Knapsack 11-19

Notes From My Knapsack 11-19-09

Jeff Gill

 

Give Thanks With Heart and Hands and Voices

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Sunday evening at St. Luke's Episcopal Church the entire community is invited to start a week of Thanksgiving with a Community Thanksgiving Service at 7:00 pm, planned by the Granville Ministerium.

 

The Rev. Thom Lamb of First Presbyterian will preach, and The Rev. Stephen Applegate of the host church has arranged a number of us clergy folk from many different denominations in a worship service that can help raise up and focus our reasons to be thankful, as a village, as families, and as individuals.

 

Our offering at the service will go to the Coalition of Care's ongoing work, and a community chorus will sing for us.

 

That chorus is another expression of an impulse that's visible over on Newark's East Main Street, just past the big blue steel bridge, opposite the Licking County Justice Center. Right now, the "Church Build" Habitat for Humanity house is wrapped in blue material around the first floor framing, but sheathing will go on shortly, and then a crane will help lift the roof trusses into place.

 

Centenary UMC is celebrating a bicentennial year in 2010, and one of the ways they wanted to mark the occasion, along with the usual plates and such, was a gift to the community. A few members took the lead in the idea of pulling together county Christian churches, and got around twenty participants to commit to the idea, but Granville churches are strongly represented in both contributions and construction crew. The last day I was on the site, there were workers from Centenary, St. Luke's, Spring Hills, and St. Edwards.

 

The work will continue on Saturdays and Wednesdays through the holiday season; also coming right up – Thursday, Dec. 3, at 6:00 pm, is the Newark "Sights and Sounds of Christmas" guided tour of downtown churches. $5 per person, all for the Licking County Food Pantry, is a wonderful experience to see and hear some real county history, and great live music. Check out www.sightsandsoundsofchristmas.org for more info.

 

Of course the first Saturday of December is . . . time to leave town? Yes, I know there's a few Scrooges who feel that way, but this is the 20^th anniversary of the Lovely Wife and I first stumbling into downtown Granville as evening settled around the Four Corners, the Scouts lighting the luminaries, music echoing out of the churches, and a light snow fell all around. We were captivated and entranced and whatever else the thesaurus says about that, and if you'd told us that night we'd be living in this village fifteen years later we would have laughed and laughed.

 

If you'd have told us in 1989 we'd have a son in twenty years who would be lighting those luminaries, we might have cried, just a bit, with happy tears. And laughed.

 

Both of which we'll no doubt do on Dec. 5 at the Candlelight Walking Tour. See you there!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story about your favorite anniversaries or events at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.