Notes from my Knapsack 11-9-23 & 11-23-23

Notes from my Knapsack 11-9-23
Jeff Gill

That uneasy feeling you can't quite shake
___


We all know what "herding" is. Even if we don't call it that. You can call it manipulating, or see it as directing, but there's an element of herding that's what I'm thinking about.

At the grocery store, we've all made our rueful peace with the fact that pretty much wherever you go, you walk through produce first, but have to reach the very back of the building to get a quart of milk.

Maybe you're aware of it, perhaps not, but the items on the end caps are pretty carefully selected, those prominent aisle dividers along the main flow of traffic, and what's at eye level versus what's around our ankles? Businesses sometimes pay for placement.

We like to think we're not merely creatures of impulse, then we suddenly change our minds and order something in the drive-thru that was colorfully featured on the menu in a large, distinct fashion. The fact that the item doesn't quite look like it did on the menu board when it's unwrapped in the car isn't going to keep it from happening again, either.

Then there's online herding. And yes, news sites can be the worst, but the "one weird trick" sites featuring "news" can be even worser. You scroll past the opening banner ad, flick aside the pop-up, click "no" on the invitation to subscribe or activate notifications, then keep having to shut down or otherwise work around embedded video windows and further pop-ups. At a certain point, you stop to ask yourself "what was I reading that I'm trying to find the rest of?"

I call it micro-herding when the sudden overlay screen you want to move aside has a button that looks in color and typeface and relief as if it's the way to say "nope" when it's actually the "yes" or vice versa. Or when the X that's there somewhere for you to click to make the obscuring addition to your phone screen go away is cleverly hidden, shaded to near invisibility to trick you into actually reading the thing you're trying to maneuver past.

Some herding is well-intended and actually helpful. I was at a medical appointment and they'd rearranged the layout of the spaces from how it had been, and to some degree against how it was originally built. When I was done and ready to go back to the waiting area and lobby to exit, I went the wrong way, which a few months ago was the right way. The nurse said "no, just follow the footprints" and indeed there were big blue footprints on the floor to guide my steps.

Herding is sales, too, and where would we be without advertising in all its glory? [pauses to let you think about that imaginary world for a few moments] It's not going away, and we have to figure out how to live with and around and through it.

But I think herding is starting to bother us, and it's showing. The bother, I mean. I'll come back to this next time.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been herded, and he's done herding of cats and otherwise. Tell him when you've felt herded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.


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Notes from my Knapsack 11-23-23
Jeff Gill

Herding cats, herding sheep, herding ones own self
___


When last we spoke here, I was going on about "herding."

Herding is what I call all those social and commercial and online ways we get nudged and encouraged and manipulated into doing something we didn't necessarily start out to do.

Like sheep wanting to pursue the next clump of grass when the shepherd wants us heading for the barn, we can be herded to our own good. My phone since the last update has taken to nudging me about exercise and steps and health. I didn't ask for it, but I'll admit I haven't worked too hard to shut it off. I need the nudges.

What is more irritating is the nudging to buy or spend or subscribe that piles up on us, even when we're trying to do better and manage our finances more consciously. You've noticed, no doubt, that there's nothing so simple as making certain online impulse purchases; have you tried to unsubscribe from a recurring payment lately for anything? It ain't easy, and they don't mean for it to be.

I've been helping an older family member shift their bill paying over to online (and that suggestion isn't herding, it's been club-over-the-head in the monthly envelopes for the last few years). It's started to irritate me that, since we need a couple of safeguards on the process, I want to NOT go online to pay and have it go auto-pay, but that's what each utility and payment recipient is set up to herd you towards. Just go paperless, auto-pay, and forget about it! Well, I don't want to forget about it, even as I see the upside for the vendor. They save all kinds of steps and time and expense on their end (while I'm paying a fee, eh?), plus they get an extra measure of security with me going to auto-pay.

So the herding is vigorous, like a good sheepdog, everything but the bite.

What I am starting to wonder about, though, is the ubiquitousness of the herding experience. In stores, in processes and forms, in our online experience. We get the not at all inaccurate impression that we are being herded constantly, and not for our best interests, but to increase profits, enhance revenue, improve someone else's bottom line.

And I think it makes us cranky. You spend all day being herded, and your first hour at home paying bills online and looking up the news and your latest updates feeling constantly herded, and you realize since the first unsubtle herding nudges during the morning news program to get you to download the station's app or buy something they're recommending for which they get a cut, and you find a certain pain behind your right eye, or maybe in your back, or somewhere further down. You squirm, and snarl a bit at those you love, and there's just an atmosphere of rebellion looking for an outlet.

Or are we being herded towards that mood, too?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been herded, and he's done herding of cats and otherwise. Tell him when you've felt herded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 10-27-23

Faith Works 10-27-23
Jeff Gill

Remembering the dead in the land of the living
___


"Coco" is an animated film, not a theology text.

The Disney Pixar production back in 2017 is a story woven around the Mexican traditions of the "Day of the Dead," and cultural practices to honor deceased relatives from marigolds and music to shrines with pictures and even favorite foods, all meant to help keep alive the memory of those who have died.

In the larger Christian tradition, it connects to Nov. 1 being "All Saints Day," and the lesser feast of "All Souls" on the 2nd. In our neck of the woods, more people may be aware of the evening before honoring all the saints, or "All Hallows," which has become Hallowe'en.

All Souls, or "Día de los Muertos" is an expansive celebration however you look at it, including all those who have gone on before. In "Coco," the traditional practices and communal beliefs are given some twists with a visit to a not-quite-Purgatory, a "Land of the Dead" which is explained, at one point, as being itself a stage along the way to a deeper mystery, a more lasting eternity. It's a-theological, while dealing very directly with last things.

Most compelling in the narrative is the idea that you vanish from that stage of afterlife once there is no one left who remembers you in life. Again, it isn't a theology text; some might argue it's not even all that Christian. The movie has trouble with the idea of whether or not it's good to move on, or not; to be forgotten and vanish from this post-death phase is most often presented as a tragedy, while it would seem to make more sense for the tragedy to be staying in that in-between state forever, or at least for too long.

Still, the story if you haven't seen it is a truly moving meditation on memory. The recurring theme is in a song, central to the plot in all the many ways it ends up being sung, by different people, to whom, and why. "Remember Me," written Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, is truly the heart of "Coco."

"Remember me/Though I have to say goodbye/Remember me/Don't let it make you cry."

There are aging family members losing their own memories in life; in death, there are memories the living seek to forget, or even erase. There is time, and distance, and pain, and hope, and the desire to be remembered which itself can take many forms.

"For even if I'm far away I hold you in my heart/I sing a secret song to you each night we are apart."

Being an animated movie, there is final plot twist, a flash of the right memory at the right time, redeeming a past almost forgotten.

"Know that I'm with you the only way that I can be…"

In an imperfect, one might even say broken world, there is hope for healing and restoration, a happy ending even when death is very near. I honor the movie, the intention behind a joyful and sometimes laughing Day of the Dead commemoration. And whether it's a Disney production or a Hallmark Christmas romance, who doesn't love a happy ending?

"Remember me." The tears that come for many watching "Coco," and with that song, is that memories don't always heal. Some memories have to be redeemed, and transformed, and occasionally just given over to a deeper mystery, a more lasting everlastingness where we can trust the Keeper of eternity with finding the solutions we do not have, who can tell us just what it is we can safely forget, and cast aside.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to laugh with the kids in costumes at death and decay. Tell him how you mark this season of memory at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.