Faith Works 10-7-22

Faith Works 10-7-22
Jeff Gill

A shifting season of leaves & light
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November 6 is the day we fall back an hour, returning to standard from daylight savings.

We already know the sunset is falling back, coming earlier, even as the sunrise is later. Less light, more dark, cooler air and crisper leaves.

This is also a time for seeing more stars, paying more attention to the moon. You don't have to be a night owl to be out and see the Big Dipper wheeling in the north, and the rise of Orion in the east (one of his many names).

The Newark Earthworks, along with other Hopewell culture period ceremonial mounds and enclosures, are helping us watch the cycle of moonrise points along the eastern horizon. There's an open house coming at the Octagon Earthworks, the last of four for the year, on Sunday, October 16th, all day on the 135 acre property and with tours and programming at 33rd St. and Parkview just north of W. Main St., between Noon and 4:00 pm.

As a preview of the Octagon's open house, I'll be leading a walk for anyone who wants to see some hidden gems, not all preserved officially, of what was once a four and half square mile complex of interconnected geometric figures built two thousand years ago. My walking tour is starting and finishing at the Great Circle Earthworks, just off Rt. 79 between Newark and Heath, which is open daylight hours all year. I'm actually going to take those who come along on a three mile hike off of the park property, along sidewalks and down side streets plus a few alleys. There's more than you might think that's left, for all of modern development and demolition.

We meet at the museum on Saturday, Oct. 15th at 9:00 am and I plan to get you back to where we started by Noon. That's about one mile per hour, or strolling 3 MPH and pausing for some storytelling and answering questions here and there. Please come along if you are interested, just show up with a water bottle and good shoes.

I like to walk in any season, but especially autumn. The temps are congenial, the light has a certain angle to it, especially early in the morning or towards sunset, and the scents of fall are always around.

Scholars and students and storytellers (I've been all three at various times) think that people once walked great distances to experience moonrises, perhaps sunrises, at the Newark Earthworks. A circuit of the shapes, from creek to observatory to square to circle and back through square to ellipse, then to water again on another drainage, one path through that might have been "a" way if not "the" way, is seven miles, more likely ten if you circumambulate each figure.

Walking and prayer are very closely tied for me. The traditional view links worship, in a church, with prayer and vice versa, but many traditions include pilgrimages and circumambulations of their own: Stations of the Cross, labyrinths, walking the sawdust trail, coming forward to confess your sins, your faith. Walking, walking.

Many faiths come together at the earthworks. The story being told by and at the earthworks is still a narrative we're assembling, re-telling, renewing even, I hope. The moon is a focal point, but I believe even that heavenly body is simply an index, a guide directing eyes and hearts and spirits to something — someone — beyond even their rising light.

From whatever your perspective, come walk the earthworks with us.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been learning about the mounds of this area for some time, with a long way to go. Tell him what you know, or would like to know, at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.