Faith Works 1-15

Faith Works 1-15-11

Jeff Gill

 

Just Listen to That

__

 

With some business on the Newark campus of The Ohio State University, I was walking through the Reese Center and then the Warner Center, and had a few minutes in each to just stand, and wait, and watch.

 

There were probably a few students and staff who walked by me without phones, but they didn't stand out. The dominant experience was the vaguely Doppler-effect sound of one half of a conversation increasing in volume and clarity as the bent-armed walked came past me, then faded into the next passage or doorway . . . quickly replaced by the next.

 

This is not to say that every electronic conversationalist was moving along, and indifferent to nearby listeners. Even with temperatures flirting with single digits, some hovered outside around a corner for a motivation I can only put down to a desire for privacy, unless they just had a thing for frostbite. But they were keeping themselves warm with energetic talk.

 

My work done there, I got into my car and heading back towards downtown Newark along Granville Street, into the Five Points and down to Courthouse Square. Now that I'm thinking about it, I can't help but notice, at each intersection, and even oncoming traffic – it's something like two out of three drivers, if not a bit more in sum, holding a phone up to their ear while driving (I think) with their other hand.

 

It's amazing when you consider it from the viewpoint of the last few centuries, where like the World's Greatest Salesperson in the World, we used to have to carry our bulky dial phones over our shoulders on broad leather harnesses. But our signal strength was never what his seems to be.

 

Right, I'm kidding. We used to carry a dime in our Boy Scout first aid kit so we could make an emergency phone call from a booth (kids, don't even ask).  I saw my first Motorola cell phone in 1977 and thought it was the coolest, sleekest thing – looked like a slimmed down, streamlined sewing machine, and weighed about as much, just without the cabinet.

 

Today, everyone: the guy in the beat-up pick-up ahead of you at the stop light, the coatless student sitting on a picnic table, the woman behind you in the express check-out, everyone has a cell phone, a smart phone, a connection, and they're all on the line (ha!) with someone, constantly.

 

Which is why we are communicating so well these days.

 

What do you mean, am I joking? Of course not, we're communicating at a frantic clip, words pouring forth, piling up, rising into the ether and erupting from devices in our hands or clipped around our ears. And that's why we all understand each other better, get along so well, work together so smoothly in groups and as families, and everything is cupcakes and puppies and unicorns, right? (Mmmm, cupcakes.)

 

I had piled up a bunch of Biblical citations I wanted to use here: Mt. 6:7, Eccl. 5:2, et cetera, et cetera, but you can look those up for yourself. What I want to say is simply a good word for . . . silence.

 

Winter is a fine time for a silent retreat, or just a day chosen to intentionally NOT speak. Maybe even a couple if you can pull it off.

 

"Is there enough silence for the word to be heard?" asked T.S. Eliot. For those who wonder how silence can speak, who hear about silent retreats and consider it wasted time, I can only ask "how's all our talking working out for us?"

 

One shouldn't talk on a phone while driving, let alone texting; beyond that, I have no interest in joining a general effort decrying phones and the internet and blogs and tweets, and there are many of them out there if I wanted to sign up.  I'm really not sure they do much harm.

 

I just don't think they represent much communication, either, and I want to point that obvious point out to everyone. We're talking to each other more than ever, but we are losing our opportunities for, and perhaps our appreciation of, silence. I think we all need a little, perhaps some more than others, but everyone a bit, like iodine in our salt.

 

Find some silence for yourself before we head back into spring, and Lent, and sports, and the 2012 political prospects. Write a list, and don't call your spouse from the canned vegetables aisle. Walk out and listen to the snow fall, and hit the ground.

 

Did you know that you can hear that, if you listen?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he knows that preachers like silence more than most people would think! Quietly send e-mail this week to knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Winter 2011 "in class" tours --

http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/nrkwrks.gif

http://knapsack.blogspot.com/2010/01/links-for-newark-earthworks-tours.html

http://newark.osu.edu/Pages/Default.aspx

http://www.change.org/petitions/view/nominate_significant_ohio_earthworks_to_be_added_onto_the_unesco_world_heritage_list

Knapsack 1-13

Notes From My Knapsack 1-13-11

Jeff Gill

Twelve Years Old in Granville – 1863

[2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War,
and Licking County will have a number of events honoring our many
local connections to those momentous days in our nation's history;
this story is based on one of those ties.]

1863 -- Ellen wondered where her father was today.

They got letters from him at odd intervals, and some of them referred
to previous letters that clearly they had never received.

Right now, she and her brothers and sisters were only certain that he
was in a state called Tennessee, which was very hard to spell.
Spelling was not Ellen's favorite subject at the old octagonal
schoolhouse, down Centerville Street just past Clouse's lane, but in
general she liked schooling, just not as much as she loved her father
and worried for him.

He was an officer, and she always envisioned him bravely leading his
men at the front of a charge, but even a twelve year old knew that
the front of a charge was no place for a father of six.

Mother Ruth always seemed the very picture of grace and calmness, but
she looked like a little girl herself when a letter arrived from
Father. The younger ones were still taught at home, but Ellen was
walking back from school. She felt very fortunate that her walk every
day was not even a full mile each way; there were children, and young
ones, who had to walk some four or almost five miles from the Welsh
settlement out in Sharon Valley, and they had the steepest part of
their journey one the way home.

From Tannery Hill overlooking Clear Run, it was level all the way to
the schoolhouse and back. To make the short jaunt into the village
meant you dipped into the valley, waded or skipped from rock to rock
across the crick, then scrabbled up the slope and around the shoulder
of Mount Parnassus to get to town.

In town were shops and stores where candy could be found and news of
the war in the South, but out here on Centerville Street, you could
get dried apple slices, fresh milk, toasted nuts, grilled fish, and
stories about the fearsome "alligator" on top of the hill to the
north. They went into the village for church on Sunday, but for the
most part, they had everything they needed right along their two
miles of heaven from Clear Run to the Newark turnoff, down alongside
the old feeder canal to the aqueduct.

It was good to go to school, but it was even better to head home
where you could freely ask Mother questions about what you had
learned: Had she ever been to Baltimore? Did a clipper ship really
travel faster than a horse and carriage? Were there actually
factories that extended for blocks, filled with metal machinery that
took in raw material and produced useful gear at the other end?
Boston, Massachusetts sounded like a city full of marvels, and
Faneuil Hall to boot, where Samuel Adams and John Hancock once spoke.

Perhaps one day she would see it for herself.

Perhaps one day she would teach children in a school, like Miss
Aylesworth did, sitting at her desk opposite the door, with the
remaining six sides lined with desks, the older scholars in those
privileged seats, the younger perched on the seat extended outward
from the front. These two concentric rings of students were the
entire world of education for Ellen, but she knew there was more to
learn beyond Centerville Street.

Then a voice she almost mistook for her younger sister, but was her
mother calling out at the house on ahead: "Ellen! There's a letter
come from your father!"

[Ellen Hayes went on to teach, and after five years saving her pay
attended Oberlin College, then ultimately taught astronomy and
mathematics at Wellesley College in Massachusetts; she ran for state
office and published her own newspaper, and before her death in 1930
wrote of her childhood in "Wild Turkeys and Tallow Candles," still
available in Granville.]

Knapsack 1-13

Notes From My Knapsack 1-13-11

Jeff Gill

Twelve Years Old in Granville – 1863

[2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War,
and Licking County will have a number of events honoring our many
local connections to those momentous days in our nation's history;
this story is based on one of those ties.]

1863 -- Ellen wondered where her father was today.

They got letters from him at odd intervals, and some of them referred
to previous letters that clearly they had never received.

Right now, she and her brothers and sisters were only certain that he
was in a state called Tennessee, which was very hard to spell.
Spelling was not Ellen's favorite subject at the old octagonal
schoolhouse, down Centerville Street just past Clouse's lane, but in
general she liked schooling, just not as much as she loved her father
and worried for him.

He was an officer, and she always envisioned him bravely leading his
men at the front of a charge, but even a twelve year old knew that
the front of a charge was no place for a father of six.

Mother Ruth always seemed the very picture of grace and calmness, but
she looked like a little girl herself when a letter arrived from
Father. The younger ones were still taught at home, but Ellen was
walking back from school. She felt very fortunate that her walk every
day was not even a full mile each way; there were children, and young
ones, who had to walk some four or almost five miles from the Welsh
settlement out in Sharon Valley, and they had the steepest part of
their journey one the way home.

From Tannery Hill overlooking Clear Run, it was level all the way to
the schoolhouse and back. To make the short jaunt into the village
meant you dipped into the valley, waded or skipped from rock to rock
across the crick, then scrabbled up the slope and around the shoulder
of Mount Parnassus to get to town.

In town were shops and stores where candy could be found and news of
the war in the South, but out here on Centerville Street, you could
get dried apple slices, fresh milk, toasted nuts, grilled fish, and
stories about the fearsome "alligator" on top of the hill to the
north. They went into the village for church on Sunday, but for the
most part, they had everything they needed right along their two
miles of heaven from Clear Run to the Newark turnoff, down alongside
the old feeder canal to the aqueduct.

It was good to go to school, but it was even better to head home
where you could freely ask Mother questions about what you had
learned: Had she ever been to Baltimore? Did a clipper ship really
travel faster than a horse and carriage? Were there actually
factories that extended for blocks, filled with metal machinery that
took in raw material and produced useful gear at the other end?
Boston, Massachusetts sounded like a city full of marvels, and
Faneuil Hall to boot, where Samuel Adams and John Hancock once spoke.

Perhaps one day she would see it for herself.

Perhaps one day she would teach children in a school, like Miss
Aylesworth did, sitting at her desk opposite the door, with the
remaining six sides lined with desks, the older scholars in those
privileged seats, the younger perched on the seat extended outward
from the front. These two concentric rings of students were the
entire world of education for Ellen, but she knew there was more to
learn beyond Centerville Street.

Then a voice she almost mistook for her younger sister, but was her
mother calling out at the house on ahead: "Ellen! There's a letter
come from your father!"

[Ellen Hayes went on to teach, and after five years saving her pay
attended Oberlin College, then ultimately taught astronomy and
mathematics at Wellesley College in Massachusetts; she ran for state
office and published her own newspaper, and before her death in 1930
wrote of her childhood in "Wild Turkeys and Tallow Candles," still
available in Granville.]