Faith Works 1-1-22

Faith Works 1-1-22

Jeff Gill

Thinking about a cup of sugar

___

If you read my four part story through December, you followed a young mother up and down the street she'd lived on for a few years, looking for a cup of sugar.

The story, a work of fiction built of scraps tugged out of my own reality, had a beginning in a staff training session I was asked to help with years ago, for a group working on housing issues in Licking County.

There were a number of elements to the visioning and planning day I was part of, but what's stuck with me was a group conversation I started with talking about the memory I had, growing up, of being sent across the street by my mom with a measuring cup in hand to get a cup of milk for making biscuits. Sometimes, it was Mrs. Stone coming over to our house for one egg because she needed three and found she only had two left, or Mrs. Glinski asking on the phone if Mom could send me over with two cups of flour.

I'm not saying it happened every day, or even every week, but it wasn't odd or unusual. And then at some point . . .

This is where the conversation really took off. Because the folks my age or older (I'm 60 now, but this was 10-15 years ago) all had variations on the same sort of memories from their childhood. Those who were younger, in their twenties and thirties, were kind of bemused by the whole idea. Go to a neighbor's house for supplies? Seriously?

What we both uncovered and bridged in the next few minutes was a bit of a generational gap in assumptions and expectations: a time when many families had one car, so if Dad wasn't home from work, "running to the store" wasn't even an option; a time when baking not only happened, but wasn't always from a pre-mixed box; a time when houses and fridges were smaller, when a few of us even recalled milk delivery in the morning, and the homes were closer together and even had sidewalks between them.

To be honest, I haven't asked a neighbor for baking ingredients in . . . decades. (I did have a bottle of wine show up on my front porch recently.) And both my wife and I have cars, we have a pantry and cupboards and if anything, I might find my supplies are dried or hardened or rancid, not used up. But there are still makers and bakers and grandmothers on many (most?) blocks in our communities, and while home-made snacks are out of bounds for most school events, there's still times and places where a plateful of homemade cookies are welcome sights, let alone tastes.

For all of the popularity of cooking shows and bake-offs and Martha Stewart with Snoop Dogg, it's not clear if actual food preparation is on the upswing in homes. The early pandemic period saw shortages of yeast packets and A-P flour and other home baking goods, but that demand seems to have settled back down to previous levels. Drive-up carryout pickup of food, home delivery services, and even resurgent inside dining all are showing our eating habits to be back to a fairly retail and individualized status.

So what's the path for what my story was really meant to be about, which is rebuilding community? What is the best recipe for mixing together our own memories of pies and cakes and cookies, punch and egg nog, potlucks and pitch-ins, to where the interest would rise for us to get together and share meals?

This is something that faith communities perhaps do best. For many of us, a shared meal, even with modest amounts of bread and wine, is the heart of our worship. And even traditions which make less of communion know the communing that can take place around covered dish dinners or after funeral luncheons. Sharing food is a taste of the holy, an eternal moment that can come during the lunch hour, and we need to find more ways to break bread together. Or to make cookies!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's enjoyed hearing from so many of you about your cookie recipes. Let him know how you'd get more people eating together at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes From My Knapsack 1-6-22

Notes From My Knapsack 1-6-22

Jeff Gill

St. Murphy, preserve us

___

Perhaps you've heard of St. Murphy, the apostle of low expectations.

No, he's not real, but the reality of low expectations leading to less disappointment certainly sums up 2021.

Tony Hillerman wrote a whole autobiography titled "Seldom Disappointed," from an impoverished Oklahoma rural upbringing through World War II and ultimately a successful career as a journalist and professor, let alone as a best-selling author. But in his youth, he learned that it was essential to keep your expectations in check.

That approach can sound somewhat depressing, except for how Hillerman made it clear that low expectations keeps some mental and spiritual space open for occasionally being pleasantly surprised. You aren't always going to get pleasant surprises in life, not even every day, but if you're open to the possibility while working with that which is — the unpleasant realities and everyday inconveniences — you might even be surprised by how often you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Murphy's Law says "whatever can go wrong, will." Finagle's Corollary adds "and at the worst possible time." Most engineers and technicians of my acquaintance tell me they live by these principles right up there with OSHA and NIOSH. If you're a devotee of St. Murphy, you expect stuff to break or wear out or not work, and when things do go right you're properly thankful for the occasion, as opposed to expecting that as a usual outcome.

More importantly, you are more likely to be prepared in advance for adverse outcomes when you expect them. You will seldom be disappointed at yourself by making ready for problems. "Be prepared" is the Scout motto, and always having two sources of illumination in your baggage on the road, or checking your tires and oil regularly, and keeping an extra coat and gloves and even a blanket in the back seat during the winter: you may never need them, but when you do, you're going to feel very thankful indeed that you put them there. A power outage in a strange bedroom, a breakdown on a lonely stretch of road, unexpected occurrences along the way can best be dealt with in advance, or at least better than in the moment when unprepared.

On a broader scale, this is why we have an NIH and a CDC for the national interest. We can debate, and no doubt will, how ready those agencies and scientists and bureaucrats were for the arrival of a "novel coronavirus," but the record shows that people like Anthony Fauci said years ago that their greatest fear looking ahead was something like what just happened. In the same way, journalists and even a few politicians talked in the 1990s about their concerns over what would happen in New Orleans if its levee system got a direct hit from a hurricane. It wasn't unanticipated, but we were unprepared . . . or at least not as prepared as we could have been.

How could we have been better prepared for COVID? I honestly don't know, but I know we need to look into how well we were prepared (which may be better than we think we were) and how we could have been better prepared (which likely would have been expensive, which always has to be taken into consideration).

Meanwhile, what will the rest of January look like? Let's just say . . . I have low expectations. But I'm open to being pleasantly surprised.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's a big believer in being prepared. Tell him about your expectations, great or otherwise, at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 12-23-21

Notes from my Knapsack 12-23-21
Jeff Gill

O little town on Raccoon Creek, how still…
___


Bishop Phillips Brooks went on a post-Civil War pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1868. Along the way from Jaffa to Jerusalem and on to the Dead Sea, his party visited Bethlehem, spending the night in a hostel just off Manger Square, near the Church of the Nativity built by the Emperor Justinian over the grotto where tradition says Jesus was born.

Late at night, Brooks looked out of his window onto the dark and quiet streets of that little town in the Judean hills. He saw the heavens above, and the stone below, the candle light flickering in the church windows across the way. And then he sat back down and began to write what was at first a poem.

"Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by."

Bethlehem 150-plus years ago was quiet after the sun went down and folks went to bed. During the day, pilgrims came and went, caravans were still passing through on their way from Hebron to Jerusalem, shepherds from the rural countryside passed tourists from Massachusetts and even farther afield. Manger Square and the road past Rachel's Tomb were bustling places. After dark, storefronts closed down and the streets cleared.

Two thousand years ago, how was it? The census staff closed down at dusk, the inns barred their doors, and families retreated to their homes and stables. Roads were empty, and the marketplace was quiet. Somewhere along a side street, a home for a relative of Joseph's hosted him and his betrothed, opening up a temporary lodging where her child could be born.

"The hopes and fears of all the years, are met in thee to-night."

Seventeen years ago, I remember driving slowly into Granville on Christmas Eve. The ice storm of December 23, 2004 had brought down power lines, added a thick coat of snow to pretty much everything, and by late in the day on the 24th, little light or heat was available to most people. Generators here and there allowed some Christmas Eve services to happen, along with the traditional candles. Power had been out for a while, but we knew that it would return in time.

The four corners church buildings showed varying amounts of feeble light through their glass, stained and otherwise, as did a few more on beyond the downtown core. The plows and shovelers had piled high along sidewalks and street sides the former obstacles in the roadways, and what light there was glittered off of ice and snow in equal measure coating trees and buildings and vehicles.

Twenty years before "O Little Town" was written as a poem, so too was "O Holy Night" drafted in France, by Placide Cappeau. Adolphe Adam wrote the music for it later, and John Sullivan Dwight translated the French words into English. There's a phrase in it I see alternatively "the weary world rejoices" or "the weary soul rejoices."

That's what I felt, for myself and for others, as I maneuvered around Christmas Eve that night. Power was far from restored in most homes, but the roads were cleared, and generators were out and operating, plus a night always beloved for candlelight now came into its own.

Granville was quiet and mostly still, but I could feel our weary souls rejoice. Above the deep snow-walled streets the silent stars twinkled brightly, and between them the glow of fellowship was streaming out of windows, giving hope to the wanderer.

May this Christmas Eve do the same for you in our little town.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's happy to skip the ice part of the story repeating itself. Tell him how you've found hope in the holiday season at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 12-25-21

Faith Works 12-25-21

Jeff Gill

A cup of sugar, a story for the season

___

[In the Saturdays of December, a story is being told on the installment plan; this is the last of four parts.]

Mrs. Schaeffer at 642 was so happy to get her cookies from Mrs. Kern; as Melanie had been warned, it took a while, but from the front step she could see the procession of lights turned on one at a time inside until the older lady opened up her door.

"You're the young woman Mrs. Kern called me about, aren't you?"

"Yes, ma'am," was the instinctive reply. Mrs. Schaeffer was on a walker, but there was authority and strength in her voice that made her think of a teacher or professor of some sort.

"It's good of you to deliver these for her. If you could come on back to the kitchen and set them down; as you can see, I can't carry much." Pivoting around on the two wheels in the front of her walked, Mrs. Schaeffer made her way through the front room to the kitchen just through a wide archway.

"I'd make you a cup of coffee, but it's too late for either of us to be drinking that, even on a cold night." Mrs. Schaeffer stood herself up while standing within the security of the walker. "Can I invite you to come back some time and I promise you a good mugful, not that instant powder and hot water."

"Yes, certainly; I just have to get back to my boys tonight anyhow. But sure, sometime soon, I'd be happy to." Melanie realized she meant it, too.

"You still have some baking to do tonight, at any rate. Well, Merry Christmas to you and your sons, and I look forward to seeing you again. If you don't mind, just tug the door until it clicks behind you."

Melanie balanced the other two boxes she still had, and pulled the door shut, thinking about how she'd met more strangers tonight than she probably had in the last year, and both had felt like people she'd known for years. How odd, and all because of a cup of sugar.

She dropped the one box of cookies off at Mrs. Morley's at the door, the bag of sugar still under one arm, with a promise to check back in with her later, then finally back through her own front door.

The boys were in the back bedroom on a game console, and she sat down on a chair in her own kitchen, glancing up at the clock. It had felt like an epic adventure of a neighborhood sort, but barely half an hour had passed. Next to the stove already set to warm, the sifted flour and dry ingredients were there, and the bowl with softened butter waiting for the sugar was ready.

"Boys," Melanie called out. "Boys, come on into the kitchen."

Another half hour later, it was bedtime, and a first batch of sugar cookies were out of the oven. "These smell great!" was the unanimous opinion. Then the remembered bag of sprinkles and colored sugar in the coat pocket came out, and a last delay of bedtime with a festival of decorating (and some sprinkles on the floor to sweep up later).

Each got to eat one warm, and then a reminder to brush teeth before getting into bed. Melanie asked them, before they left the kitchen, "How would you like to bake a few more batches and take them to our neighbors?" They agreed that would be cool, especially if they could decorate them, too.

With the boys off to sleep, Melanie sat at the kitchen table thinking about cups and pounds and batches, how much waxed paper she had plus a few shoeboxes in the hall closet. With that five pound bag of sugar less one cup from her first batch, she had nine cups left. Maybe six more batches of cookies to share? For Mrs. Morley next door and Mrs. Kern at 648 and Mrs. Schaeffer at 642, plus her office mate at work, and maybe one for each of the boys's teachers?

Suddenly, somehow, the holiday ahead seemed brighter, bigger, and just a bit more merry. She started in on the next batch; maybe two more before turning in tonight, and a couple more with the boys after school.

If she ran out of anything else, she'd just go down to Mrs. Kern's to ask. And she found herself hoping that she'd have to.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he hopes these columns have led a few people into baking their own batches of cookies. Let him know how you've gotten to share Christmas at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 12-18-21

Faith Works 12-18-21

Jeff Gill

A cup of sugar, a story for the season

___

[In the Saturdays of December, a story is being told on the installment plan; this is part three of four.]

Melanie had never met Mrs. Kern at 648, but now she was expecting her.

Mrs. Morley, Melanie's next-door neighbor, she knew . . . well, as she walked down the street it occurred to her she didn't really know Mrs. Morley all that well. As a mother of two boys, she'd moved in a few years ago to this quiet residential street, looking for a good peaceful place to bring them up, but between her job and school and sports and then COVID, she'd really hardly met anyone in her neighborhood, and only knew Mrs. Morley because of her having taken the initiative to say hello, offer a hand at times, to simply smile and wave. That's why she'd found the nerve to walk over looking for a cup of sugar to finish a cookie recipe she'd started.

But those pictures on the piano? How long had her husband been gone, and where did her children live now, grown? Melanie realized she didn't know. Even so, the welcome that night included a bag of cookie toppings in one hand and a call to a neighbor Mrs. Morley did know promised to fill the measuring cup in her other hand.

Shifting the cup handle along with the dangling bag, she knocked at 648, and immediately the door inside the storm door swung in, steam clouding the glass. Then the outer door swung open, and a voice inside saying "come in, come in!"

Entering, Melanie saw a short, round little woman in a wide and long apron, white hair in a bun on the back of her head, who said as the storm door closed "You are just in the nick of time, I have cookies coming out, more going in, and all my supplies out on the counter! Follow me."

Mrs. Kern bustled through the living room into a brightly lit kitchen, tidy underneath but busy with bowls and trays and cookie sheets and wire racks everywhere.

"Now, dear," she went on, "you needed a cup of sugar, Martha said?" Melanie nodded, looking around at what seemed to be a veritable cookie factory. Then feeling rude, she added "yes, that's right, and you're so kind to offer to help."

"Oh, my, dear, cookies are my life. I was a school cook for years, and especially at Christmas, I just have to have a big project to make me feel at home in the season. So here…"

The older lady was holding out a bag, a full sack of five pounds of sugar. Melanie flinched, and said "oh, but I just need a cup!"

"Nonsense, dear," replied Mrs. Kern. "What about your next batch? Don't worry, I have plenty more in the pantry; it's easier for me to give you that little bagful than to parcel out a cup, easier for you to carry home. And as you go . . ."

Melanie tucked the bag under one arm, and stuck the measuring cup back into her coat pocket, the bag of sprinkles into the other one. Looking up, she saw Mrs. Kern holding three boxes, bright with ribbon and stickers, out to her.

"If you would be so kind, I wanted to get a box of fresh cookies to Mrs. Morley, and also to old Mrs. Schaeffer at 642, if you wouldn't mind delivering those with my compliments. She may take a bit to get to the door, so be patient. And that third box is for you and your boys; if you'll send one of them over after school tomorrow, I'll have another boxful for you, but these over here are spoken for first thing in the morning. But one box worth won't be enough for two growing boys, not by half! I'm doing chocolate butterscotch chip cookies tomorrow, those in the box are just chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin."

"Mrs. Kern," Melanie said taking the stack of boxes, "I just don't know what to say, but thank you . . ."

"Oh, no, dear, thank you for giving me a chance to help. It makes me happy to see a young woman in the neighborhood, and a baker, too! Anything you run out of, just come on by and ask. My boys keep me supplied: they say it keeps me off the streets."

And so Melanie found herself walking down to 642 with a stack of cookie boxes in her arms.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been checking his pantry supplies as this story unfolds. Let him know what you are baking this Christmas at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 12-11-21

Faith Works 12-11-21

Jeff Gill

A cup of sugar, a story for the season

___

[In the Saturdays of Advent, a story is being told on the installment plan; this is part two of four.]

"Hello, Mrs. Morley," said Melanie. "Sorry to bother you this time of day."

It was dark out, but in December that didn't make it very late. Mrs. Morley smiled at her and said without a question "Come on in, dear."

Standing in the older lady's living room, she felt even more awkward than she had pausing at the door before she knocked, but the only way out is forward, as her dad used to say.

"Mrs. Morley, I hate to be a bother, but I'm in the middle of trying to make some sugar cookies with my boys, and like a fool…" Melanie pulled her hand out of her coat pocket, with the measuring cup in her hand. "I thought I had more sugar than I did, and I wondered if I could borrow a cup of sugar from you?"

If anything, the neighbor's smile grew larger. "Oh, how sweet. What a lovely Christmas tradition for your sons to remember; just have a seat and let me go look."

Melanie sat down, and looked around the small and tidy living room, thinking of her own toy strewn family room next door. There was an upright piano across from the door, and a row of framed pictures across the top: a young man in an old hand-tinted picture wearing a military uniform of some kind, a couple in front of a Christmas tree (was that Mrs. Morley?), and a series of candid or school photos of a few young people who got older, left to right, until a wedding photo anchored the far end.

Shaking her head, Mrs. Morley came back into the room with a small bag in her hand. "If only you had needed eggs or flour! I'm exactly where you are, dear, I thought I had sugar and I don't except a few spoonfuls on the bottom of the crock. I am so sorry…"

Melanie got up and said "Please don't apologize. It was just on the chance you might, it will keep until tomorrow I guess."

Holding out the bag, Mrs. Morley replied "I do have just the solution. Mrs. Kern two doors down has plenty; I just called her. She's at 648, and will be waiting for you."

"Oh my, don't go to the bother of…" stuttered Melanie.

Mrs. Morley laughed. "Too late! I called her on the kitchen phone, it's the one she and I gossip on all the time. She's a baker; she used to be a school cook and can't stop making things for all sorts of events. Almost a caterer, she is, except her cooking is always a pleasant surprise."

"But before you go, just to contribute to your holiday project," she said holding the bag out more insistently, "I had some sprinkles and sparkles in red and green sugar that I'm not likely to use soon, which will be perfect for what you're doing. You'll do me a favor by taking them."

Slowly accepting the bag, Melanie got up, and nodded. "Well, if she's waiting for me, I guess . . ."

"That's exactly right, dear. She's happy to hear about a mother wanting to bake cookies for her sons at Christmas, and delighted to help."

After a few more wishes of the season, Melanie was back out the door, down the walk, then turning towards 648, to a nearly neighbor she'd never even met. What had she gotten herself into, she asked herself.

A bag in one pocket, and a measuring cup in the other, Melanie pulled her coat tightly around herself, and headed on down to the house after next, looking for that elusive cup of sugar.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's ready for some fresh baked cookies just writing this. Let him know what you think happens next at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 12-9-21

Notes from my Knapsack 12-9-21
Jeff Gill

Denison celebrates 190 years
___

In 1831, Ohio Baptists looked at their losses to competing religious groups in northeast Ohio, also known as the "Western Reserve", and in the southwestern part of the state around Cincinnati, and they took steps to create educational institutions to build up their tradition.

There weren't a great many Baptists in east central Ohio, but just enough, especially around Zanesville, to make a pitch for a proposed "Literary and Theological Institution" in their neck of the woods, in as yet uncontested ground by the competitors so common up around Kirtland and Mentor or down in Carthage and Mt. Healthy.

So it began, the Granville Literary and Theological Institution, formally launched December 13, 1831 by Ohio Baptists.

Obviously, the name was long and somewhat unwieldy, and even after they moved across Raccoon Creek through "miles of mud," from their former location to their new and lasting home atop Prospect Hill, it just wasn't a name to conjure with.

Financial struggles in the 1850s nearly closed down the relocated college, but a bachelor farmer who had cared for aging parents beyond the age of marriage and offspring offered, at the urging of his Muskingum County Baptist preacher, to fund a renewed university if they preserved his family name.

Ironically, William S. Denison at nearly 60 found a teenage bride willing to marry him and bless their union with children, and he fought paying off the full amount pledged right into the Civil War years, but the state Supreme Court agreed that he'd made a binding promise, and in the end his heritage didn't last through children, but Denison University did.

This puts Denison in an interesting category with Harvard and Vanderbilt as institutions of higher education named for people who never physically visited their campuses . . . but Denison is unique in having to sue in court to get their bequest.

Denison was a university well before the time when many private residential colleges have more recently looked to change their name to a more attractive "university" label. Doane Academy as a private secondary school, Granville Female Seminary, and Shepardson College for Women all were part of the collection of institutions that meant Denison truly was a university from the late 1800s on into the present day. Locally, residents and students alike refer to "the college" but the full name has been Denison University since the 1850s.

Brown University in Rhode Island was a template from Denison's earliest days, another Baptist school which became an independent and influential academic institution in their region. Preachers and teachers and leaders were the result of the curriculum, at Brown and at Denison, with the Twentieth century ushering in an era a further independence from sectarian ties, first from exclusively Baptist affiliations to a more general "Christian college" model, and to the private residential liberal arts undergraduate program of today.

A college which trained missionaries for places like Japan, China and Myanmar is today a university whose graduates are still catapulted around the world. The mission of today's Denison University is "to inspire and educate our students to become autonomous thinkers, discerning moral agents and active citizens of a democratic society." The program is more secular in nature, but the intention is still one of inspiration, rooted in "a firm belief in human dignity and compassion unlimited by cultural, racial, sexual, religious or economic barriers, and directed toward an engagement with the central issues of our time."

Happy 190th birthday, Denison University!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's learned much at the fair college on the hill, and even gotten to teach a little there. Tell him what you've learned about educational institutions at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 12-4-21

Faith Works 12-4-21

Jeff Gill

A cup of sugar, a story for the season

___

[In the Saturdays of Advent, a story will be told on the installment plan; this is part one of four.]

Melanie wanted her two children to have a lovely, memorable Christmas.

The last year had been memorable, but not in good ways. Melanie's mother had died after a long illness, and she wasn't sure the boys even remembered her when she was still up and around and making cookies in the kitchen. Their father had stopped calling even on their birthdays as he traveled with his work out of state. She was thankful for a promotion at work and a pay raise, but it meant longer hours and she covered shifts more than she wished.

So tonight she planned to make sugar cookies for Christmas. It was something her mother did when Melanie was a child, and she realized they hadn't ever done that in this home, and it was five years since the divorce and their move to this neighborhood.

She pulled up a simple sugar cookie recipe on her phone, and checked the canisters, dusty along the back of the kitchen counter, and was relieved to find a hardened container of baking powder in the back of the cabinets. There were eggs in the fridge, and she knew vanilla and flour were sufficient because she did make pancakes fairly often . . . well, often enough. (Make pancakes every Saturday this December, she thought to herself as she got out the big bowl.)

The butter was softening in a ceramic bowl, and she sifted together the flour and baking soda and baking powder which she'd chipped loose enough for a half teaspoon, with the oven heating up to 375. Melanie started thinking about having the boys come in and help put the dough on the cookie sheets.

For the next step, the two sticks of butter got mashed and mixed in with the cup and a half of sugar. She opened up the canister and reached in to scoop out the measuring cup's worth, but heard not a scoop but a scrape.

There was just enough sugar to cover the bottom; the while interior fooled her into thinking there was plenty, when there was nowhere near enough. Maybe a half cup at most, and she needed a cup and a half. And these were sugar cookies: it's not like there's a workaround.

She spent some time ransacking cupboards, thinking there might be an old bag of brown sugar she kept for oatmeal (when was the last time they had oatmeal for breakfast?), and maybe that could work? But it had either been eaten or thrown out. No sugar. She found an extra blue canister of salt, sighed and shrugged.

It was late, looked like rain on the forecast, and too near the boys' bedtime. So much was mixed and ready, but she just needed a cup of sugar. The butter could go back in the fridge, the bowl of flour and dry ingredients could go back in the cabinet and would probably be okay . . .

Or she could ask Mrs. Morley next door. Melanie remembered how when she was little, sometimes her mom and neighbors would call and borrow an egg or two, or a cup of buttermilk, but that was when people cooked and neighbors talked to each other. She'd never asked a neighbor for a cup of anything.

But Mrs. Morley looked like a lady who might bake occasionally. She could offer her half the batch, maybe? What would that be, two dozen cookies for her, still plenty for the three of them. Sighing again, she grabbed the measuring cup, shrugged on her coat, and stuck her head around the doorway into the living room to tell the boys she'd be right back. They barely nodded.

Out the front door, around on the walk since the grass was soggy and probably muddy, and up the neighbor's driveway. The lights were on, her car was in the carport behind the house, it didn't seem too late, but Melanie was nervous. It seemed odd, but then it came to her that she had never in these last few years come over to her neighbor's house. She'd always come over to her to offer a hand or to say hello. How odd, but that's how it had turned out.

Feeling uneasy enough she almost didn't, but then she thought about her mom, the boys, and those cookies she wanted them to have, and she knocked on the door.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's pretty sure he knows where this story will go, but you never know. Let him know what you think happens next at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Advent Devotional Dec. 6, 2021

CCIO Advent Devotional

Dec. 6, 2021

…When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

 ~ Matthew 6:3-4 (NRSV)

Myra was a Greek city on the southern coast of what's now Turkey, in which it's a small town called Demre. But as part of Lycian Greece, it was an outpost of Grecian culture, a seaport with cosmopolitan connections, and in the early Fourth Century the Christian community of Myra had its own bishop, a fellow named Nicholas.

There's a long journey from Nicholas of Myra to Santa Claus, and some might even argue there's no real connection anymore between the two. This is where the wider Christian tradition of acknowledging saints has been less accepted in more austere branches of our faith community, because the historic person and the legends that can entwine their image can in truth end up at some distance from each other.

Saint Nicholas is honored in the ancient Christian calendar on December 6, traditionally the date of his passing in the year 343. The week between St. Nicholas's Day and St. Lucy's on the 13th is where many northern European traditions of trees and candles and wreaths and gifts have their actual roots, grafted onto the celebration of the birth of Jesus a little later in the month.

December 6 as a time for gift giving has the longest heritage, although it might be worth recalling that for many centuries while there were gifts in the Advent season, they were no more than could be stuffed into a stocking or stuck in a shoe left at a child's bedroom door. This would seem to leave out ponies and bicycles and game consoles, let alone automobiles with giant red bows.

But the idea of a secretly given gift, without the giver seeking credit for having left it, has a very long and honorable heritage going back at least to Nicholas himself. The legends go back nearly to his era, that the bishop of Myra was, as a good Christian pastor would be, attentive to the hurts and needs of the congregation. Nicholas knew of certain challenges faced by various families in his parish, and found a way to make the practical side of a solution (gold coins, or a ransom in a pouch, or some other tangible way to pay off a debt) show up in their house. He never climbed down a chimney in those first stories out of Myra, but sometimes stockings or shoes by a fireplace were the receptacle of the needed gold bags.

The semi-ironic point of them all was that the receivers didn't know who their benefactor was, though if that really was the case, why do we know it was Bishop Nick here some seventeen centuries later? Ah, saints stories. Like a modern superhero movie, you may not want to pick at the details too closely, let alone the physics. The through-line of the story is that there was a family in need, a church ready to respond, and a gift given not to receive thanks in return, but to honor Jesus's call to love one another.

And isn't the clear origin of the impulse of Saint Nicholas that caution from Christ in the Sermon on the Mount: that in giving gifts to aid and uplift others, don't tell people. Don't put your name on a plaque. Don't make a big deal about it to others. In fact, don't even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. A warning I read this way: when you give a gift? Give, and let it go. If you give something to someone, and you find yourself worrying about their reaction, their response, how thankful they are or whether it's getting used the way you think it should? You need to forget about it. That's the left side of your brain knowing too much about what the right half got going on. Drop it.

Leaving aside the puzzle of how we know, but letting it be one of those artistic license moments, Bishop Nicholas in helping his community members was truly a Secret Santa. That was clearly his intention, and that seems to be a scriptural intention, too. May all our giving and sharing and helping this Advent be done in that same spirit.

Prayer: God of grace, giver of every good and perfect gift, help us to give freely, to receive thankfully, and to share in the joys of this season as people of grace, a family of faith, with a witness to the world. Amen!

[Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher living in Granville, Ohio; his email is knapsack77@gmail.com but he's fairly slow about replying, so please be patient.]

CCIO Advent 2021 devotional text

CCIO Advent devotional

Dec. 13, 2021

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

 ~ James 1:17 (NRSV)

Before the reforms of the Western calendar, December 13 was effectively the winter solstice date, the shortest day and longest night of the year.

It was also the feast of Sancta Lucia, St. Lucy's Day, and the connections of "lux" or light with Lucia meant that from Sicily to Sweden, in early Europe the celebration of this date meant folk traditions to ask for vision, light, and the rebirth of the daytime hours which would become visibly longer about December 25th, at Christmas.

We have other ways to mark the month and the days, and light switches to banish the gloom of evening coming shortly after lunchtime, but for all our modern innovations, we still seek vision. To see, and see clearly.

James speaks in his letter about light from above; Alexander Campbell cited this verse to explain his windowless study with a six-sided cupola allowing only "light from above." The message of James is that every self-giving act, every perfect gift, brings us something of God, of the divine intention, into our everyday life.

St. Lucy in her martyr's tale from the third century tells us about a young woman who chooses to see God's love as the most important love in her life; there are many myths about her, all of them eloquent (and some creepy), but I most like the stories that talk about how she could not be moved, even by a team of oxen. She was barely more than a little girl in the midst of the Roman Empire at its height, but they could not move her. God and the love of charity and chastity and compassion came first, and not wild horses or well trained draft animals could move her. She could not be moved.

In Advent, we look for the light of God to grow on us and around us, and we pray that when God's anointed comes to lead us, that we will follow, that we will not be moved from that faithfulness. Advent is about the promise God has given, again and again, to offer guidance when we need it, to lead us for a season, to transform us for eternity. Lucy heard and saw and believed that promise, which gave her enough light to follow step by step. On St. Lucy's Day, we can remember that witness, her martyrdom, as a light for us which "comes from above." 

As saint's tales do, from St. Nicholas to Sancta Lucia, her image and story becomes in the north of Europe a procession of young women walking slowly, deliberately, with a crowning wreath studded with lit candles, avatars of a coming dawn made real on the "longest night" as Dec. 13 once was in Sweden. Those illuminated acolytes cast flickering shadows on the snow, a tribute to a young woman who likely never saw snow in her life.

The Christian journey, the story within the story of Advent, is one where we find ourselves made one family, siblings of the Christ, children of the Most High, alongside of Sicilian princesses and Scandinavian children. We are ancient modern people, brought together from the east to the west, the arctic to the antarctic, from Romans to Americans, empires lost and rising and falling again, but all made one in a redeemed and resurrected hope.

May we all find light from above that illumines our inmost thoughts, our late night reflections, well before the reassurance of the dawn a light that comes from above but shines out within. Sancta Lucia, shine your light upon us!

And may we remember that all light comes from above, from God.

Prayer: Illumine Thou our hearts, O God, and shine not only on us, but through us, that we might show a light which helps others find a path that leads towards your love. Amen!

[Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher living in Granville, Ohio; his email is knapsack77@gmail.com but he's fairly slow about replying, so please be patient.]

Notes from my Knapsack 11-25-21

Notes from my Knapsack 11-25-21
Jeff Gill

Thankful for losses, large and small
____

Being thankful is one of the usual duties of the season, and certainly an expectation for columnists. Most of us find at one point or another as November winds its way towards December thinking about what we are thankful for.

You can make quite a list, some years, of gifts and events and occasions, of people and relationships, of all that has made us thankful in the last year, or at least as much of it as we can recall from the vantage point of the eleventh month.

My thoughts are going in a somewhat different direction, not that I don't have a number of wonderful reasons to be freshly thankful. But after the last few years I've had work to do heading into Thanksgiving Day on being thankful for . . . well, let's put it this way: for things I generally didn't start out being thankful for.

I'm still slowly adjusting to not being a parish minister, a settled preacher in a church where I go to the same pulpit each Sunday and preach to a largely similar congregation week after week. That is the life I had been used to for decades before, and like most people, I liked what I was used to.

Yet there are blessings to having the freedom, which I had to push myself to claim, of being able to care for family members in the middle of the complications of COVID. There are pleasures of meeting new faces, masked or otherwise, and preaching to a completely different group than you did the last time you got up to share good news as a preacher. It stretches different preaching muscles to craft a message that way, and I've learned some things about myself, about churches, about faith.

And as I've written about before, the aftermath of my father's passing and the closing down of the family house in Indiana has brought me home taking a different eye to my own possessions, some of them with strong sentimental attachments. Aside from the truism of "you can't take it with you," you can't even get much of it into a retirement community, and most of it my son is not going to want to inherit. I'm thankful I've been coming to a new relationship to my stuff, to memorabilia, to what I (think I) can't do without.

With this year's new version of some of the same struggles we had last year, not to get into too many personal details, it's also been a time to confront some limits. In myself, in others, and as we (in our family, anyhow) start to assess what we can and can't do it's a healthy time to figure out what is possible, even if it's not exactly what we wanted to do. Clarity is a gift, one with sharp edges but a useful reflection.

So I find myself thankful, in a way, for losses, for paring down, cutting back, getting focus even if on a smaller field of view. Clarity is indeed a gift, and I want to be thankful for it.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's thankful for a whole lot of people but that's a different column. Tell him about how you've been thankful for unexpected things at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-27-21

Faith Works 11-27-21
Jeff Gill

The Wheel of the Year, Cycle of the Seasons
___

Full disclosure: I love the Christian calendar.

My own religious tradition is one that is not as rooted in the observance of the church liturgical sequence as others; we hold that such things are non-essential, and in truth I would never judge harshly someone who said they found the so-called church calendar unhelpful. It's something we've created over the centuries to help make spiritual sense of our annual cycle of events.

The more rigorous of my fellow believers take as their guide not so much that if something is not explicitly forbidden in the Scriptures, you can do it, but if something is not specifically called for in the New Testament, you should not mark it. Severe Calvinists like Oliver Cromwell famously banned Christmas celebrations on this basis, and our early American Puritans felt much the same way; it took a Civil War and the experience of soldiers encamped with German Americans and Irish recent immigrant enlistees to re-disperse across the country traditions of trees and decorations and feasting and carols.

By the time we got Christmas back into most of American Christianity, even the most austere faith communities started to relax about a few manger scenes and maybe a tree in the vestibule. Once we'd had our troops overseas, especially into 1940s Europe, they came back with a love of candlelight services and "Silent Night" that's still a part of what many of us think of as a "traditional American" Christmas.

I grew up in the more progressive end of my tradition, but even in the church of my childhood, I don't recall words like lectionary or Advent being very common until well after I'd left for college. Hanging out with and ultimately ministering around Methodists and Lutherans and Presbyterians in a campus ministry, I saw the role in faith formation and Christian education that the church calendar could play; the Episcopalians down the block let alone the Catholic parish around the corner certainly had more candles (or even incense) than I was used to, so our less exuberant Advent or Lent still seemed to be in keeping with our heritage.

Going out into vocational ministry, I learned in the 1980s that terms like "Year C" or paraments were still a foreign language in plenty of parishes (my word processor still underlines paraments in red), but then I'd hear the question "where do you get those red or green or purple cloth covers for the pulpit and lectern?" Yep, paraments.

Again, I'd argue strongly against anyone wanting to say you must have paraments and a liturgical year to faithfully worship God and praise Christ, but I don't think they are an obstacle, either. They're a teaching tool, and one I have come to appreciate. It's not the end of the world if you miss a Sunday when the green should be changed to purple (hint: if you do that, it's time). And if you have come to prefer the color blue, or as I've heard "Advent blue" for the Sundays leading up to Christmas and the glory of white and gold, that's fine too, just don't make a crisis out of having the wrong color out. That makes the point the anti-liturgical people make about putting human traditions over divine intention, when we worry more about parament colors than the preaching.

It's the idea of the Christian calendar, though, that I've come to value most. It starts with each day, prayers at morning, noon, and evening for many of us, the rising and setting day after day, echoing the Son's rise; then the concept we all share of a day set aside to celebrate the Resurrection each week (even if there's a bit of debate over which day, with a few holding onto Saturday). Then each week we live out a cycle of birth, death, and resurrection in a recurring celebration (some marking each Friday as a reminder of Good Friday, along with other weekly observances); Advent and Lent are each their own self-contained cycle of weeks building to Christmas and Easter, the two axles of the whole ongoing process.

And the wheel within the wheel is the Christian year from the First Sunday of Advent (tomorrow!) through Pentecost, a coherent narrative about Christ set within the wider, ongoing turning of the year itself, both part of and set apart from earthly time.

Or perhaps tomorrow is simply a Sunday: even so, every one is a gift from God. On that we can all agree.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; now he's digging out all his Luke themed sermon notes for Year C. Tell him what Advent means to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-20-21

Faith Works 11-20-21

Jeff Gill

Thankfulness is a choice we can make

___

There's a new word that may or may not make it into future dictionaries, but it has plenty of usage right now.

The word is "Beforetime." As in, "the Beforetime, when we crowded into elevators without a second thought…"

Beforetime is a period of taking supply chains for granted, casual attitudes towards hand washing, and seeing crowds as cause for excitement. Beforetime is what some of us want to get back to, and a time which many of us are sure isn't coming around again. Or as Heraclitus said, "no one steps into the same Beforetime twice" (or Greek to that effect).

Ohio's own Warren Harding campaigned into the White House on the platform "a return to normalcy" which was a word we're still not sure is legit. But it's a word with new currency. We want something like normalcy, even if it isn't a 1920s version.

What our steadily easing circumstances can give us, though, is a very real sense of thankfulness for the things we now know we took for granted. Chocolate chip little bear cookies, the brand of toilet paper we knew fit onto our fixtures at home, going to concerts without a second thought: we can bemoan at length what we don't have back yet, entirely, or we can dig a bit deeper and be thankful for the fact we had those things, and have every expectation of getting back.

Or we can kvetch or mutter about how it is right now, and see if that makes us feel better. As Dr. Phil says: "How's that workin' for ya?"

Thankfulness. That's the theme of the season, the point of the holiday, where we want to be. To be thankful for as good as it is, not to focus on what it isn't now, isn't yet, isn't going to be soon. But we're working on our thankfulness for what we've had, and in a very practical sense, what we're entirely likely to get back again soon enough.

Right now, we don't have everything we'd like to have. That's a common sentiment at any given time. Even in the Beforetime, if we're honest. There's always something we'd like to have, to get, to hold onto, that's gone for now. COVID is making more immediate impacts on our lives, but this isn't all that unusual in the wider sense of how life goes. Read your Bible, read the histories, think about how it was for pioneers, settlers, our great-great-grandparents. This is a literal speed bump in the road by comparison.

So we have had, most of us, a long stretch of smooth driving at high speed, and now we have to slow down, and even brake our way over speed bumps. Okay. No crisis, right?

For the Christians out there, we have a narrative to consider about being a pilgrim people in the Old Testament wilderness, and of being missional apostles sent to to declare Good News, but occasionally having to shake the dust off our sandals and keep moving with the peace that is in us. Nothing new there, correct?

In Judaism, there's a running reminder of giving thanks for freedom from Egypt, of escaping the wilderness in the Exile, or for entering into the Land of Promise. Among Muslim believers, there's an awareness of the struggle for acceptance of who God is, how God is active in the midst of the world, and being thankful for that without asking for or expecting more. Many non-traditional faiths talk about a divine operation that is beyond our immediate understanding, who is not accountable to our everyday expectations.

For anyone trying to live by faith, the challenge is to accept life as it is, but to not settle for that as the only lasting reality. That's both a tension and a resolution at the same time. Or to put it another way, it's our common expectation that faith leads us towards new life, and that to life everlasting.

What's next? Paul says to the Corinthians that we see in a dim mirror but darkly…and later we will see face to face. Can we be thankful for a promise as yet unfulfilled? If we have enough reason to trust that promise; if our faith is secure in promises already fulfilled, pointing towards those prophecies resting in hope, I believe we can be thankful for what has not yet happened.

Which illuminates the thankfulness we have for what's already been done, in a brighter light "upon a distant shore."

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's thankful for quite a few things that haven't happened, too. Tell him what you're thankful for at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-13-21

Faith Works 11-13-21
Jeff Gill

When more can be less, and then some
___


For many churches and other faith communities, the last few weeks have been part of the financial, practical, pragmatic part of spiritual life.

The fall giving campaign is a standard part of many voluntary organizations, especially congregational life. Commitment cards, or pledge sheets, or a variety of paper or now online forms are used to invite individuals and households to make known their intention for donations to the work of their faith community in the coming year.

It's no secret that the whole COVID period has been incredibly hard on a variety of groups dependent on public gatherings, whether worship services or performance spaces like theatre or dance, youth organizations or recreational activities. Even outdoor programs have seen a drop off in group participation, and if your standard form of divine service means putting large numbers together in an enclosed room, the last year has been hard on those figures, in terms of attendance or of giving. There are exceptions, but in general it's been a rough patch to say the very least.

A strange common thread I've heard from a number of religious leaders is that giving, per capita if not in total, is up, but also on the increase is the percentage of overall donations that are designated.

I have to admit that as a a religious leader myself, I've come to have a very ambivalent relationship with the whole concept of designated giving.

In development work, designated giving is recognized as a great way to improve and increase overall donations. Donor choice is a way to open up pocketbooks, and a modest gift, we're told, can become a major piece of giving if you invite a prospective donor to select where and how their donation will be used.

In church life, many of us have known for a long, long time that there's a dark side to designations on offerings. Folks have asked for (or demanded) some form of designation, insisted on options listed with the pledge card, so they can cast a kind of super-ballot on what the church is doing, about their discontent with the ministerial leadership, as to the missions chosen by the church governance. If you're upset with the preacher, you give to the building fund but not the general fund; if you dislike where the annual mission trip went or what they did, you designate your missions giving to a specific cause or location.

It's a form of the infamous "parking lot meeting after the meeting" leadership model, where influence through indirect methods can override any open and official decisions that are made.

The two-edged sword of designated giving is that when you can direct your gift, you give more. That's seen again and again in various financial campaigns, and I have no doubt myself that it's more true than not. A question of stewardship, though, is to ask whether or not it should be as true as it is.

We like to control things. Theologically, we might even discuss that tendency in the light of something called sin. We, ourselves, want to call the shots, whether we're in charge or have the responsibility or are even in the majority. We want to be in control; we want to be . . . okay, theologically, I hope you can see where that's going.

But a gift given with conditions is, practically and semantically considered, not a gift at all. Giving, tithing, good stewardship, is to trust and affirm and to release your gifts to the work of the whole. If the community you're a part of is going in a different direction than you think is right, there's a conversation to have, discernment to make about your place, your role. But more often than not, the temptation to designate is the will within to believe that you know better than those with the responsibility of leadership, and to attempt to impose your will on them.

So here's my spiritual challenge to us all. Don't designate. Don't insist on your way. Don't press for control, let alone credit. Let your yes be yes, your no be no, and your gift be truly a gift.

This is the year to make no designations at all if you can. More giving, but with more strings attached, means fewer options for those seeking to lead in troubled times. An undesignated gift is a gift indeed, now more than ever.

At least consider it. Your choice!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been part of more stewardship campaigns than he cares to remember at this point. Tell him how you find a path towards giving freely from the heart at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-6-21

Faith Works 11-6-21

Jeff Gill

 

A great soul, a mentor in faith

___

I learned a week ago from old friend and mentor Rick Powell that Marilyn Hotz died in September; Marilyn was an elder in the church where he had been senior minister in Indianapolis and where I had come and served as student associate. In her usual no fuss sort of way she had no services, which likely would have been the case even without the pandemic complications. When it was time to go, Marilyn just went.

When it was time to go to prison, Marilyn just went. I showed up a callow and youthful seminarian at Centenary Christian Church in 1985, and I hadn't been there a month when she said "time to go to prison," and before I could say "whaaaa?" off we went.

When it was time to make God's promise of redemption a practical reality, Marilyn just went. I hadn't been there much longer beyond my first visit with her to the Indiana Women's Prison (IWP) when she brought a pretty notorious recent inmate to church, someone who had committed murder and . . . it's not important. The point was this was not someone the community in general was sure they'd forgiven, even though she'd served her time. Marilyn was having NONE of it, no sir. She'd been to Alabama & Mississippi a couple decades earlier to join with Martin Luther King in talking to voting registrars about their limits on God's grace as well as federal voting rights, and large men with unholstered weapons and barely leashed dogs hadn't slowed her down, so a few sidelong glances from the back pews weren't going to give her pause.

When it was time to take Christmas gifts to the state mental institution, Marilyn went. It's all gone now (and the prison as well has been moved out of the Near Eastside), but in those last days of Central State the long halls still held some lonely remaining residents, and she assumed my first December working with the church youth I'd want to take them to the asylum. She went, and so did we.

Marilyn went to be visitor for those at IWP who had no visitors, but they only allowed her so many (there were some rules even she couldn't work around), so she went up to me, twice her height and less than half her age, and said "you need to become a prison visitor." Let's just say I wouldn't know as many convicted murderers or as much about professional prostitution as I do if it weren't for Marilyn. I wasn't sure I had time to make the regular commitment being that kind of visitor required, but if Marilyn went (for five or six a month) then I could figure out how to keep up with one or two.

And whether her turn on the schedule, or if an elder designated for a Sunday didn't show, Marilyn went to the table. I rarely do a prayer for communion where I don't think of her. She could pray in public for any occasion better than any ordained person I've ever known, myself most emphatically included. Marilyn went to the table with delight, but with a sense of holy purpose, that in our prayer we remind everyone of the radical nature of God's invitation. Years later, I'd hear John Dominic Crossan talk about radical hospitality & open commensality, but Marilyn had gotten there first.

At my ordination, we had to hold it under a tent since the church building I'd grown up in had just been condemned. Since Marilyn had been part of our having burned down the church we were all part of in 1986 (accidentally, I assure you, but perhaps also providentially), she loved it. LOVED it. All elders, preaching and teaching elders (aka clergy) and congregational elders alike, were invited to sign my ordination certificate. The number of living signatories to that document is getting shorter, but I always smile to see Marilyn Hotz's signature on it. That's an affirmation of the church I celebrate.

Marilyn went to heaven last month, and didn't tell us. Figures. She's already been up there a while, sorting out St. Peter's intake procedures at Pearly Gates Central, and no doubt has found a small hidden door off to one side to sneak a few in quietly whose presence might surprise the larger number of the redeemed. She'd chuckle at the idea, but in this season of All Saints and All Souls, I know in Heaven there's a new saint of the church in residence to be mindful of, because Marilyn Hotz went home.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's thankful for a great cloud of witnesses who keep us all aimed at heaven while guiding our steps on earth. Tell him about your mentors and role models at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.