Faith Works 3-21-20

Faith Works 3-21-20

Jeff Gill

 

A column I'd rather not write

___

 

My father died.

 

Many of you reading this have been through that, and God bless you. I have not, though I've been with more families than I can count as they dealt with this personal and existential shock.

 

In fact, I was with a family at a funeral home going through calling hours for their father when I got the call from my mother that . . .  right, what I just said.

 

It does not feel real, and I suspect it won't for some time. He was 85, and it couldn't be called a complete shock, but it was. No doubt for him, too. He sat down to drink his coffee and didn't get back up.

 

I'm writing this just after I learned the news, and well before you'll read it, because I may be off my feed for a few weeks. But if you find my stories of interest and my faith as expressed, even obliquely, to have any solidity and substance, Ronald B. Gill gets the credit.

 

He worried that his sons might inherit his flaws, so he was always very forthright with us about mistakes he'd made (less than you might think) and honest about their impact on his life, which always frustrated him a bit that we pretty much all three boys (I'll leave my sister out of this) managed to echo his foibles in one way or another. "Why did I tell you all about my foolishness if you're just going to go ahead and make the same mistakes?"

 

But we had to make them for ourselves, like most people do; I'd like to think we made quicker recoveries having heard Dad's experiences preceding our own. His fondest hope, like most American fathers of his era, was that we'd all four kids do better than he had done. That was a high bar to set, though.

 

Many people have made the modest mistake of thinking my dad was a minister, because of some of the ways I cite his influence. But he was never in that role: he was a Christian, first a Congregationalist, later (due to marrying my mom) a Disciples of Christ adherent, a deacon and elder and chairman of the elders and building committee chair and board chair and constitution revision chair and most of those multiple times. When my childhood church building was condemned, and my ordination held under a tent next to the unusable building, he led and guided and motivated the effort to build a new building in an even better location, and then chaired the second group (after swearing he'd never do that again) to build the current sanctuary.

 

Ron Gill was a local historian and genealogist and Civil War re-enactor and storyteller, in print and in person. Oh, I hear many of you saying, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

 

No, it does not. I've tried to make him proud. Last summer, our church body had their biannual General Assembly in his native Iowa, and in Des Moines he heard his son teach our Christian tradition's history for two long afternoon workshops. After it was all over, on our way to dinner, I asked him what he thought.  "Not bad," Dad said. "I learned some stuff I'd never heard." That's what he always was looking for.

 

Recently, I finished a doorstop of a book I was looking forward to passing along to him. He loved those finds, the thicker the better. He was reading one of them as he drank his coffee and sat in his recliner, no doubt thinking about his next project, when Jesus said "Ron, I need you to help set up some chairs."

 

So he went. See you later, Dad. Love you.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's proud to be Ron Gill's oldest son. Tell him about your family at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.