal of traveling going on.

As it turns out, I've traveled a great deal through COVID times, mostly back and forth to a single house in the Indianapolis suburbs. I can't account for supply chain problems, but I'd assure you that if I-70 is any guide, the trucks have not stopped running, and that's in both directions.

Outside of the "resort" (as my wife and I joke in our texts, about arriving at "the resort" where there's no tipping, but the laundry & housekeeping is definitely self-service) we have been making pre-dawn runs to stock up when there's few others at the stores, and mostly otherwise going to hospitals where masking and precautions are still considered reasonable, given that (unless you're a patient's escort) most of those arriving are in a risk category.

To be honest, we were never world travelers, unless you count a lap or two of EPCOT. We had hopes. And online, there are some interesting options if you can't travel, but would like to engage in a little creative self-distraction.

Which is how I've become a regular pedestrian in Paris, with a few ventures in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. Google Street View is a pleasant way to meander around a strange place, and while I can't test this out anytime soon, I have a definite sense that if you dropped me off by taxi from the airport in downtown Anyoftheabove, I could get around at least a bit to places I hope to see in person some fine day.

It started with some professional reasons to check out addresses before I drove to the location, all here locally, and I found that a quick scout-around online could help me do what I needed to do in person later. Yes, things can change a year or two or four later, but in general it's a useful lay of the land. And then I retraced some steps in midtown & downtown Manhattan through my laptop, and developed a sense of what reality looks like versus the admittedly limited window of my computer screen.

One fun break I've taken a few times in a moment of stress: walking the embankments of the Seine in Paris, or the Thames in London. Just type in the city, click the map on the right that is a usual search option, then zoom into a riverbank until [plop] you leave the aerial view to a click-by-click, one arrow at a time, online opportunity to wander past Notre Dame or Parliament. Like most computer games, there are limits to how far you can go: it's not an "open world" by a long shot. But I think of what touristing I've done in my life, and how often I end up bustling from one place to the next, not seeing much or as much in between as I might have. This ain't bad, I have to say.

April in Paris, anyone? I think we have some ripples of virus still to endure for another year or two, and I've still got a person to be cautious on behalf of, so it's going to be one click at a time for a while yet.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not been everywhere, man. Tell him where you've virtually been at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 3-26-22

Faith Works 3-26-22
Jeff Gill

Lent and a world of glass and sand
___

Fragile and robust, or cracked yet whole.

Our smartphones (irony alert) are, for many, expensive appliances we treat casually, and broken tools which still work until they don't.

I'm noticing how for more and more people the tablet is more a device the better-off use, and phones are the go-to computer for everyday use. Younger adults can go days, weeks without working on a traditional keyboard or using a desktop, let alone laptop computer. Phones are getting bigger, and use of online materials, whether documents or applications or websites, is mostly handled in one hand, not on a screen.

Maybe this is just the folks I'm working with these days, but I talk and assist large numbers of parents of school age children now, and telling them on the phone (a device on my desk with a handset I can crunch into my shoulder while typing on a computer workstation) to check a certain website will often get me "okay, I'm looking at it on my phone."

Not to tell the digital age something it already knows better than me, but a web page on a 15 inch screen (or paired screens) is a very different interaction than a smartphone browser's rendition. So I've learned when I need to walk someone through a registration or updating or revising of online information, I look at it on my phone first.

It's a function of age and long-ailing eyesight, but this lesson took me a while because a complex form online of any sort would normally cause me, if say I learned I needed to use it by an email on my phone (hold that thought) I'd still wait until I got home, for a larger view and more fingers on the keyboard — maybe not ten, but definitely not all with one finger or two thumbs. Not so most people I'm learning. The internet is becoming a landscape viewed more through the porthole of a phone screen than a wider window as I prefer.

And just to further belabor the obvious, all kinds of former viewscapes are clamping down to three or four inches by five or six: movie theaters are celebrating a return to seats that are clearly fewer in number than we once had, and that's not all due to COVID times, and even home theater large TV screens may be secondary to what people are looking at in their lap, cradled in one hand.

There are people I think very well of indeed who have said, without irony, that they believe we should ban all social media until people hit age 18 or so. I can understand where they're coming from without entirely agreeing with them. And in a separate but somewhat parallel line of thinking, some wise heads have voiced a belief that faith communities should quit providing online worship, to promote attendance and fellowship and engagement with one another. I can only agree with the goal, the ends, while I'm skeptical of the means.

Now we have a factory complex coming our way which takes silicon, sand in essence, and fabricates from it a vast house of data. I'll save 500 words and let you mull over that sermon illustration right there (house, sand, build, hmmm). The ironies get richer when you think of how a century and a half ago we had glass factories to the east of Newark, today a brilliant Heisey Glass Museum in the heart of the city, and a silicon transmutation complex going up to our west.

The chips more and more go into devices, we still call them phones, which are as the interface a pane of glass, both window and mirror for us. Honestly, for anyone, let alone a Christian preacher, it sets us up for an embarrassment of homiletic riches.

Looking into our world of glass and sand, reading about the radical, transformative changes that are coming to our area, are we seeing our reflection, a distorted window, or are we getting a clear view of what's to come? I hear fear, I hear joy, I see excitement, and I see dread as I've talked to various community leaders and local residents these last few weeks.

What we should remember is that we're getting most of our impressions through accidentally cracked glass, artfully fused sand, semiconductors which can only transmit semi truths, if that's what's put into them.

Or from the earliest days of computers: garbage in, garbage out. That's a phrase worth contemplating, over halfway through this Lent of 2022.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; his screen is cracked, too. Tell him how you keep your perceptions clear at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 3-19-22

Faith Works 3-19-22
Jeff Gill

Righteous anger might be an oxymoron
___

If we start with a Biblical and New Testament perspective, it's hard to support the concept of righteous anger. To wit:

"My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires." James 1:19-20 (NIV)

Pretty much closes that door, at least for those of us wanting to affirm Biblical authority in a statement that precise, that clear.

It's still a temptation.

And when it comes to temptation, I call on God to help me resist it, to save me from the time of trial, and in Jesus trust in grace when I fail. Which is not infrequently.

Last week I was escorting an elderly relative in his 90s through a medically ordered heart test; he has a pacemaker and some other symptoms that had us wanting to check out some basic questions. So we made our cautious, careful way inside, and back to the suite where we checked in and waited our turn for the exam, and both he and I were masked, as not only makes sense for a hospital setting but is clearly required for entry at the main door, in the hallway, and signage reaffirming all of this on entry to this part of the (did I mention this?) heart hospital.

Just as we were getting my charge seated, and it was busy enough there were not seats enough for such as me, which was fine but tells you how relatively crowded the room was, a nurse came out of the back and walked up to a man seated right next to us. Clearly a request had gone into the clinic from (I assume) one of the registry clerks behind their windows before we walked in.

The man next to us had his mask on, but pulled down below his chin. And let's exercise compassion early on here: he's alone, while most of the patients had someone escorting them. He looked about my age, but heavier, and obviously he's waiting on a heart test of some sort himself, and may be on edge, not at his best.

Nonetheless.

The nurse in scrubs, mask on face, leaned over the man and said as nicely as one could wish that he needed to put the mask on over his face, mouth and nose both. Without going into the whole sad dialogue, the seated man told the nurse that he was stupid, the policy was stupid, and it was stupid to make him wear a mask when it was his risk to take. At this point, I'll simply add that words came to my mind, phrases and sentences I was tempted to speak.

With grace and firmness, the hospital staffer persisted, stating stupid or not, this policy was for the protection of everyone, and he needed to put the mask on or he would have to leave. He pulled up his mask, and told the kindly staff member they were stupid and they'd done their stupid thing so they should leave now.

After the door closed behind the nurse, he pulled the mask down below his nose, and turned to look right at me. And cocked an eyebrow. I stood there, standing over my responsibility, a 93 year old who can barely hear and is easily confused on a good day.

"Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil."

I thought that, and say it, not because the sad silly man glaring at me was evil, but because of my own temptation to respond in anger and hostility. I didn't speak, in part out of prudence, and in large part because I feared what I'd say if I did, and even more what I'd say next if his defiance continued, as it likely would have in the moment.

Whatever your opinion about masks & precautions, in a heart hospital, surrounded by fellow patients clearly of whom most were what you might call immunocompromised, it's beyond question that simple human decency means you follow house rules and wear your mask, even if it's only a partial protection. He chose not to, and to echo a certain cinematic scene, he chose poorly.

I'm still working on my choice. My choice in the moment, my choices now, my choice of words writing this column. "Deliver us from evil," from righteous anger, from selfish defiance, from my own sin.

We are not done looking out for each other, and that's not just about masks. Let love prevail, and grace abound.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still working on some issues himself. Tell him how you exercise prudence, restraint, and godly defiance at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 3-12-22

Faith Works 3-12-22
Jeff Gill

Grief isn't waiting
___


"How long does mourning take?"

I've heard that question more times than I can count over the years as a pastor, and I have an answer that's been my first response for most of them:

"As long as it takes."

There's no set timetable for recovering from a personal loss. Some people may take a few weeks or months, others take years. And the same person can find one death from among those they love to be a fairly straightforward process, not that it's ever easy, but then have another loss set them back for much longer.

Those are, in some ways, the hardest pastoral conversations. "I should be over this by now!" Who says, I reply. Not God. Not me. Yes, anniversaries can both help in the healing and re-open old wounds, there's just no set schedule for affairs of the heart.

And if you are involved in hospice work, there's an inverse proposition involved. How long does a particular person's passing take? There are patterns and templates and a general history of how this sort of illness and that sort of condition will play out, but anyone who's been around death and dying knows that it's foolish and dangerous ground to walk onto when raising up a sign saying "they have exactly this long." You don't know.

What I can tell you is that there's a strange sort of mourning in advance that happens when you are caring for a seriously ill person. It's not the anticipation let alone expectation, but the reality of coming to terms, day by day, with the loss of a loved one, and then there's the uncertainty of asking when you will need to make use of that pre-sadness, preparatory sorrow, advance pain.
My wife recently said "Grief doesn't wait." I told her "I'm stealing that." Because it's something more of us need to think through, to hear at first and accept in the final assessment. Grief isn't waiting, not for us to be ready, not for our lives to get to a convenient place to pause, not for death, even. Grief is here, a part of our thoughts even before what we are grieving has happened.

Grief is an emotional and I would argue a spiritual reality for each of us, just as pain is a reality for any of us as embodied persons. If you have a physical form, you have pain. It's a part of our warning and monitoring system — hand hurts, remove from fire — that's actually quite useful. Foot hurts, don't put your weight on it, until more healing takes place. Leprosy is most dangerous, I'm told, because you no longer have the sensation of pain, so bad things can happen to fingers and toes and you don't do anything. Pain gets our attention, and ideally points us toward healing.

Grief is like that. It reminds us that healing isn't done. How long does healing take? Don't ask me, ask a nurse practitioner (but we'll tell you the same thing: as long as it takes). Some people can heal up from a broken bone in four weeks, others for their own material reasons physically will take ten or twelve. The orthopedic surgeon says "six to eight weeks," but even they will offer a cautious caveat.

Today is two years since the call came that my dad died earlier that March 12. I'm better than I was those first few weeks, and more in balance with my own thoughts and reactions than I was perhaps a year ago this day. Will I be "over it"? Others who've lost parents say "never," some say "it's always there in certain ways." Some move on, close doors behind them, say they're fine.

For me, the "I need to tell Dad about that" moments come less often. The healing isn't so much that increased interval as it is how when the shock of "but I can't do that" hits, my world doesn't wobble quite as much, or as long. Grief for me has been an imbalance, a disorientation, a loss of equilibrium in my movement forward. The earth shook, and there have been aftershocks, but now I can at least find my footing and move more easily on the way.

How long does it take? I wouldn't say two years. Might be a bit longer. It depends. Just remember that grief isn't waiting on our timetables, before or after a loss, but it's also quite possibly a friend. It can help us heal.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been thinking about love and life and loss for a while. Tell him how you find your balance when knocked off of your path at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 3-17-22

Notes from my Knapsack 3-17-22
Jeff Gill

A month of whipsaw weather
___

March means spring in central Ohio.

That doesn't mean it also can sneak up on us with a wicked fall of snow, or worse yet the black ice of early morning, especially on north-facing slopes where the higher sun angle isn't putting heat into the pavement all day to keep it clear overnight.

Melt and rain dancing on either side of freezing, which is still a feature of every March here, means you can expect dawns with a dollop of danger on bridges and overpasses. Our frost-free day in this neighborhood is around May 15, so the tomatoes can wait (unless you're starting seeds up on top of the refrigerator).

But daffodils, our heritage and inheritance in the Granville area, are popping up and right behind come other bulb-rooted flowers, hyacinths and tulips and more perennials on the way. Baseball players may not be at spring training, but our local lads are selling mulch and delivering it just as the weeds are rustling up out of sleep.

March means spring in central Ohio, and the trees start budding and bursting and casting more debris down on lawns and parked cars. Maples are especially good at this. Lawnmowers need checked, and I hope you didn't leave the gas in it all winter; the more conscientious among us sharpen with files the edge of spades and shovels or whet the shears and trimmers. The last of the ornamental grasses need to be cut back before the new green shoots poke up among the midst of them, and there are loads of brush and downed limbs to tend to.

Keep the scraper in the car, and the spare coat and extra blanket in the back, but soon it will be June and you'll realize you can stow them away for next November. Not yet, though. Frost in the morning, chills yet to come.

As a young Scout, I still remember our troop's biggest setback, but most lasting lesson. This is back when scout troops could still own and operate their own secondhand school buses, and ours was painted purple, with the back third converted to a quartermaster's store of shelves and stowage. We were an every month camping troop, and our leaders were steelworkers along Lake Michigan who knew the outdoors and taught us well.

But it was a March campout that caught us. It had been warm and sunny for weeks, the grass was already growing strongly by mid-month, and this was a few hundred miles north of here. The forecast was mild, and the weekend dawned balmy, the Friday night gathering and trip to our campsite mostly in t-shirts and shorts. In mid-March.

Saturday, after a mellow morning, a shift in the wind, a drop in the temperatures. People dug in backpacks for coats and found windbreakers; more than a few of us as we set out on an afternoon hike realized digging into our pockets that there were no gloves. We'd thrown them weeks before onto the hall closet upper shelf.

Back at camp, the snow started. Heavy, wet, steady. Fires were lit for supper, but they offered too little warmth; the adults made a circuit of the three patrol sites, and assessed our (gulp) preparedness for a winter night. And for perhaps the only time in Troop 7 history, we went home early.

March means spring, but it can still bite. Be prepared!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he learned about what "Be Prepared" really means that weekend. Tell him about your outdoor education at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 3-5-22

Faith Works 3-5-22
Jeff Gill

Crutches and healing and strength
___

Last week we had Garrison Keillor in town for a show at the Midland Theatre. I had the opportunity to interview him in advance for this paper, and on the phone he was generous with his time and spoke at length about a variety of subjects, much more than I could get into the article I wrote earlier.

Keillor is known best for storytelling, and his renown in that field on the radio was already growing when I was in seminary in the 1980s. Many of my peers in preaching found his approach to narrative and public presentation to be a healthy corrective to the sometimes overly academic model we were getting in class, focused on a manuscript and a systematic presentation, controlled and cautious.

On "Prairie Home Companion," when Keillor moved into the portion of the radio program called "News from Lake Wobegon," for this listener it often seemed as if he was a high wire walker on stage, working without a net. There was both a spontaneity and a sense of carefully crafted speech in what we would listen to, leaning in even sitting in the car as he would pause and in many small subtle ways communicate that he was thinking out loud. And for me, at least, it was impossible to hear his delivery and observe the effect that kind of narrative had on other listeners, and not think about preaching the Gospel, which deserved careful preparation but also seemed to call for a mutual humanity in how the Good Story is told and re-told.

Mind you, I'm not saying this is the only way to preach, but for me it felt like an approach worth investigating. And it shaped my time in the pulpit. So I was interested in talking to the man about church and faith and preaching.

He was more than willing to speak on those subjects, but his observations kept coming back to his local parish, the church he clearly attends regularly in Manhattan. When I would ask about narrative theology and preaching as storytelling, he would respond with a comment about how the sermon works in a wider context, and it was more as a parishioner than as a preacher he spoke.

In talking about some of his own personal journey, and internal struggles after some public controversy he experienced, he came back a few times to his church's healing service, a weekly part of their cycle of worship which is focused on prayer as a congregation, and the opportunity to come forward and be prayed for by the ministers fo the church.

"I went forward," Keillor said about one such service, "and the deacon at the front put her hands on my shoulders. It meant so much, I can't tell you, to go forward and say it out loud. I said to her 'I hurt,' and she looked right at me, and I felt listened to. I felt the burden of anger lifted from my life."

That was not about preaching, but it was about a minister being truly present to someone. He didn't have to make the connection for me. Effective communication is about that kind of presence and openness to someone who is hurting, who is in need. Sometimes it happens in sermons, sometimes in other acts of pastoral ministry.

A few decades ago the governor of the state of Minnesota, Keillor's home, said "Christianity is a crutch." He said it was for "weak people." I've always appreciated the clarity Jesse Ventura brought to this conversation. I think he's right, even if we come to different conclusions on what that means.

Only a person who's sure they'll never need a crutch can laugh at them. If you are confident you'll never want to have a commode chair handy, I guess you could find one ludicrous, worth a chuckle. But if we all are likely to need a crutch, a place to find relief, or even hope to find a healing hand on our shoulder, then we probably should be careful about making fun of weakness, before we find we're just mocking ourselves.

In Lent, we have forty days to reflect on our own weakness, our own needs, and the promises of God to lift us up, and sometimes even to carry us. To say to the Lord "I hurt" and know we are heard, and in that knowledge find healing.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's had his weak moments in and out of the pulpit. Tell him where you find the crutch you need to carry on at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 2-26-22

Faith Works 2-26-22
Jeff Gill

Rehearse a funeral, just to get it right
___


Could we see worship services as "birthing classes and funeral rehearsals"?

That's what I've been meditating on recently, and the more I think about the two-sided image, the more I like it.

Last week I was mulling the experience of a birthing class as preparing people for an event that's both natural and utterly unlike anything else, a process much anticipated but equally anxiety producing. In spiritual terms, everyone likes to talk about new life, but when it involves dying to self, that's not so popular.

And birthing classes really do spend a fair amount of time on reminding everyone, from mother to cheerfully uncertain spectators, that breathing is a really good idea. Focus on the basics, and breathe, and just take things one step at a time.

Okay, so maybe worship practices and effective preaching can be compared to a birthing class, but what about that odd phrase "funeral rehearsals"?

We are coming up quickly on the doorstep of Lent. Ash Wednesday is March 2, and many Christians will be looking for ways to spend the 40 days and intervening Sundays 'til Easter in penitent contemplation, preparing hearts for resurrection joy by adopting certain spiritual disciplines along the way.

That's another way of saying "funeral rehearsals." I know, funerals don't tend to have rehearsals, and that may be the problem. Wedding preparation classes and rehearsals before the big day for the bridal party to walk through where they go and what they do so the event can be appreciated for what it's supposed to be . . . that's normal, right?

I think we need to prepare ourselves for funerals, too. For dying, and for death. Now there's a Lenten thought, right? My late friend Father Tom Shonebarger liked to talk about "contemplating our mortality" and he was in no way a gloomy person. His point was that we prepare ourselves, mind and body and spirit, for the fact that we will leave this life.

Once in making preparations for a funeral, there was a divided opinion in the family about having the service at the church building or in the funeral home. What prevailed was a few key people saying they didn't want to remember the casket and funeral and finality every time they came back to Sunday services.

I did not press, and we followed those wishes, but I'll share now long after the event that I wished not that I'd argued in that particular case more vehemently, but that in general I'd reminded people of why a church funeral can be truly redemptive and ultimately supportive.

Yes, it can be hard to come into a space where Christmases and weddings and happy times are in your mind, and put a coffin or an urn in the center aisle. But I truly believe that part of being a member of a church family is that you find ways to weave it all together, the baptisms and the departing, the celebrations and the grief, and you prepare in advance and sort out after the fact that the 23rd Psalm has a variety of applications, but you'll never hear it again the same way after hearing it at a graveside. That's not a reason to avoid using it there, it's part of the depth and richness and power of scripture.

Likewise, when you have a church home or just in your mental map of the congregations and church buildings you've been part of, there's something deep and rich and important about that intersection of aisle and altar, before a communion table not just for sermons and Christmas pageants, but also for home goings and farewells. Yes, that first Sunday back is wrenching in a different sort of way than the funeral itself, but that inner realization of what's at stake and why it happened may help the mourner heal all the better, not to say more quickly.

Many of us lost out in these last couple years on funerals as we'd rehearsed them. I pray each of us found our own way to realizing it wasn't all about having the events and activities play out exactly as we'd imagined, the few times we let ourselves contemplate mortality for those we love.

It's arranging the furniture of the heart, developing practices of the spirit that we need to rehearse, not just for an upcoming Lent. Maybe every Sunday in some ways. Even for ourselves.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still working on his metaphors for many things. Tell him how you keep worship in front of you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Garrison Keillor interview 2-8-22

Garrison Keillor interview 2-8-22
Jeff Gill

Songs, stories, and gratitude on stage
___


What Garrison Keillor wanted to talk about was gratitude.

"With aging, when your life comes into much clearer perspective," Keillor mused. "I think back to the decades of my so-called career and it was so hectic, so busy. I remember certain events, but I recall my adolescence and childhood more clearly, more than what I was doing in the years with the radio program, and the tours, and the travel. I was consumed with ambition, and the next thing, and the thing after that…"

But now, encountering aging and limits: "You just feel gratitude for everything. What's left is really beautiful. My wife and I play Scrabble every day. When I was so ambitious, I didn't have time for that, but now I do."

I was asking the noted author, performer, and soon third time guest on the Midland Theatre stage about preaching and sermons and storytelling. It was an interview as a long-time fan I'd imagined many times before, and like Lake Wobegon it didn't quite seem real, except there was no mistaking the voice on the other end of the phone advising me on the tension between preparation and delivery in speaking to an audience.

"If you sit down and write out what you're going to say, you find out that when you get up and go out to deliver that manuscript by heart, you will remember what you need to," said Garrison Keillor.

"Memory is a wonderful editor."

A fixture on public radio for many years with his "Prairie Home Companion" Saturday night program, a year after he chose to end his weekly appearances on the air and turn things over to a new host, a former coworker accused Keillor of inappropriate behavior in the workplace. His public radio employers quickly cut all ties with him, and a settlement was reached.

In his now weekly Substack dialogue with fans he said about the incident recently "it's an interesting story but I'm not going to tell it. The old friend who accused me asked for anonymity and I see no reason to disrupt her life. I'm looking at 80 in a few months and so what's the point?"

His recent writing has addressed his age and aging, and I've found myself freshly interested in this new theme of his, just as I dove into his work decades back to understand the gift and grace of public speaking, if not of preaching itself.

Keillor was the very presence on the phone of grace and welcome. He also is persistently very much who he's been through the years, an inquisitive, quizzical, and insightful student of human nature without an excess of optimism about our foibles, but with a strong emphasis on hope. After all, he was the bass anchor for the Hopeful Gospel Quartet.

"We just had a show in Holland, Michigan where we had a singing intermission," Keillor explained. Each "Keillor & Company" program is different; he brings a pianist and vocalist to accompany him, but his goal is clearly to find out if the audience is willing to sing a cappella together — "it's not me, it's not my singing, it's giving people the opportunity to do this, and they almost always rise to the occasion." In Michigan, those assembled responded in four part harmony, a challenge to which I assured him Ohio could rise. Our opportunity to respond in Newark comes on March 3 at the Midland Theatre, with tickets available online for his 7:30 pm show (see the Midland website for details).

"In Easton, Maryland last Sunday, in the monologue I found myself using pieces from my recent novel which had stuck with me, bits from columns I'd written not long ago, stories from my family: I was stealing from myself," Keillor chuckled. "Then we started out with 'My Country 'Tis Of Thee,' and went on to 'It Is Well With My Soul' and 'How Great Thou Art' all a cappella, and since we were near Baltimore, we sang the 'Star-Spangled Banner' and people just responded."

He was very open and candid about his childhood background in a very conservative religious tradition, and the kinds of social limits that were taken for granted by his parents, but also how out of their marriage "doctrine had to give way to love." Keillor's parents took differing views on Christmas observances and musical preferences, but found their way together towards harmonious resolutions as their family story was lived out.

"There's no doubt about it, stories have a certain power," Keillor noted. As we talked our conversation kept coming back to that question of how a community, how a diverse group of people can find in story and song a common purpose, a unifying thread.

"People are wary of a story that carries too clever a moral," he pointed out. "Through stories, we learn about our own culture." And songs, I added. "I worry about how little song some of our younger people know, what songs they have in common." Keillor observed "everyone knows 'Amazing Grace'" and that "Softly and Tenderly" brings everyone together pretty quickly, but what he's trying to keep alive "is the sheer joy you can feel in a room when everyone is singing out and singing together and even in harmony sometimes."

In a career which has ranged from short stories in "The New Yorker" to appearing as a version of himself in a Hollywood movie based on his radio show, his latest turn is online through Substack, with "Garrison Keillor and Friends," where his most recent columns and reader response "Post to the Host" entries have become regular reading.

I pointed out to him that his regular writing has made me think of where he lives as a friendly, compact, small town, even though he makes it clear he's living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He laughed at the idea, and explained "since COVID, I've been living a very small life. And a small life, perhaps, is perfect for a writer." His wife runs in Central Park, they have their groceries delivered, he walks to his Episcopal church where he speaks warmly about the ministries they provide, from a rich mix of musical styles and offerings to healing services and sermons to which he's clearly happy to just listen.

As we wrapped up our conversation, he said of his daily routines "It's a very simple life, it happens to take place in a very large city." I assured him that the small city of Newark was looking forward to welcoming him again, and his audience would come grateful for the opportunity to hear him, and for the chance to sing together.

Faith Works 2-19-22

Faith Works 2-19-22
Jeff Gill

What about birthing classes?
___


Various questions have been asked of me about my idea that worship services are describable as "birthing classes and funeral rehearsals."

Now, I didn't say that's a comprehensive summary of the totality of what Christian worship is or should be, just that I thought it was a useful template to use, imaginatively speaking.

If someone else wants to say "worship should be communion with the Living God" I won't dispute the point; if another argues "Christian assembly on the Lord's Day should be about turning hearts toward heaven and lifting up Jesus" I'd smile and say "Amen!" to you. Each is an attempt to find a model in words how to sum up and guide the ever-challenging question of leading worship, something both my wife and I have done in a variety of settings from Scout camp shorelines to rented middle school auditoriums, let alone a variety of church buildings, over many years. Worship is not something that can be summarized easily . . . any more than God can be, come to think of it.

But the more I think about my off-hand phrase, the more I like it. It kind of grew out of a post I've done multiple times over the years, after first taking our son to Disney World, and seeing a discreet sign over by the Mad Tea Party: "First Aid & Lost Children." For a long time, that was a phrase I would mention in congregational leadership and in social media as a working summary of what church is at its best: "First Aid & Lost Children." An effective congregation, I'd still say, should be a place where the spiritually hurting can hope to find a kind of first aid for the soul, and where those who feel lost and without a loving parent watching out for them can find a refuge, and maybe even be reconnected with the love they once knew.

That's for faith communities in general (and for the nonce, I think it's a nicely ecumenical description, too, not just a Christian model), but it's not quite as descriptive and prescriptive for worship services. I didn't spend much time thinking about that, just a mental placeholder to note I didn't have a neat summary phrase that worked as well.

My phrase "birthing classes and funeral rehearsals" I think has it's roots, as perhaps too much of my thinking does, in the writing of Wendell Berry, and specifically the closing of his blank verse poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" (trust me, you should read it if you haven't, easy to find online). Two words: practice resurrection.

"Practice resurrection" might do better in two words what I propose in five, but it's a bit opaque. I'm still claiming it as wisdom, but the fleshing out of it ended up with first "birthing classes" and needed the logical bookend of "funeral rehearsals."

If you've never been through a birthing class, male or female, the main thing to remember is that the leaders want you to be prepared to welcome new life into your own. And they want to be honest with you: it won't come easy, you need to breathe, and you need to accept what comes while working with what's happening. Our natural impulses are not always our friends when birth is ready to occur, but with a modest amount of coaching, the pregnant woman and even the hapless male (or friend, as was true for some of the couples when I was in a birthing class) can make it through.

New life is what we all say we want, but that's not the same as saying we're ready for what it means to let new life be born, or to accept the changes new life brings into our life as it was. Birthing classes do spend a great deal of time on breathing: because that's one of the simple things we need to remember to do when life is changing dramatically, just remembering to breathe. And there's a fair amount of conventional wisdom and outright truism that needs to be shared, because now we're hearing familiar phrases in the context of — now this means us.

Does this description sound more like birthing classes, or preaching and prayer in worship? Stay with me, and I'll get to the second part, too.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's practicing resurrection every day. Tell him how you've learned to rise up and go forth at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 3-3-22

Notes from my Knapsack 3-3-22

Jeff Gill

A round trip of the Land of Legend

___

If you've got about three hours to spend & have cabin fever, here's my suggestion for a day when the sun is shining. You'll drive a hundred miles and never leave Licking County, but get a great sense of the whole rich wide range of terrain we have.

I'm starting in general around downtown Newark, so adjust from there as suits your location. Head east, exit at Cedar St. and go north on Rt. 79. Drive on through Wilkins Corners, on to turn at Rocky Fork Road heading north: watch you swing left just north of 79 and don't end up on Rainrock Rd., but cross the bridge.

You'll pass Camp Falling Rock but enjoy the geological formations on either side of Rocky Fork, clearly visible from your car this time of year, hidden from the road during leafier seasons. Beware as the pavement ends, keep going until you run into Camp Ohio Rd., turn left. You'll run into Martinsburg Rd., jog north to Richards Rd. then it runs right into Bell Church: get out, enjoy the view from the cemetery hilltop outside the historic church building -- Amish farming to your east makes for a different sort of look to the fields.

Take Bell Church Rd. over to US 62, turn left, roll past Utica (Watts Restaurant just a few blocks north), head across the county with sweeping views north and south and straight ahead. When you hit 657/Marion Rd., turn right; more rolling countryside until you reach the hamlet of Lock and Lock Rd., turning left to shadow the northern county line until you reach Fairgrounds Rd., turning left. Past the Hartford Fairgrounds, into Croton, south on Croton Rd. -- heavily glaciated flat farmfields on either side, after you just saw unglaciated geology all around you up Rocky Fork.

The road ends at Rt. 37, turn left and pass through Johnstown, and just east of town south on 310. Back into rolling terrain, on across Rt. 16 and then south of the highway turn left on Morse Rd., the main road from central Licking County to Worthington and Franklinton in the 19th century. You'll turn right on Outville Rd., and on through one of Licking County's often missed little gems, Outville itself.

Then to US 40, the Old National Road at Kirkersville. This next stretch is straight ahead driving through Luray and Hebron and Jacksontown, but look for old buildings and of course the milestones still often in view on the north side of the road, some nicely maintained, all along the way. Eagle's Nest just before Brownsville, about 15 miles from Kirkersville, is the highest point on the National Road in Ohio, and the views to the south along here are always stunning.

Take Brownsville Road north, aka CR 668; turn right at Flint Ridge State Memorial and pause there as suits you. Flint Ridge Rd. to Gratiot Rd. north (left turn) and at the jog, just turn left and stay on Brushy Fork Rd., making sure to see the Old Stone Church of Christ on your left, the oldest church building in the county still in use (c. 1836, just ahead of St. Luke's in Granville). Meander on down the valley until you reunite with Brownsville Rd., turning right to cross the Licking River, and return to Rt. 16, crossing it, and then veering left on Marne Rd.; you'll pass through Marne village, and watch for Montour's Point on your left (a George Ball home on a site that was a trading post back likely into the 1750s) then Bowling Green Cemetery on the right, oldest pioneer settler cemetery in the county. Cross Rt. 16 again, and enter Newark on E. Main St., returning home as you wish.

About 100 miles, three hours or so depending on stops, and you'll have sampled a grand circuit of this Land of Legend we call home.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's driven all of this a few times and backwards, too. Tell him sights you like to share in this county at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Newark Earthworks essays for the Advocate running series of guest editorials

Newark Earthworks editorial essay - Spring 2022
Jeff Gill

On foot around the earthworks
___


Over the last thirty-plus years, I've had the pleasure of leading thousands of people on tours of the Newark Earthworks.

They arrive on school buses, some in tour coaches riding high, or in flotillas of cars from the local college campus.

Groups are a large number of our visitors, but people come from farther away individually or as couples, unscheduled and uncertain, sometimes attaching themselves to larger groups as we walk and talk. And on open house days or other planned events, those of us who lead tours meet people who sometimes came after weeks and months of planning and anticipation.

Whether a retired couple on vacation, or three yellow busloads of excited and energetic schoolchildren, one part of the process I enjoy is helping visitors get their feet on the ground, and seeing the earthworks as the original builders did, two thousand years ago, shortly after the construction phase was over.

And while the big groups coming to see the major preservation locations are rewarding to guide and inform, at the Great Circle off Rt. 79 and the Octagon Earthworks at the end of Parkview and 33rd St., they are but two sections of what was originally a four and a half square mile geometric earthen enclosure. Yes, we've lost a great deal; yes, we should be thankful for the foresight of community leaders and average citizens who set aside the Circle as county fairgrounds by 1854, and saw fit to tax themselves to purchase and preserve the Octagon earthworks in a public vote of 1892.

But what I've come to truly enjoy is taking groups, a dozen or two at a time, on foot across the landscape of modern Newark, to visit the pieces that have, in most cases, been accidentally preserved. Some now have protections around them, others at risk, but my best strategy right now I believe is simply to take people to see them, step by step, and raise our awareness of just how much remains even between our two grand monuments at either end of the majestic original whole.

There are subtleties in how the Native American builders used the landscape, and how the terrain today both hides and can help reveal what was built here millennia ago. You can't catch it as you drive along in your car; from a high bus window you miss much traveling in between. And our contemporary obsession with aerial views, overhead maps, now drone perspectives, can lift our eyes so far up we miss what's right at our feet.

These tours are quiet and discreet; we travel on public streets and sidewalks, and a few alleys, but some of what we're viewing is beyond where we can go, so I don't promote these locations casually. The Wright Earthworks is owned by the Ohio History Connection, a central fragment whose location can be shared abroad, and where we can triangulate from there to lost elements now only seen on old maps . . . or occasionally, to locate another small piece hiding in plain sight.

The research, the learning, the discovery still continues. Sometimes, just step by step.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he leads tours as a volunteer with the Newark Earthworks Center at Ohio State Newark and for the Ohio History Connection, and is a World Heritage Ambassador.


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Newark Earthworks editorial essay - Summer 2022
Jeff Gill

Moving earth across the landscape
___


One challenge we have in doing what's called "interpretation" of the Newark Earthworks are the assumptions, and even misconceptions many visitors bring to the sites.

Interpretation is the kind of non-formal education that park rangers and tour guides do. Interpretation isn't education in that there's not a set outcome in mind, of grades or credits or course participation scores. You participate for a very different set of motivations: social, family, personal reasons for taking a trip, spending some of your leisure at a place where you can learn or just relax and pick up a different point of view.

Obviously education and interpretation have a fair amount of overlap in terms of tools and techniques, but the biggest difference is that your visitors can walk away at any time. Students in school usually don't have that option. So a good interpreter knows they can't just lecture, shouldn't try to be merely entertaining, but there's a tricky balance to maintain.

This is why it's hard to deal with mistaken assumptions. If someone voluntarily comes and joins in an interpretive program or takes a guided walk, and says "but we know aliens built all of this, right?" we might be a little argumentative. What you don't always know is exactly what your visitors are assuming, and how that's shaping the way they hear what you're telling them.

There are words, for that reason, we avoid. "Savage" I hope we all understand is an inaccurate as well as unhelpful term; "primitive" is right up there from my point of view. Some visitors do start from an assumption that if you don't have written records, or metal alloys, or gunpowder, you're not a civilization, but they'd be quite mistaken.

In fact, one of the archaeological and anthropological marvels around the Newark Earthworks scholarship we've done thus far, is how we see not only the engineering precision built into this four and a half square mile complex of geometric earthworks, but the social complexity we're only just starting to come to understand.

Briefly put, there are major civil engineering projects in ancient history around the world, and in this hemisphere, of pyramids and monuments and causeways and roads, all of which took large numbers of workers. But almost without exception, the archaeological record shows in funerary remains and nutritional analysis of teeth and bones that there was some serious social stratification in those cultures. There were bosses, kings or priests or poobahs, who show less wear and tear on the bones and better food in their bellies. And there were workers, servants, even slaves, who lived notably less well.

Through the Middle Woodland period of the Ohio Valley, in the population archaeologists call the Hopewell Culture, we don't find this. Slave labor, even significant social stratification, doesn't appear in the archaeological record. This is significant.

Because to built earthen enclosures made up of literally millions of basket loads of soil and clays, sometimes brought from miles away, you need hundreds or more likely thousands of people voluntarily working together. Working hard, and apparently without coercion. This is quite a civilization, and I'd like to ease my visitors around to leaving behind their assumptions about early America, and call it an advanced civilization, in its own unique way.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he leads tours as a volunteer with the Newark Earthworks Center at Ohio State Newark and for the Ohio History Connection, and is a World Heritage Ambassador.


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Newark Earthworks editorial essay - Fall 2022
Jeff Gill

Taking shelter from the storms
___


Every year, as the nights get longer and the weather gets colder, I think about the Native American builders of the Newark Earthworks, of their ancestors in what we call the Archaic period and even before that the Paleoindian era, and how they faced the coming winter.

The lives of the indigenous people to North America were different than ours today, no doubt, but I think it's more helpful to start with what we have in common rather than to dwell on the fact that they had neither cars nor speeding tickets.

In fact, pausing as I walk in the evening to think about how those ancient builders got ready for a night in Ohio helps me look at my own evening routine a little differently.

Look, much of what we call a house is a machine for doing two things. Keeping the water off of us, whether rain, sleet, or dew, and for keeping heat inside, which is why we yell at our kids about leaving doors hanging open. And that's another thing I suspect has not changed in 12,000 years or so.

Modern houses have pitch roofs, gutters, downspouts, and drains. American Indian inhabitants of what we now call Licking County are known to have built what are commonly called wigwams, domed or cone shaped structures which are different from the more stereotypical "teepee," which is more of a Plains Indian living quarters.

Different tribes and languages have a variety of words which adjoin wigwam, but basically you're talking about a well crafted structure, with poles made from more flexible saplings placed in the ground, bent across to a partner opposite and lashed together. A framework of such poles would be lashed with spruce roots or other natural materials carefully selected for toughness with flexibility. The structure would then be covered with panels of bark taken off of suitable trees, and in some situations animal hides might be used; in the early historic records we read about woven panels which could be rolled up and transported if the residents were moving.

Those same records tell us moss sheets or woven grass mats could be packed around the bark to divert the rain and fend off heavy winds. Doorways were usually covered by animal hides.

When it rained or blew, I imagine the head of a household in the valleys along Raccoon Creek wondering "will the roof hold? will it leak?" Whether shingles nailed by a hired crew, or bark mats caulked with moss and reeds, the questions and worries are really just the same.

And instead of worrying about the furnace, when it was last serviced, and if I need to replace the air filter, in a wigwam was a central fire pit, used for cooking, illumination, and warmth. If there was enough firewood at hand, and it was a quiet night, you and your family would watch the smoke rise up through the carefully crafted smoke hole at the peak of the wigwam, and see the stars flicker just beyond.

The houses are different, but the concerns have not changed. And the good feeling of knowing your family is being kept dry, kept warm, and together in your home here in Licking County.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he leads tours as a volunteer with the Newark Earthworks Center at Ohio State Newark and for the Ohio History Connection, and is a World Heritage Ambassador.

Notes from my Knapsack 2-17-22

Notes from my Knapsack 2-17-22
Jeff Gill

Preserve, enhance, advance
___

For Granville and western Licking County, as we all see some dramatic changes coming as clearly as a squall line sweeping down out of the sky, I have three words of counsel.

Of course, I have more than those three, but this is what came to mind as I drove around, during the reflections I wrote about here last time, about the land we're going to see transformed into globally significant factories and economically disruptive locations.

Preserve, enhance, advance.

Preserve: the reality is, was, and always will be that we can't save it all. We cannot and should not want to preserve everything like a fly in amber, with the same stiffness not to say deadness that would result. Broadway and its businesses are not the same as it all was when I first moved here; some I miss, some I have trouble remembering. There are views we had from my house that are now blocked by new buildings which may or may not make my heart sing. I could have bought that lot across the road to prevent someone from building on it, and I did not, so I lose a particular vista.

The same is true for communities, townships, regions. The green space efforts we've made now look even wiser than they did at the time; zoning disputes are already happening where developers and builders are looking for maximum return even before the chip factory news. The time is now for us to figure out a) what do we want to preserve, and b) how much will we pay for it? Natural, historical, familiar things might all change soon: what do we want to preserve?

Enhance: since we can't preserve everything, we have to look at what it takes, as a communal endeavor, politically or in other civic arenas, to shore up and secure what we do have that we're going to keep. Schools and education are usually at the top of this list, but perhaps we've been content too long with a two item list of "excellent schools and a small town way of life." Seriously, what specific features do we want to make better, stronger, more secure as change like a rip tide washes around us?

Advance: Seven generations. If I have learned anything in the wonderful opportunity I've had in working with Native American groups and tribes and individuals in the last few decades in reference to the Newark Earthworks, it's the principle shared across many tribal nations and indigenous cultures in North America: how does this decision have an impact seven generations on? What in roughly 150 years will this choice mean? And if you can't answer the seven generations question, you haven't come up with a solution of any sort worth the name.

Preserve, enhance, advance. Because for good or ill, there are few things more socially disruptive than economic development. Anything we do not as a community make an intentional choice to preserve and maintain is going to be dramatically changed in the next few decades. And we can't preserve everything.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's seen a few communities change, sometimes for the better, sometimes otherwise. Tell him what you'd like to preserve at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 2-12-22

Faith Works 2-12-22
Jeff Gill

Birthing classes and funeral rehearsals
___


As if on schedule, a social media furor broke out, as they're always doing, about on-line worship.

A person whom I have read somewhat from, and think generally well of, surprised me and from what I could tell on social media quite a few others by saying she believed churches should stop offering online or "virtual" worship, in pretty much any form. Her answer in advance to the question of "what about the home bound" was that congregations should go back to what many had been doing before, and sending trained leaders, lay or ordained, to bring communion or some form of personal presence into those places, but not use video worship as a way to provide that.

Perhaps it was a cheerful sort of well meant trolling. Sometimes folks see the word "trolling" and assume it's a personal affront, an insult that should cut to the bone, but . . . some of the nicest people I know are trolls! By which I mean that folks can adopt an online persona that's garish and drastic and much more emphatic than they actually are. Even fairly mild-mannered people can post something for effect, put an opinion out there on the very fringe of what they actually believe, in aid of getting attention, discussion, clicks to engage with their actually much less controversial stance.

And on the "all churches should drop online worship entirely" front, I detect a bit of walking back. This is written far enough ahead I'm not sure what the next chapter for that particular blogger will be, but I'm going to follow up her point, which is where I think the positive spin on trolling can be accepted, as long as it's okay for me to disagree. Starting with the point that came to my mind immediately and was posted by myriad others: how ironic is it that we're reading this polemic about online worship . . . online?

I just got done rushing over in advance of our recent winter storm to stay with an elderly relative, fearing power outages and such. One challenge: the newspaper did not come as usual. Now, the local paper there, as here, is going through some changes, and obviously the trends are towards the digital platforms. People want their news on their phones, or their devices, et cetera . . . except for the ones who want it in their hands, on newsprint, leaving ink on their fingers.

Poignantly for me, one of my last conversations with my father was about the shifts in print publication frequency and the growth of online news outlets. He said, I kid you not, "I don't know that I want to live in a world where I don't get a newspaper every morning." Well, that resolved itself not perhaps how I'd wish. Meanwhile, in 2022, my aged relation wanted the morning's newspaper, and me showing it to him on my laptop was no satisfaction at all. He wanted his paper! And blessedly it came, albeit later in the day.

But we all know that in March, changes that have come elsewhere in the country arrive for us, with Saturday news online and digital, but not in print form. And I'm sure changes will continue, some of which I may not like all that much.

That's newspapers. For worship, we not only want, I'm with the pseudo-trollish minister who says we need face-to-face and in-person worship. We do. There's much about the life of faith, like my metaphor last week of "birthing classes and funeral rehearsals" that only go so far on video lessons and recorded experiences. We need to get back to together, I do not dispute it.

Yet to bar even the option, for fear people will use it . . . I think of how Christians went a millennium and a half without personal Bibles. No one had personal, private copies of Scripture. They were hand made, cost the moon, and if you had one in church it was chained to the preaching desk. You learned God's Word in preaching, art, through the liturgy.

Then that meddler Gutenberg came along, and next thing you know paperback copies of the Bible are handed out for free by the Gideons, and now we all have access, but do we have better knowledge?

Allow me to troll a bit. I think all Bibles should be turned in, and we can only hear and learn from Scripture by going to church, then we'll get back the community and commitment of the medieval period. What do you think?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been called a troll once or twice. Tell him how you've learned not to feed the trolls at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Newark Earthworks essays for the Advocate

Newark Earthworks editorial essay - Spring 2022
Jeff Gill

On foot around the earthworks
___


Over the last thirty-plus years, I've had the pleasure of leading thousands of people on tours of the Newark Earthworks.

They arrive on school buses, some in tour coaches riding high, or in flotillas of cars from the local college campus.

Groups are a large number of our visitors, but people come from farther away individually or as couples, unscheduled and uncertain, sometimes attaching themselves to larger groups as we walk and talk. And on open house days or other planned events, those of us who lead tours meet people who sometimes came after weeks and months of planning and anticipation.

Whether a retired couple on vacation, or three yellow busloads of excited and energetic schoolchildren, one part of the process I enjoy is helping visitors get their feet on the ground, and seeing the earthworks as the original builders did, two thousand years ago, shortly after the construction phase was over.

And while the big groups coming to see the major preservation locations are rewarding to guide and inform, at the Great Circle off Rt. 79 and the Octagon Earthworks at the end of Parkview and 33rd St., they are but two sections of what was originally a four and a half square mile geometric earthen enclosure. Yes, we've lost a great deal; yes, we should be thankful for the foresight of community leaders and average citizens who set aside the Circle as county fairgrounds by 1854, and saw fit to tax themselves to purchase and preserve the Octagon earthworks in a public vote of 1892.

But what I've come to truly enjoy is taking groups, a dozen or two at a time, on foot across the landscape of modern Newark, to visit the pieces that have, in most cases, been accidentally preserved. Some now have protections around them, others at risk, but my best strategy right now I believe is simply to take people to see them, step by step, and raise our awareness of just how much remains even between our two grand monuments at either end of the majestic original whole.

There are subtleties in how the Native American builders used the landscape, and how the terrain today both hides and can help reveal what was built here millennia ago. You can't catch it as you drive along in your car; from a high bus window you miss much traveling in between. And our contemporary obsession with aerial views, overhead maps, now drone perspectives, can lift our eyes so far up we miss what's right at our feet.

These tours are quiet and discreet; we travel on public streets and sidewalks, and a few alleys, but some of what we're viewing is beyond where we can go, so I don't promote these locations casually. The Wright Earthworks is owned by the Ohio History Connection, a central fragment whose location can be shared abroad, and where we can triangulate from there to lost elements now only seen on old maps . . . or occasionally, to locate another small piece hiding in plain sight.

The research, the learning, the discovery still continues. Sometimes, just step by step.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he leads tours as a volunteer with the Newark Earthworks Center at Ohio State Newark and for the Ohio History Connection, and is a World Heritage Ambassador.

Notes from my Knapsack 2-3-22

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.

Faith Works 2-5-22

Faith Works 2-5-22
Jeff Gill

Cross currents and communion in church
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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.

Faith Works 1-29-22

Faith Works 1-29-22
Jeff Gill

Cross sections and cross country living
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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.

Faith Works 1-22-22

Faith Works 1-22-22
Jeff Gill

Faith communities and who's in the pews
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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.

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.