Notes from my Knapsack 3-23-23
Jeff Gill
Spring break plans without complications
___
From Newark City Schools to the more rural districts in Licking County, the next few weeks mark "Spring Break" for students and households.
With college students, spring break has a meaning all its own; Denison and Ohio States have already taken their time off. I'm thinking more in terms of school age kids and their families.
The State Department is issuing warnings about "south of the border," so Cancun and other more tropical beaches seem to be risky; even heading down onto the Gulf of Mexico in the US feels a little off right now.
If you've got time and money to burn, maybe the South Pole or at least Antarctica are on your list; Florida tends to attract the biggest crowds, with Texas right behind around South Padre and Mobile, Alabama fairly popular.
Or, what about Licking County?
I know, spring break is supposed to mean travel. Get me to the Aegean, or maybe the Hawaiian Islands. Nice "work" if you can get it.
It was my senior year of college, and I had a few of them (long story), before I realized that maybe 20-25 percent of my classmates were making it to Florida and Fort Lauderdale for spring break, or so where Purdue students ideally went since "Where the Boys Are" came out in 1960. My impression was people like me were a freakish minority going home for spring break, but in fact we were an overwhelming majority.
Most of us then, and most students now, go home. Like, to here. Ditto school age kids. Some families may visit exotic ports of call, but most of us are right here. To do what?
Let me make a few suggestions for how to spend a spring break, most of which will work fine in this county, but might just be useful in tropic locales.
Take a walk. Not a stroll, but a longer venture, one where you get a small day pack, or even a knapsack, and put a couple of water bottles and energy bars in it. Walk a long, long way, then turn around and walk home. Five miles, ten, maybe more, but just do a long walk. We have rails-to-trails options, but if you walk facing traffic on roads with good shoulders, there are many options.
Find a good place on a mostly sunny day to lie down. Take a blanket or quilt or whatever to buffer your experience of the soil and grass, and lay yourself in a comfortable pose, where you can see the sky from horizon to horizon. Then, watch a cloud from its first appearance, likely in the west, across the sky overhead, and all the way to (usually) the eastern horizon. Repeat a time or two. You will never, I guarantee you, look at clouds the same way again.
Pick a spot. Take a foot or two of red yard, and make of it a nature trail. On a tree branch to a trunk, from the roots to a nearby anthill. Think through ten or twelve stations. Find someone also on spring break, talk them through the hike. Switch, and let them design the yarn's path and tell you the tour.
Enjoy your spring break, wherever it is!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's used to spring breaks close to home. Tell him about your travels at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Monday, March 13, 2023
Faith Works 3-17-23
Faith Works 3-17-23
Jeff Gill
Where we are from, which is elsewhere
___
Halfway through Lent, with St. Patrick's Day and St. Joseph's Day marking the turn.
I've checked out some fish frys on Fridays, even as the Protestant in me prefers baked steak dinners.
A preacher in a Catholic church is no strange scene today, but there are still those alive who recall when it was much more unusual, unlikely, improbable.
Not so terribly long ago, Protestants casually walking into a parish hall and handing their money to a member of the Knights of Columbus: not a thing. Seriously.
My point being: times have changed. Hurrah! We include more people in the circle of "us." This is a good thing, and in general we all agree on this.
The question is who, now, is "them." This where we get into tricky territory. By tricky territory, I mean politics. And this is meant to be a column about religion and faith and churches, broadly defined. By broadly, I mean both Protestant and Catholic, even Orthodox or heterodox.
I've been writing this column weekly for not quite twenty years (since Jan. 2005, anyhow). When I was given this opportunity, a preceding regular faith columnist in these pages frequently made comments about Catholicism as if it was alien to Christianity. One request, not a requirement, that I heard when being considered for this page as a regular contributor, was asking if I could not refer to a major sector of local Christianity as heretical.
This was the beginning of my exploration of our local history back into a time when Catholics were targeted by the Klan, when southern Germans and northern Italians and Austrians in general were a "minority group." When even after fifty to seventy years in Licking County, such people were called aliens and immigrants, because of their church affiliation and not their citizenship. And their annihilation, literal or metaphorical, was called for in publications for sale on the streets of Newark.
As I said last week, we have come a long, long way, and that's a big part of what I want to say by retelling these stories of hate and hostility from a century ago. It is encouraging and hopeful that we have stopped saying awful things about long-time neighbors, and encouraging discrimination against groups whose identity is tied to their church attendance more than anything else about them.
How did we do that? What can it teach us today as we work on expanding that circle of "us"? And yes, we can even discuss questions about where the edge of the circle really needs to be clearly defined.
But that's where I feel the most uncomfortable today. When we talk about homelessness, the argument keeps getting made: they aren't from here. We're attracting the wrong sort of people here by the services and supports we offer. "Those" people come to be homeless from "other" places. And when those of us who work with people who are homeless say most of our conversations and interactions are with people with obvious and concrete connections to this county, those statements get dismissed in favor of "no, homeless people are other than us, different than we are, from somewhere else."
Again and again and again I find as I read and review the history of Licking County, from 1802 on into the present day: we are all from somewhere else. We all came here, bringing certain gifts, even some challenges, from other places. And the outside, external, other-ed interests in trapping or farming or sheep herding or glass making or whatever . . . become part of our present picture of who "we" are.
The Wehrles were once other. The Heiseys, ditto. The Moraths, the Dilles, even the Joneses . . . and my did we have a bunch of them! . . . were once not just neighbors to keep up with, but others, who came here.
And are now us.
Jeff Gill is writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he came here from Indiana, and I hope that's okay. Tell him about where you come from at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
Where we are from, which is elsewhere
___
Halfway through Lent, with St. Patrick's Day and St. Joseph's Day marking the turn.
I've checked out some fish frys on Fridays, even as the Protestant in me prefers baked steak dinners.
A preacher in a Catholic church is no strange scene today, but there are still those alive who recall when it was much more unusual, unlikely, improbable.
Not so terribly long ago, Protestants casually walking into a parish hall and handing their money to a member of the Knights of Columbus: not a thing. Seriously.
My point being: times have changed. Hurrah! We include more people in the circle of "us." This is a good thing, and in general we all agree on this.
The question is who, now, is "them." This where we get into tricky territory. By tricky territory, I mean politics. And this is meant to be a column about religion and faith and churches, broadly defined. By broadly, I mean both Protestant and Catholic, even Orthodox or heterodox.
I've been writing this column weekly for not quite twenty years (since Jan. 2005, anyhow). When I was given this opportunity, a preceding regular faith columnist in these pages frequently made comments about Catholicism as if it was alien to Christianity. One request, not a requirement, that I heard when being considered for this page as a regular contributor, was asking if I could not refer to a major sector of local Christianity as heretical.
This was the beginning of my exploration of our local history back into a time when Catholics were targeted by the Klan, when southern Germans and northern Italians and Austrians in general were a "minority group." When even after fifty to seventy years in Licking County, such people were called aliens and immigrants, because of their church affiliation and not their citizenship. And their annihilation, literal or metaphorical, was called for in publications for sale on the streets of Newark.
As I said last week, we have come a long, long way, and that's a big part of what I want to say by retelling these stories of hate and hostility from a century ago. It is encouraging and hopeful that we have stopped saying awful things about long-time neighbors, and encouraging discrimination against groups whose identity is tied to their church attendance more than anything else about them.
How did we do that? What can it teach us today as we work on expanding that circle of "us"? And yes, we can even discuss questions about where the edge of the circle really needs to be clearly defined.
But that's where I feel the most uncomfortable today. When we talk about homelessness, the argument keeps getting made: they aren't from here. We're attracting the wrong sort of people here by the services and supports we offer. "Those" people come to be homeless from "other" places. And when those of us who work with people who are homeless say most of our conversations and interactions are with people with obvious and concrete connections to this county, those statements get dismissed in favor of "no, homeless people are other than us, different than we are, from somewhere else."
Again and again and again I find as I read and review the history of Licking County, from 1802 on into the present day: we are all from somewhere else. We all came here, bringing certain gifts, even some challenges, from other places. And the outside, external, other-ed interests in trapping or farming or sheep herding or glass making or whatever . . . become part of our present picture of who "we" are.
The Wehrles were once other. The Heiseys, ditto. The Moraths, the Dilles, even the Joneses . . . and my did we have a bunch of them! . . . were once not just neighbors to keep up with, but others, who came here.
And are now us.
Jeff Gill is writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he came here from Indiana, and I hope that's okay. Tell him about where you come from at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
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