Faith Works 11-15-24

Faith Works 11-15-24
Jeff Gill

Paul said it to the church in Corinth, and to us
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Last week I opened "To be clear: this column was written before Election Day."

To be clear, this one was written after the results were well and truly known. And I've had the unedifying spectacle of Christians on my social media interact over the outcome.

Generally, as this column is intended for a widely general audience of "faith-interested" people, and not simply Protestants (whom I know best, to be fair) or even just Christians. However, in Licking County and even more widely, if I'm going to speak as an ordained minister, I'm going to have to quote some Scripture. So stand back!

In the twelfth chapter of Paul's first letter to the fellowship in Corinth, he says at the twenty-first verse: "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'"

Does this sound relevant to anyone else?

Just before that, Paul was setting up his overarching point: "For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body."

With me and Paul so far? The foot may be stinky, but it's a necessary part of the whole. The ear may have a higher place and smell of cologne, but it can't get within hearing distance of anything worth listening to unless the feets don't fail us now. You gotta get along, feet and toes and eyes and tear ducts…

Paul continues, just to beat the point into the dust of the marketplace: "If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body… As it is, there are many parts, yet one body." (vss. 14-20)

It's a vivid metaphor, one of many in the Bible (which is worth reading, you know?) and a very useful one for our current cultural moment. You could sum it up with "We need each other, even or possibly because of our differences," but human nature (note the need for a discussion of sin sometime here) means we may need something more startling, more intense to help us get the point.

As Flannery O'Connor said on this subject: "To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures." She was talking about writing on the subject of faith and life, and she knew her Paul, too.

We need each other, progressives and conservatives, yes, but also the old and the young, the praise music folk and the pipe organ fans; the sensitive and caring sorts and the more objective and mathematical people as a both/and, not an either/or. You generally don't want the English majors doing your books, and as a Purdue grad I hope the engineers out there won't mind if I say they aren't as a rule the obvious choice for Hospitality Committee chair.

I have contacts and engagements all across a wide swath of my own religious tradition, and a few adjoining us, so I'm not talking just to my village or county or region. But I am talking to you, dear friends. We need each other, and to say after a bruising electoral campaign that we can't have anything to do with "those people" is just the foot having a fit over the ear's high and mighty place.

We need each other. And we all probably need to read I Corinthians 12 in full, maybe twice.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's possibly more of an appendix, or maybe a spleen. Tell him where you fit in at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Notes from my Knapsack 11-14/21-24

Notes from my Knapsack 11-14/21-24
Jeff Gill

In the light of Election Day
___


Election morning the village turnout, at least in terms of "as the door opens" at 6:30 am, was impressive. Possibly the most I've ever seen for the dawn patrol here in Granville.

There was a man in his running outfit, shorts & sneakers; I saw women & men dressed for business or court or something official this morning, in ties or dresses and dark fabrics. I saw neighbors and fellow churchgoers and former clients; there were fellow Kiwanians across the table checking in voters & college students plus professors from up the hill down here in the church basement. There were a few in patriotic gear, but of course nothing overtly partisan. I saw people I've known for over two decades here in the village, folks I've more recently met whose names I scrambled mentally to recall, and a fair number of complete strangers.

It was Election Day in the United States of America. The genius of our founders is encapsulated in the propositions that we are all created equal, and therefore our votes count equally. All of us, at least those who make the effort both to get registered, and to cast their vote.

For democracy to function, it requires a critical mass of voters to participate, and register the outcomes as "the consent of the governed." If we only had a handful of us voting, the system would flounder if there's not enough of us participating to sustain the hard work of governance, which boils down to the levying of taxes and the expenditure of public funds. Those two issues are contentious enough, but we make it work because of the deposit of good faith made by enough of us having voted; it works enough to leave the citizenry in general feeling like the actions of our commonwealth are by common consent.

There are those who vote whose engagement and understanding I wonder about. And there are reasons expressed for making certain choices that leave me baffled as to why their perspective is even relevant. I won't lie: some ideas strike me as ignorant and uninformed. Yet the essence of democracy is that they get to vote, too, if they meet certain minimum criteria. The various pluralities, for elected officials and financial assessments and governance revisions to charters locally or constitutions on the state level, will decide. Majority rules.

Whichever top ticket candidate prevails, I have work to do locally not because my preferred candidate won or lost, but more likely to make the best use of the outcomes of other ballot matters which are not even on the local TV news let alone cable coverage. Certain things village residents are voting on will affect me quite personally, and county-wide the results of things like library levies and senior funding will be matters with impacts I will see, up close and personal.

So I pray for blessing on all those I see going about their civic business this day, in sporting togs or blue suits, with obvious partisan commitments or those whose actual sympathies I do not know and can't even suspect. Thank you most of all to the pollworkers, and a hearty thank you to my fellow voters, and may the blessing we have of taking part and doing our part spill over from us for the good of our community as a whole.

Decisions are being made on this day, but they are almost all decisions about what work we have to do the next day, and next year, and on into the next few. Take a deep breath, say a prayer as you are comfortable doing, and let's look on ahead -- to holiday movies, to the Candlelight Walking Tour, for a new year drawing near, and to continue serving together in addressing the needs around us.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has political opinions and a basic commitment to democracy. Tell him about anarchy or any other option you prefer at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 11-8-24

Faith Works 11-8-24
Jeff Gill

How popular is pop culture, anyhow?
___


To be clear: this column was written before Election Day.

So I'm not being discreet or non-topical, but pragmatic. How did it go? Well, by Friday I hope we know. Meanwhile…

Last weekend I was in Indianapolis, which was having a three-day Taylor Swift invasion, shows back to back and the city abuzz with excitement. Attendance records were set for Lucas Oil Stadium each night. In other words, it was BIG.

Well, I confess to having helped nudge a preacher into making a Taylor Swift reference early in Sunday's worship where I attend services while in town. The ministry staff there and I know each other, and with the news wall-to-wall Swift-centered coverage, plus the associate pastor had gone with his daughter, I made some comments online asking how Taylor's lyrics might make it into the themes of the day.

Then I doubled down on my semi-ironic pleading as I entered the church, but actually not thinking the senior minister would go there. However, he did. He opened the pre-service announcements saying "It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me." Pause.

Then he immediately asked, "so, how many of you know what that was a reference to?" On an average early service in that congregation, with the pews fairly well filled, of 150 people present only five raised their hands.

I think all five of us were somewhat surprised.

The senior pastor repeated the experiment, I suspect now out of curiosity, at the second service, where there were probably more like 200 present, and he messaged later that "about eight people raised their hands."

Taylor Swift was the dominant figure in TV news all weekend, and she's a pop culture behemoth, spilling over into NFL games (and if you don't know, I'm not going to explain it). But less than 4% of those present said they knew much of anything about her. Let the reader understand, as the Bible says.

I said to the associate after the service — who was wearing a special Taylor-themed jacket, yes with glitter involved — that this reminded me of a Wednesday Bible study I once had with about 50 attending each week. Once I made a reference to something about a popular film's account of personal sacrifice by way of an illustration, and then thought to ask "actually, how many of you have seen a Marvel superhero movie?" One lady proudly waved her hand. Just one, bless her. She wasn't the youngest person there, either, but she was the only one.

Later on, the same impulse led me to ask "how many of you have seen a Harry Potter movie, on TV or even just on a DVD?" None. Zip. Nada. (Yes, I know, some Christians have issues with Hogwarts etc., but it was still interesting. Is it possible some had, but weren't willing to say so in a church setting? Could be.)

In this pop culture context, and in the wake of the election, which again I hope is effectively over by the time you read this, I thought it useful to note this parallel point: according to the Census Bureau, in 2020 we had two-thirds of eligible voters participate in the general election. In terms of the country as a whole, that means only 48% of the nation's population voted (158.5 million vs. 330 million total).

If the winner gets 50.5%, that means they are still supported by something less than 24% of everyone. Sure, that includes children and people in assisted living and so on, but you see my point. Is "everyone" all wrapped up in the election, or in any one candidate? Like knowing a key Taylor Swift lyric or who Doctor Strange is, not so much.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's fairly sure he's the problem, but that's not Swift, that's Chesterton (look it up). Ask him about anything but elections at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 11-1-24

Faith Works 11-1-24
Jeff Gill

 

Ancient mysteries, modern challenges
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On November the First, one hundred and sixty four years ago, a remarkable discovery was made in our area.

David Wyrick, the former county surveyor and noted amateur antiquarian, was digging where once towered the Jacksontown Stone Mound, formerly forty feet and more in height and constructed almost entirely of rocks, uncut, loosely piled over what turned out to be a complex of smaller earthen mounds at ground level. Some two hundred feet across at the base, the piled stones were largely hauled away after 1823 to build the "Northbank" of the Licking Reservoir of the Ohio & Erie Canal – what we now call Buckeye Lake. Tens of thousands of wagon loads of stone were rolled from their hilltop to the valley below to the west.

A tomb carved out of a tree trunk, copper rings, and other funerary material had already been found at the ground level where the stone mound once stood. Digging beneath even that, Wyrick found on Nov. 1, 1860 a carved stone box in two pieces, and within what became known as the Decalogue Stone. It was covered in a squarish form of Hebrew lettering.

This was not, however, the first Hebrew inscribed stone Wyrick had discovered. On June 29^th, just four months earlier, in a shallow pit near the Octagon of the Newark Earthworks, he dug up an oddly shaped rock which became known as the Keystone. Attention both locally and nationally was quickly focused on this strange object, with Hebrew phrases carved on the four faces of the Keystone.

There are volumes which could be written about the Newark Holy Stones, as these objects have come to be called. In fact, Brad Lepper and I mean to write at least one; he's been "on the case" a few years longer than I have, but we've been digging archivally and elsewhere into this mystery for over thirty years now, and it's time for something more than a few articles in journals and dozens of public talks, all of which we've done. They're interesting not just for "antiquarian" or archaeological reasons, but because their story, and what these objects might be saying about history and humanity in the United States, continues to fascinate and attract attention, right down to 2024.

We say they are hoaxes, which doesn't end the interest, but begins it. The briefest possible explanation for why we're so certain they're fake is because the Hebrew on each, the Keystone and the Decalogue, bear tell-tale signs of modern Hebrew. They aren't, they can't be 2,000 years old, or even two hundred. But if they were made in 1860, with such care and carved in stone, what was the purpose? What reasons justify the effort expended to create them & hide them for Wyrick to find (because we think he was a patsy, a victim of the hoax himself)?

Our best explanation has to do with what happened on Nov. 6, 1860. The period in which both Holy Stones were fabricated and found was while the nation struggled through a presidential election with high stakes, and then voted into office Abraham Lincoln.

The struggle, one that Lincoln himself wrestled with, was the human status of what at that time were seen as entirely distinct races of people, and the question of whether or not such differences were real, and if so whether those distinctions justified a different status under law. The Dred Scott decision three years earlier, and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry the year before, all were a "tragic prelude" to the conflict everyone saw coming.

We suspect the Holy Stones were an attempt to influence the election, and public opinion, in favor of the equality of all humankind, whatever race or ethnicity. It's a debate we still are having today, and a book we really need to write. Stay tuned!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; yes, he's daring himself to get writing on this project described here. Tell him if you'd read that book at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 10-25-24

Faith Works 10-25-24
Jeff Gill

Religious backgrounds and anticipated outcomes
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In the U.S. Constitution, it's spelled out fairly specifically in Article VI, the third clause:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

"No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust."

This is effectively the end of the core, original draft of the Constitution as it was approved in 1787 and referred to the states for ratification; there is one more section, Article VII, but it's all about how the ratification would take place. So in a functional, practical sense, this is the culmination of the U.S. Constitution: "no religious test shall ever be required" for public service.

The pragmatic tension here is that while the Founders made it clear the law can never require a religious affirmation or status as a qualification, that's not quite the same as whether the voters could apply one in their own private decision making about how to vote.

We've had Unitarians (the Adams family) and Catholics (Kennedy and Biden), all manner of Protestants, and even Anabaptists (Hoover, Eisenhower, and Nixon, though they each had journeys away from their roots). Mostly Christians of various sorts, but as yet no Lutherans or Pentecostals or Orthodox incumbents.

The quasi-incumbent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is a long-time member of an American Baptist Church in San Francisco; her pastor, Amos Brown, was a student in the one college class Martin Luther King, Jr. ever taught, and Brown has been noted for his ecumenical engagements throughout his preaching career. Harris's mother is from India, but Hinduism was not a part of their lives growing up by all accounts. Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, is out of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America tradition.

Also semi-incumbent, former President Donald Trump has roots in Presbyterianism, with a mother from Scotland who grew up speaking Gaelic as her first language; his parents later joined Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan which was the congregation led by Norman Vincent Peale, affiliated with the Reformed Church in America, and Trump's first marriage was in that church, but he continued to claim the Presbyterian faith in which he was confirmed for many years. In 2020 he stated he was "non-denominational Christian." His running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church in 2019, after having a childhood exposure to what he calls "conservative, evangelical Christianity."

In the spirit of the Constitution, I'd say none of this should either qualify or bar any of the leading candidates from their offices. In the spirit of democratic inquiry, I find it a good sign that we have such a range of religious backgrounds in the two top tickets. A non-Christian might say "not such a wide range, Jeff" and a non-believer secularist might call this no range at all, since there is no avowed atheist or agnostic among these four: duly noted.

I would never say a non-religious person couldn't be a good civic leader, but I think it's still true that if you have no religious experience in your portfolio of life involvements, you may be missing something many of your fellow citizens find necessary. There shall be no religious test for public office, but I am reassured that all our leading candidates know something about how faith works for many Americans.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has his own ideas about what qualifies someone for public office, and it ain't church-going. Tell him what you think they are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 10-18-24

Faith Works 10-18-24
Jeff Gill

A landscape of departures and arrivals
___

We are coming into the peak of both fall, and election season.

Election Day itself is Nov. 5 but a startling number of voters have shown a preference in recent years for getting it over with early, for whatever reasons, and early voting is likely to encompass two-thirds of the total 100,000 or so ballots cast in Licking County.

November 1 is All Saints Day in many Christian traditions, often observed on the first Sunday in November which would be Nov. 3 this year. That means we will (technically, at least) be thinking about saints before we do our voting.

Saints, the honored dead, are of course part of the seasonal round with the eve of All Saints, or All Hallows as the early English said, being on our cultural calendar as Hallowe'en (the apostrophe being your call, stylebook-wise). Secular Halloween acknowledges the change of season and the shortening of days, chill in the air and leaves crunching underfoot, and I don't have to tell you that the acknowledgement or even enthusiastic endorsement of death is part of "secular" spooky season.

It's hard not to think about death with shadows getting longer, and winter approaching, but All Saints as opposed to the eve of is something more to do with Chesterton's "democracy of the dead." His mediation on capital-T Tradition included the voice of those who have gone before, a not inconsiderable number of souls, who may know things we do not entirely understand, hence "the democracy of the dead."

We can get caught up, politically and socially, with the idea that the future is always new, and things are always going to get better, but history and tradition and the saints who have gone before bear witness to the reality that in many ways "there is nothing new under the sun" (that's not from Chesterton). The past may have something to teach us, and it certainly helped make us and shape us, for ill perhaps in some ways, but often for good.

Hence the role of saints.

Whether your faith tradition observes a formal process of canonization, or if you simply mark any believer's passing as a promotion into the ranks of the saints, this is a good time of year to reflect on the saints who have shaped your life, and even your community's life. Founders and builders and grandparents and caregivers, parents and family, friends and mentors. You don't have to be all that old to come to a point when you realize a number of your guideposts in life have "gone on before" as the hymn sings, and you might just have advocates in heaven.

A few of my friends and mentors have died in this last year, not to mention some close relatives by marriage. I've been wrestling with two different cemeteries in the last year to get markers erected for those who have passed, and in a few inscriptions, for those not yet gone but getting close. It's a bracing experience, the story of "the dash" and all that. My initial engraving is 1961, and the second number… who knows?

But I'm in this realm of thought less to confront my own death than my personal relationships with those who have already died, for whom many questions are answered, and whose support and encouragement and guidance is still active in my life. How is it active? That becomes an interesting theological question; some might say it's more psychological, but as Prof. Dumbledore would add, that doesn't make it any less real.

"For all the saints, who from their labors rest": to this group we present our living work, our choices, even our voting, and listen for their response. Can you hear it?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's listening to what this season has to say. Tell him what you hear at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Notes From my Knapsack 10-24-24

Notes From my Knapsack 10-24-24
Jeff Gill

Local considerations, wider implications
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Granville had a library before there were streets or a complete survey.

The pioneer settlers of 1805 formed a church in Massachusetts before they ever got here in late November, but by 1806 the interest in a library proceeded schools or banks or even much government to speak of.

The library charter, in fact, was leveraged to get a bank started, which is part of why we have the Granville Historical Society building, standing on Broadway since 1816. Today's Granville Public Library building is historic itself, now 100 years old with a Frank Packard design completed by his firm after his untimely 1923 death.

In all the attention to national politics on TV news and across social media, we run the risk of overlooking the sort of electoral decisions that have an immediate impact on our lives. Not just the voting, as we do every two years, for our U.S. House of Representatives occupant, but for Statehouse officials representing us, like the State Senate and State Representative. We have three seats on the Ohio Supreme Court up for ballot, along with two Licking County commissioner spots.

There are lots of uncontested seats on the ballot for county government, which I really dislike seeing, which is not to voice anything against those running unopposed. Sometimes that's a sign you're doing such a good job the opposition gracefully declines to dispute the position, but seeing seven or eight slots in a row with a single candidate is not a good sign for loyal opposition, in any electoral situation.

We are being asked to voice our opinion, which will have a weighty implication in practical terms, for the ongoing property tax levies to support the countywide senior citizens services programs, and to continue and slightly increase the Granville Public Library support, as the latter is trying to prepare to serve a wider audience as their service area covers not just the village but the entire school district. More residents in Granville South means more potential customers and needs in that growing area.

There are also two opportunities to weigh in on village governance, with charter amendments needing your approval, or not happening if you do not. Small matters, perhaps, but with a very direct impact on your life, and not something you'll hear much about on cable news.

Personally, I have opinions on almost all of these matters. Ask me personally, and I'm happy to share them. But this column isn't to exhort you to vote one way or another on any of them: it's to remind you that this is where the rubber of democracy meets the road of governance. Who reviews zoning variances, or state funding for school districts, or presides over drug court: you decide, at least in part. Will we expand service of library programming? That's pretty much entirely up to you; likewise, you could throttle senior services back considerably. Your call.

Foreign policy? I'm not sure your vote on top of the ticket matters will sway that a great deal (reasonable minds may vary on that, but you see my point). But county level policy is something you can influence, quite directly.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has his ballot in mind, but hopes to vote in person on Nov. 5. Tell him your political philosophy at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-11-24

Faith Works 10-11-24
Jeff Gill

Religious politics across a wide spectrum
___


Religious exhortations to support one candidate or another are nothing new.

Faith communities have goals and priorities for both their own common life, and for what many Christians call "missions," or outreach, which are their personal and congregational intentions for the wider community.

Any group, however organized, that has goals for their wider community is going to be bumping up against political agendas. That's politics in a nutshell: how we organize our common life. You can have our life in community organized by a king or queen, and that's a monarchy. You can end up, intentionally or not, with a very small group of people making all the key decisions, and that's an oligarchy.

As is pretty well known, the origin of what we call democracy in ancient Greece was letting the "demos," the people vote as a group on how the community would be governed, but that demos wasn't too democratic by our standards today: it was free adult male citizens who had been through basic military training, so about 10% of the population in Athens some 2,500 years ago.

Early American democracy had the same shortcoming: free white male property owners had the right to vote. So it was more inclusive than a monarchy or oligarchy, but still fairly limited. Come women's suffrage into the 1920s and the civil rights movement into the 1960s, American democracy is wider and more diverse than almost any broad-based democratic polity.

Within that large and diverse electorate, you end up with a wide range of religious perspectives. Under "free white male property-owners" type democracy, you had a relatively limited range of religious perspective, and most of it Christian and broadly Protestant. Expand that population of politically engaged citizens, you radically increase the variety of faith perspectives.

Sure, there are now church-based groups out there who are in favor of oligarchy, with them inside the select governing coalition, and there are Christian anarchists out there, too. We now have a rich, complex, even bewildering range of attitudes towards how a person of faith should look at political life, and while it can be confusing, I think it's better than having a handful of church traditions in the driver's seat.

Some belief systems actually opt out, and tell believers not to vote as an unjustifiable entanglement with worldly matters. I don't hear folks worry about that stance as much as there's loud concern about a congregation or preacher who tells their adherents how to vote. That's not how I roll, but the American experiment is not that churches can't tell people for whom to vote, but that you can't be expected to hold a particular religious belief in order to vote, let alone to hold office. Religious tests for being a political candidate were a real thing until relatively recently in much of Europe, and still exists in parts of the world (whether Communism is a religion I will leave for another day). Our Constitutional democracy says "nope" to that idea.

Jesus, who is the benchmark for most Christians in most matters, said "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." That was in a dispute over taxes, akin to the example about voting: some religious leaders said paying taxes was too much involvement in secular matters for the truly faithful. Jesus seemed to see a space for politics, but one that should be kept alongside of one's faith, without tangling them up too much.

When challenged with what Herod Antipas was saying, Jesus replied "you tell that fox" he was going to do what he was sent here to do, regardless of political opposition. Strong words, clear distinctions. Calling the ruling authority a "bottom feeding unclean parasite" is not political, but it's pretty challenging to the politics of his day.

And with Pilate, the chief magistrate, Jesus simply kept turning his own words back to him, asking for honest consideration. Political speech, or powerful preaching?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's interested in what Jesus is saying in almost any sphere of life. Tell him how you decide your political positions at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Notes from my Knapsack 10-10-24

Notes from my Knapsack 10-10-24
Jeff Gill

A personal stake in the input, plus the outcome
___


Both of my parents were born in the middle of the Great Depression. They would call themselves Depression babies, but it's also true they were respectively seven and six years old when Pearl Harbor happened, and times went from Depression shortages to wartime rationing.

None of which is to take away from them the challenges they each faced, in Iowa and Illinois where they grew up in rural communities. Yet they both finished high school, and grew up with indoor flush toilets and running water, and electricity even if it was frequently subject to outages.

So my folks were very at ease with the lights going out. We always had a kerosene lamp as a dining room centerpiece, and a couple more around the house. They were used to trimming wicks and refilling lamps, where they were strange to me.

I bring this up because I realize, having spent some time getting my mother to talk about her childhood in the last couple of years (the one set of memories which, once we tap into a vein of them, still flows freely), that it wasn't that they had to pump water for the kitchen or make soap for the washing up — though they were familiar with such things! — but they were raised by people who did. My grandparents raised their kids having known what it was like to carry every bucket of water in from the side yard pump, and it made my parents rather vigilant about how long we ran the tap, or how much soap we used.

And I'll be honest: it took me years to get to where I wasn't cautiously squeezing out the dish soap in dribs and drabs. It was a second generation carryover of that caution, which starts with the frugality that comes from knowing just how much work it takes to make a bar of soap (or to churn up a dish of butter, or pump a bucketful of rinse water).

Where I got interested in these generational effects was when I started making crackers. No, I don't do it often or wholesale, but the first time I read about the possibility I thought "oh how quaint" and did it for amusement. Then I kind of got into it, for a quirky taste twist.

But the interesting thing to me is, after I've done the mixing and cutting and baking and cooling and serving, I'm both more aware of the taste (hey, I made these!) and I don't tend to plow through them as quickly.

On the other hand, I am as capable as the next guy to sit mindlessly munching on a box of factory made chips or curls or crackers. I don't think, I definitely don't savor, I just eat. And whoops, they're gone.

Making my crackers? Sure, it's the back end of laziness: if I eat too many, too fast, I'll have to do the work to make more. Can't get 'em at the store in a quick trip. Still, there's something else going on. I don't want to consume, I enjoy.

Sometimes, I think about all that at the kitchen sink drinking a glass of water. And my grandmother at the pump a century ago, wondering how many trips today.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's working on being mindful of his crackers. Tell him what makes you stop and think at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 10-4-24

Faith Works 10-4-24
Jeff Gill

Faith and trust and electoral awareness
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Faith, we are told by the author of Hebrews, is the assurance of things hoped for. Faith can also be called the conviction of things not seen.

Now, something not seen is hard to put on television. And in our world as it is right now, if it's not on TV, did it even really happen?

Yet it has been an . . . I was going to say interesting, but maybe I'm looking for something a bit more like bracing, or even a shocking realization, that instant replay has not ended arguments over referee's decisions in sports. There was hope that the widespread use of body cameras would resolve concerns about law enforcement interactions with the public, but while I think they have a useful place it's also true we are still finding wide variation on interpretation of what we just saw when something tragic or terrible happens.

Some of that is about when the video starts or ends, or what's just out of view, or blurry (and yes, you need to turn them on and not leave them off when an encounter begins), but just like end zone calls with a toe on the out-of-bounds line, it all depends on camera angles.

Which makes me think of politics.

Honestly, everything does right now, doesn't it? if you watch anything on broadcast TV you have already gotten a snootful. October 7 is the last day to register (you have been warned!) and early voting starts the next day, Oct. 8. That's right, the election may well be decided before we even get to Nov. 5.

We have a presidential race (you may have heard) and there's a U.S. Senate seat up for re-election, but there are local races from county commissioner to your ability to buy liquor on Sundays on the ballot, if you work on down to what I think of as the real nitty-gritty.

When we're making up our minds on what to vote on or for whom we will vote, there's a great deal of faith at work. Faith Works is the tag I put on this column now almost twenty years ago, riffing on our earthworks as a local landscape image, and a reminder that faith is not just a mental process but a part of what we do, as we figure out how the cosmos works and where we fit into that.

Faith is part of how we react to information we hear about the candidates or issues. We can't know everything there is to absorb about where they've been or how they've changed or why they make the statements they make that we see and hear on the internet. In fact, we're likely to believe faster what we want to believe, and hold back when information pushes back against our assumptions, the beliefs we started with.

This is a bigger factor with national or statewide races, yet it's true for even local matters. We have the senior levy up for renewal, for instance. I know what I see on my property tax bill; I'm told it's not going to increase if I vote to renew it, and that the programs it supports are worthwhile and needed.

Here I find the mix of faith and certainty working in my favor: I've seen and worked directly with some of those funded services for seniors, and all I know directly matches the bigger issue I'm asked to, well, take on faith. So I say yes with an easy heart.

Presidents and senators? Oh, I have opinions, a modest store of observations, and an acute awareness that my faith is inevitably part of the mix. How does faith guide you in voting?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows voting is already a top of mind issue for many. Tell him how faith will shape your decisions at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 9-27-24

Faith Works 9-27-24
Jeff Gill

Taking chances, seeing a longer-term upside
___


Tom Chapman died a few weeks ago, at the age of 82.

He had lost his wife Vicki back in 2015; his son Chad and brother Bob had helped manage his care in these last few years; as I'd turned to caring for family members myself, I'd lost track of him. It was good, at least, to thank them at Tom's calling for their care.

Tom Chapman had cared for his community in an interesting assortment of ways over the years. He may have been best known as the owner and operator of a collection agency in Newark, which brought him into contact with everyone from bankers to the bankrupt, and everyone in between.

Not many ministers get to know collection agents, and that's probably an oversight. I've had parishioners who worked for some of the online bill collection companies here in the area, but Tom was the only "go and knock on doors" collections person I've had the chance to talk to at length.

This association came about because Tom was the very first landlord of the Licking County Coalition for Housing in 1992 as we were getting off the ground. He rented us four apartments for transitional housing use, well before LCCH had HUD grants or other major programmatic supports. We were a patchwork of memorandums of understanding between agencies, and a handful of donations from Church Women United and a few cooperating churches in the area. Jana Lowe was a part-time director with each paycheck a hope and a promise to be renewed each month.

Basically, our birthday organizationally was the day after Tom's memorial service; on Sept. 23, 1992 our incorporation was processed by then-Secretary of State Bob Taft, and we signed a rental agreement with Tom Chapman for four units above his collection agency. Other landlords had looked us over and said "ah, no thank you" but Tom said yes.

Even so, the whole operation was shaky, and Deb Tegtmeyer, who would not become our first full-time executive director for a few years yet, stood with me on a snowy November evening as we filled the first three of our four units, using up most of the housewares and bedding we'd collected over the previous few weeks. It all felt very uncertain.

Then Tom pulled up, in a station wagon. He got out, our new landlord, but still an uncertain quantity in this whole variable filled formula, and looked at us with a note of concern on his face. Then he said "I have four frozen turkeys in my back seat, plus four bags of groceries that I thought would be right for Thanksgiving; should I take them up to the residents, or would it be more appropriate for me to have you give them?"

Deb and I looked at each other, and we both knew: this crazy idea might just work. Because Tom Chapman believed in what we were doing.

LCCH has grown beyond four units; we do much more than just transitional housing, and I think our best work is what Tom always hoped we'd be able to do more of, which is helping prevent homelessness before an eviction or other action was taken. Through the next thirty years, Tom helped us in many, many ways, including helping us get funds gathered for unexpected needs which are an ongoing memorial for Vicki and now, of course, for him.

Tom Chapman took a chance, because he knew all too well how much some people needed second chances, and he wanted to be a part of extending them. He couldn't do it alone, and we couldn't have done what we've done without him (and others like him).

Rest easy, Tom. The work and the second (and third) chances will continue.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's glad to have known Tom Chapman. Tell him about your unsung hero at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Notes from my Knapsack 9-26-24

Notes from my Knapsack 9-26-24
Jeff Gill

Searing summer, sizzling fall
___


Muted colors are likely this autumn here around Our Fayre Village.

If it wasn't for the splash of color accents from the political yard signs, we might be going through one of the lower key fall seasons in recent memory.

We're in a drought: not as bad as just south of us, but enough to render lawns crunchy, plantings frazzled, and the trees are indeed stressed.

Autumn foliage changes are a regular stress the woods are accustomed to, but this kind of stress is likely to leave damage we'll see falling in winter storms and early spring ice coatings.

If you're a farmer, God bless you indeed for the work in general, but certainly farmers need a blessing this year, and of the sort that only the heavens can provide. It really is essentially past the point, though, that any rain can do them any good. Yields will be down, and in some corners not at all.

Is this part of climate change? We are in the middle of an ongoing period of global average temperature increases, with new records set in admittedly short (scientifically speaking) spans of measured high temperatures. The idea that industrialization around the world is adding to greenhouse effects with increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hard to argue with. The debate, as is so often the case, is more in what the best solutions or even just simple responses would be.

The flip side of this question is that all the scientific evidence tells us 15,000 years ago our sunny valley was covered with a deep sheet of ice, only just starting to recede back to the north, its melting and deposits helping shape the landscape we know today. Warming slowly but steadily, the environment when mastodons roamed alongside the streams a few thousand years later, while hunted by the first human residents of Licking County we call Paleoindian peoples, our ecosystem looked much more like northern Alberta or the upper Hudson Bay region does now. Spruces and sedges and lots of lichens, not the oak-hickory climax forest that was present by the time of the Hopewell culture, the Native American builders of the geometric earthworks we marvel at today.

Two thousand years ago, there is archaeological evidence that those humans at that time, right here, were modifying their landscape to benefit their culture. Controlled burning kept some openings in prairie, adding border spaces between grassland and tree cover, where game animals would thrive and also where they could be hunted. Those managed meadows allowed for the sight lines which the Newark Earthworks track and predict, without obscuring trees blocking a clear view of moonrises and sunrises.

In other words, we have been managing our landscape for millennia here in Ohio, and the history of that management oscillates between good management and not-so-good. Pictures of 1860s Granville are striking for the near complete absence of trees: we cut them all down building cabins and early structures, as well as for firewood. It's almost unrecognizable as the Tree City we are today.

We have to have ongoing discussions about we manage our landscape, the environment, our resources. I suspect they had them in the wake of completing the earthworks as pilgrims came from around North America to watch and witness. We can learn a bit of mindfulness about our impact on our world, and attention to the question of how our choices will affect generations yet to come, from the Native American example.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to the Octagon open house on Oct. 20th. Tell him how you're managing your landscape in this drought at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 9-20-24

Faith Works 9-20-24

Jeff Gill

Intervals of reflection, looking back, looking ahead
___

This week marks one year since the World Heritage List declaration added the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, including our own Newark Earthworks, to the global roster of enduringly significant sites.

On Saturday, Sept. 21, there's a program at the Great Circle Museum, off Rt. 79 on the border of Newark and Heath, to officially unveil a plaque marking World Heritage List status, putting us in a distinguished category of locations alongside Mammoth Cave and the Grand Canyon, Independence Hall and a series of Frank Lloyd Wright homes. We are the 25th World Heritage Site in the United States.

The unveiling and speakers are at 10:30 am on Saturday morning, with tours of the Great Circle afterwards, and at 1:00 pm I will be taking anyone interested "off site," as we walk north into Newark and look for "remnants" of the once four and a half square mile complex of interconnected geometric earthworks.

That walking tour takes about three hours and starts and ends at the Great Circle Museum, covering some three and a half miles, mostly of sidewalk and alley. I recommend you bring water, and a hat perhaps: very little shade along the way! But the route is mostly level, and it's no spoiler to tell you we will see a number of bits and pieces and fragments and remnants of the walls and pathways and mounds once dominant between Raccoon Creek and Ramp Creek.

There are events planned for October, around the Octagon open house during the day on Sunday, the 20th, and later that evening as we begin having moonrises along the core alignment of that element of the earthworks complex.

As I've been contemplating in the last couple of columns, it occurred to me that the Newark Earthworks have been around for about a hundred of the 18.6 year lunar cycles they mark (among multiple other functions, no doubt). As scholars have noted, the Native American builders in the Hopewell Culture era had to have watched and monitored and recorded the lunar intervals over some time, at least three full cycles, to have then built what they did at the Octagon. So I claim no precision around my hundred intervals marked silently by the geometric figures west of 30th St.

What I do know is that as I see many in my demographic cohort talk about how "age is just a number, and mine is unlisted," along with other age-defying exhortations, I find it bracing to think about how brief my own span is against the backdrop of these ancient works. Last week I referred to it as "humbling, and I would also say inspiring."

My religious faith is tied in many ways to events of two thousand years past, and I've heard preachers talk about "a hundred generations" between the time of Jesus and our own. We come from a generation, we see . . . what? Three generations or four pass us by, and we have some sense of the passage of time from them. But it is so partial, so limited; our awareness is of a small circle of illumination cast around the place where we currently stand.

There were some in our community who asked when tens of millions of dollars were spent to restore our 1876 courthouse: why not tear it down, and spend the same amount to build a new one, which might be easier to adapt and occupy into the coming century? It's an argument, and one I know our leaders did consider warily.

Their decision in the end, though, I think was wise. We preserve from the past to give us perspective in the present. The future will keep coming at us, but the newest answer is not always the right one. It helps to keep some ancient wisdom on hand.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been around a few generations. Tell him what you're glad to see past at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 9-13-24

Faith Works 9-13-24

Jeff Gill

When you are a generation, marking time
___

When I was talking last week about the span of generations, we were looking past the ubiquitous Baby Boom, to Gen Xers and Millennials and Gen Z.

They're now watching children grow up, kids who are definite "digital natives," always having known not just the internet but smartphones: Generation Alpha has been proposed for those born since 2010, a step into the Greek alphabet. 

Other than these demographic labels, how do we mark the sequence of generations? There's calendars on the wall, and having one up probably dates you right there. Some of us watch our hair turn white, others haunt cemeteries, but all of us note the passage of time by some mental map, using relatives perhaps as our benchmarks, grandparents past and aging aunts and uncles, warily gauging our own relative youth against those newer on the scene.

Which is where I find myself reflecting on the Newark Earthworks, and how the vast landscape constructed by Native Americans here some two thousand years ago can fulfill a number of purposes, both spiritual and practical, and maybe occasionally both at the same time.

As you may know, the central alignment of the Octagon, through where it is connected to Observatory Circle, points from the high mound at the southwestern corner of the earthworks along the symmetry axis of the double geometric enclosure, to a point on the northeast horizon that our moon only reaches every 18.6 years.

Now, the rise point of the moon swings back and forth, south to north again, like a horizontal pendulum from a set observation point, like the logically named Observatory Mound. The sun does the same back and forth, only it takes a year to make an arc from northernmost to southernmost and back again, solstice to solstice.

The moondance is more complicated, swinging back and forth in terms of the rise point on the horizon over 28 days. Then each 28 day cycle expands and contracts, with the peaks approached ever more nearly until the true maximum, then swaying back and forth, retreating progressively in the same stately pattern. So while there's a true northernmost, there are a number of moonrises leading up to and afterwards which are so close you can barely detect the difference. Call them a dozen or so in total when you could see the alignment at its peak, along the architecture.

In any case, you only get a handful of chances, themselves subject to clouds and fog canceling the viewing for all but a few, but once a . . . generation? A time or two to mark the cycle then 18.6 years to wait for it again.

When Brad Lepper pointed out the Hively and Horn archaeo-astronomical research which first revealed this alignment to us, we quickly calculated when the Newark Earthworks would witness it next. It was frustrating in 1989 to realize it had just peaked a couple of years ago, and the cycle was now narrowing. We worked and waited to 2005 & 2006, and had some limited opportunities to see the earthworks stand witness to the astronomical moments it was built to mark.

It has been my privilege to see two cycles of the Moon's movements, and as we come up to the alignments coming into view during the end of 2024 and through 2025, I hope to live into a third.

That's three cycles of what I realize is about a hundred that the Newark Earthworks have marked. Just a few ticks on this cosmic clockwork of light and shadow, walls and enclosed areas, negative space and vertical elevations. A fourth I am unlikely to experience in full.

These lunar cycles, so memorialized, are generations of a sort, placing us in time, as well as shaping space. Humbling, and I would also say inspiring.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's aware the clock is ticking. Tell him how you make the most of your time at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 9-6-24

Faith Works 9-6-24

Jeff Gill

A visual sense of generations passing
___

What is a generation?

Twenty years is one standard definition, but in some contexts you'll find twenty-one years, and thirty years comes up from time to time. The general idea is a span from birth to when a person could begin a generation of their own. 

We also have demographic "generations," such as the "Greatest Generation" or the "Baby Boom." Those intervals have a common definition, and a formal demographic interval. To have been in service in World War II means you were born before about 1924; the formal definitions include those born from 1901 to 1927, but some sources cite 1900 to 1925. Born in 1927, you'd barely make 18 by 1945, but we define World War II service in federal regulations through December 31, 1946.

Baby Boomers? The children of the Greatest Generation, they are sometimes defined as those born from 1946 to 1964, but I find references in sociological literature to Boomers starting as early as 1944 and ending anywhere from 1960 to 1965.

Myself, I'm born in 1961, and I have to say that in common references to the Boomer mindset and worldview I don't know that I fit. In general, I don't feel like a Boomer. There's one definition that does make sense to me, and that's tied to whether or not you remember where you were when JFK was shot. I recall President Kennedy's funeral with odd clarity, but nothing of the day he was assassinated.

Gen X is puzzlingly tagged as being born between 1965 and 1980, which is fifteen years, versus nineteen for the Boomers; Greatest Generation intervals are twenty-five or twenty-six years. Millennials get the period from 1981 to 1986, another fifteen year interval, then Generation Z is the term for those born 1997 to 2012, another fifteen year "generation."

Let's just concede none of us want to see fifteen year olds having children, and admit that demography is an art more than a science.

In any case, we have the passage of years, four seasons in cycle, and the need to find a way to define broader trends in taste and culture and social patterns as "a generation." Times change, and there are characteristics of each era, every succeeding generation, which are somewhat unique to them. We've left out the Silent Generation which was the era my parents were born into (seventeen years, generally), and those born from 2012 are already reaching today what many cultures would call their majority, a new generation called perhaps Generation Alpha ?

Gen Z were the first "digital natives," raised entirely in an internet oriented world. Generation Alpha have always known a world where the broadcast networks and channel guides are an afterthought, where "texts" are primarily digital.

But I go back to 1947, and "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir." Have you seen the movie? Black and white, I must confess, with Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison and Natalie Wood. Greatest Generation folk loved it from the start, while the Silent Generation and Boomers would have been more likely to watch it on re-run on their broadcast televisions, late at night.

Regardless, there's a scene towards the end where a piling in the ocean surf is seen which had "Anna Muir" carved on it. The passing of generations is shown by a montage sequence of the post slowly tilting as the waves batter it, the inscription steadily aging and softening. Anna then is seen as not a young girl, but an adult woman, the aging timber standing in for her fast-forward development.

Are there other ways to mark the passage of generations? Not in the effects of aging or decay, or the growth of cemeteries and the extent of burials, but to see the passage of time as growth and change in a constructive way?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's watching the generations pass from his front porch, which is one way. Tell him how you mark time at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads

Faith Works 8-30-24

Faith Works 8-30-24

Jeff Gill

Attend a worship service because you don't want to
___

Is inconvenience a positive part of worship?

Stay with me a bit here.

I am quite aware of the Biblical line of argument: Hebrews 10:25 is a common point of reference, chastising Christians and suggesting "not forsaking our meeting together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another."

There is a certain complexity to the textual surroundings there. I think it's fair to argue back it's not simply a call to earning a perfect attendance pin. More interesting to me is the stated justification for calling believers to meet, that they be there for the purpose of "encouraging one another." 

In other words, YOU may say you don't need to come to church, but what if others need YOU? God can work in many ways through many people, but what if you are the needed connection for someone? God can't be stopped, but the consistent message of the Bible is that we really don't want to be getting in the way. God may work around our unfaithfulness, or possibly right over the top of us. Go with God's flow.

Encouraging one another is, to me, even more powerful a reason to attend worship regularly than "because I need it." We go for others, for our part in the wider plan. Yet it can also be true that we need fellowship.

Yes, I heard you in the back. You muttered you don't need THAT fellowship, those people. And there have been moments of "would you like to stand up and introduce yourself?" in worship services, or times for passing of the peace that went on painfully long, which have made me rethink the value of watching services on line at home.

It's true. We Christians can be annoying. I will let prospective Muslim or Buddhist guest columnists, Jewish commentators or Wiccan essayists, confess their own sins. As a Christian, I have no problem saying we Christians gathered together in large groups can be a bit much.

There are praise choruses that go on too long, enthusiasms for catch phrases which may or may not be liturgical, fellow attendees who insist on telling us what they think we need to know: I get it. Church can be very people-y. And it's perfectly fair for some who have to deal with people at work all week to find the gathered community more a burden than an opportunity on Sunday.

Yet I will say it again. Being inconvenienced, even being irritated, might be part of the point. Marva Dawn, a wonderful theologian of worship, liked to say to people who told her they didn't like a particular hymn or song: "ah, then that one wasn't for you, was it?"

Think about it. What is it about our faith in God's love made known through Christ who died to save us that ensures our right to a church service where every element is to our liking? How does that even make sense? "That one wasn't for you." But it might have been the message or music that reached someone else needing to hear it.

When something in a service, or even some person at church bugs me? That might be the message I need to reflect on what's actually going on there. Because in faith, what I am sure of is: it's not all about me.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows he can be irritating, too. Tell him what bugs you in worship at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Notes from my Knapsack — draft September column

Notes from my Knapsack — draft September column
Jeff Gill

Why Gillfish can't vote for Donald Trump
___

[Note for editor: the firm policy, I had heard for years, was that columnists do not do endorsements on any level, federal or local, and I've hewed to that line since beginning my run in the Booster/Sentinel in 2003. Since my erstwhile counterpart made a clear endorsement last week, I've heard from some of my readers asking if I'm making a similar statement. If I were, it would read something like the following…]


With the coveted if reluctant endorsement of my fellow columnist, Don Haven, for Donald Trump in the presidential race, it may be pointless for me to offer my own take on the balloting (early voting starts Oct. 8).

In fact, Brother Haven in detail offers some qualifications on his endorsement with which I'm in full agreement. Still, I have a less than policy related set of reasons for not being able to echo his affirmation. In fact, I have a largely unitary reason for not supporting the former president for a second, non-sequential term, even if it makes for a fun historical asterisk alongside Grover Cleveland.

I dislike intensely his preference for making fun of people's names.

Go ahead, call that a terrible reason for not voting for someone. You might well be right. In fairness to myself, I've been reconciled to not much liking the candidates on offer for much of my voting life: my first campaign as a volunteer worker was for John B. Anderson, and if you don't recall the man from Illinois, that's okay. He was a [whispers] third-party candidate.

But I am quite serious that I cannot support a person for Chief Magistrate of These United States who has so consistently and persistently used mockery of names and physical qualities as his preferred campaign strategy.

In a wider sense, I can appeal to my decades of work in and among youth, and say emphatically that making fun of another person's name or looks is a major challenge in getting young people to have healthy relationships with each other. A tendency to make fun of those around you is the sign of a bully empowered, and when mocking nicknames are normal out loud interactions, you can count on other abusive patterns showing up right behind. In other words, I've worked for years to get youth to be more respectful to each other, kinder and more caring, and there are times I hear the evening news and the sound of that work going down the drain is almost audible. Why would I want to support more of that in public life?

In my elementary years, I picked up a pair of glasses, and a nickname. Two, actually. I hated both, but Gillfish was worse, and of course what I heard all the time. Bookworm was almost inevitable.

Then I got to junior high, and my first English class with Mr. Fred Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell was a legendary basketball coach, but that day he was simply the teacher, and he called the roll, and got to me. "Jeffrey Gill. What are you usually called?" I suspect he expected the reply "Jeff." What I said reflexively was "Gillfish or Bookworm, I answer to either."

He looked up. His brow furrowed. "What do YOU want to be called?"

I actually had to think for a minute. "Um, Jeff is good."

"Well, then," Mr. Mitchell said, "in this classroom, in this building, in my earshot, you will be Jeff. Thank you." And in fact, I don't think I heard Gillfish at school ever again. Anywhere. By that one teacher, his one statement, that first day, it ended.

That's why I can't vote for Donald Trump. A small reason, but for me it's enough. We don't need more mocking name calling, but we could use a few more Fred Mitchells. He just turned 84, and I bless his memory.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's grown philosophical about his old nicknames, up to a point. Tell him what you used to be called at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 8-23-24

Faith Works 8-23-24
Jeff Gill

Why should I attend a worship service?
___


Summer is, I hate to tell you, coming to an end.

You can define it as to astronomical phenomena, or by the academic calendar as most do; if you want to insist summer isn't over until Labor Day evening, feel free!

Christmas is less than 125 days away, too.

With the end of summer and the season of vacations, it's time to address a recurring subject in this column. Why go to church (on Sunday)?

As a teacher of church history, I've had reason to do a little digging on the development of multiple services, something that was relatively rare outside of big city congregations until the Seventies.

The "worship wars" era ended in many locations with an uneasy detente, still on display in a number of churches, between so-called contemporary worship and traditional style services, obviously resulting in at least two services.

Seeker-sensitive church plants, which heralded the explosion of non-denominational congregations (and a fair number of denominational plants which worked hard to appear non-denim), almost always held contemporary worship style services, but they liked to offer multiple services to provide options. Remember, they're seeker sensitive. So you would have two or three Sunday morning, often a Sunday evening service, and increasingly a Saturday night offering.

This was, I suspect, a reaction to the development after the Second Vatican Council among U.S. Catholics to have what are sometimes called "vigil masses," aka Saturday night mass, which might happen well before dusk. There's a fascinating history to how this response grew out of a European preference for Sunday evening masses, which opened the door for a service "after sunset" on Saturday night, as counting for Sunday observance. The liturgical tradition was that the Sabbath began the evening before, so you could have an anticipatory worship Saturday "night" which was liturgically Sunday. The Vatican gave American Catholics formal clearance to do so through the Seventies, and it became a global norm in the early Eighties.

All of which meant by the time I got into parish ministry in the mid-Eighties, even smaller Protestant churches felt a fair amount of pressure to have at least two services, and medium sized ones could have Saturday night worship and three on Sunday.

(There's something to recall historically about how this hearkens back to our colonial Puritan history, echoing down into holiness influenced worship on the early frontier, where many churches held a morning service, ate Sunday dinner then returned for an afternoon service, and sometimes even an evening prayer meeting on top of all that, along with midweek worship often on a Wednesday night.)

COVID triggered what I think was a long impending re-set around worship services. Every time I talk about this online a number of people will jump in to say "my church has grown immensely since COVID!" but the wider picture is clear: church attendance has not bounced back. In Ohio, at any rate, the claim "it's because the government shut down churches" is not correct: there were recommendations and guidance offered, but no mandate to close (other states did so).

What each congregation had to struggle with was how to protect worshipers (especially elderly ones), especially during the peak periods of infection. There were changes begun during COVID that have lasted, including reductions on things being passed around like offering plates or attendance registers, and how communion was done. Changes around distribution of the bread and the cup have tended to last, even as the plethora of hand-sanitizer bottles have slowly dwindled to a few.

Meanwhile, lots of people stopped coming, and haven't started back yet. What are we to make of it, and how to talk about that change?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he fills the pulpit in a variety of church types these days, and has more to say on attendance. Tell him why you go, or don't, at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Notes from my Knapsack 8-29-24

Notes from my Knapsack 8-29-24

Jeff Gill

It's all debatable

___


Presidential debates have perhaps never been more important in U.S. politics than they have been this year.

Arguably a poor debate performance drove incumbent Joe Biden out of the running for the Nov. 5 general election (Ohio early voting starts Oct. 8). So there's an extra dollop of attention on how Donald Trump and Kamala Harris do versus each other in however many debates they end up having.

Historically, debates really haven't done that much. It is often argued the original TV debate, Richard Nixon versus John F. Kennedy in 1960, had an impact on the election's outcome. The usual claim is those who heard it on the radio thought Nixon won, but if you had your TV on, you thought Kennedy did. (Spoiler alert: Kennedy won.)

Gerald Ford stumbled against Jimmy Carter over how he described Poland's status behind the Iron Curtain, reinforcing an existing downward trend on his polling; Ronald Reagan got off a good line about his opponent's relative youth and immaturity, delivered so well even Walter Mondale laughed uproariously. Did either turn of phrase really deliver the election?

Sometimes people are surprised to hear we've only had presidential debates since 1960. "What about the Lincoln-Douglas debates?" Um, well: that was 1858, but it was for the Senate campaign in Illinois, and Douglas won. It did set the table, though, for the 1860 presidential race. (Spoiler again: Lincoln won that time.)

There's a famous management adage from Edward Deming: "Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets." I think of that when I watch today's presidential debate format, versus the one that gave us Abraham Lincoln as President.

Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had seven debates through the summer and fall of 1858, in different communities all around Illinois. They were held from 2:00 pm to about 5:00 pm. The two took turns starting, and the first debater spoke for (are you sitting down?) an hour, the response had ninety minutes for the second candidate, then the opening speaker had a half-hour to respond.

Shorthand and telegraphy were technologies just becoming widespread, and through them, the debates did become a national phenomenon, with large chunks of the debate speeches being reprinted all across the United States.

But I just think about the vast difference between asking someone to set forward their program across an uninterrupted hour, knowing their opponent was about to have an hour and a half to reply to your proposals. Then thinking as they spoke about how to use your thirty minute reply. As opposed to "you have thirty seconds to reply." 

If every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, then what are we getting from a program of short sound bites and fragmentary replies? Does a short attention span format tend to give us a more distracted and digressive candidate? Or does it just favor that sort of mindset…

(Deming also said "A bad system will beat a good person every time." Spoiler?)

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been in debates before and isn't sure our presidential debate format deserves the label. Debate that question with him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 8-16-24

Faith Works 8-16-24
Jeff Gill

Bearing one another's burdens
___


Following some recent discussion of what makes us uncomfortable or even indignant as people of faith in a complicated culture, let alone a fallen world, I was reading last week in an online periodical aimed largely at a Catholic audience, but with implications I believe much more broadly applicable.

It was a post in "The Lamp," Issue 24, which calls itself "A Catholic Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Etc." What caught my attention was an essay titled "Are All Welcome?" with the subtitle: "On attending Mass with special needs children."

The author, Kevin Tierney, is from Toledo, Ohio, so just up the road, both geographically and culturally. His family includes two special needs children, both with autism and having different degrees of outward symptoms, including something called "stimming" which can seem like noisemaking to someone not used to the situation, but is a largely involuntary response to changes in the environment. It can range from grunts and groans to seemingly nonsense verbalization, and the kind of thing that makes many people think "they should just stop it."

Tierney tries with great patience and charity to help the reader understand what it's like to be a parent with a child having such a diagnosis, and trying to attend worship. As I hope you know, the main point is that you can't "just stop it." Trying to force a child in such a situation to "stop it" is more likely to increase the outward vocalizations and expressions.

His point, which is where I think almost any faith community can stop and ask itself some questions, is around how children like this call the whole community to reflect on what constitutes "normal" behavior. Is silence, and attentiveness, and a reflective focus on what it going on in the service, the most important part of being in community? Are sounds and disruptions the worst thing that can happen, and enough so that it should result in a general wish for those who can't follow the community norms to leave the gathering space?

Or is the value of being together in community reason enough for us to reflect together on how we can gather everyone, even when some of the gathered community are not able to follow the norms of what we're used to thinking of as "normal" group behavior? Could we learn to accept a certain amount of difference across the assembly, and lift up our wholeness as the higher value, over deportment and decorum?

As Tierney asks: "Each member of the community must be willing to embrace being inconvenienced for the sake of the Gospel and its mission. I do not mean this in the clichéd sense of "offering it up." I mean this in the sense of being actively willing to bear the struggles of others. Maybe this involves training yourself not to shoot a glare backwards in the Church at someone who is loud or disruptive. Maybe it involves going over to a stressed parent and asking whether there's anything you can do to help."

If you are at a live performance or watching a movie where you've paid a steep admission price to see and hear the production, I get how there's an expectation to leave the room if you're making it hard for other patrons to get what they paid for. But is worship that sort of consumer experience? Is it necessary to enforce norms of behavior for everyone to get what they came for? It's a question, and I admit not with a simple, easy answer.

Tierney agrees, and as he closes his piece says "I do not write this to condemn. I don't want to offer a five-year plan to fix the Church. I want this to be an examination of conscience."


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows what it's like to seek peace and quiet, too. Tell him how you see this issue at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.


Note for editors: https://thelampmagazine.com/blog/are-all-welcome

Faith Works 8-9-24

Nate or Ben — if this is too long, feel free to delete the next-to-last paragraph!
Pax, Jeff

===

Faith Works 8-9-24
Jeff Gill

Indignation is exhausting, but interest is sustainable
___


Reaction to my expression of discomfort over a billboard exhorting people to "Shack Up" along a major local thoroughfare, overlooking a place large numbers of high schoolers will be gathering soon for football games, was about what I expected.

It was almost all "you're upset about that? Here's something you really should be upset by!" Yep, that's the media environment we live in: pile indignation atop indignation, whereby one's point is made by being the most indignant.

In fact, I never said I was upset or indignant, I noted it was "puzzling" and left me feeling "discomfort," because I "wonder at the wisdom of this counsel in general" as to encouraging young environmentally concerned folk to "Shack up." Potayto, potahto one might say, but I'm going to stick to my guns and say I'm not indignant or terribly upset, just asking questions.

Similarly, I got a hatful of questions and comments from a variety of sources about the Olympic opening ceremony controversy. For the record, after the producers, the printed program available in Paris, and the International Olympic Committee all said the scene in question was, in fact, meant as a parody of sorts of "The Last Supper on the Banks of the Seine" the actual focus is really not in question. But I was asked if I was upset by or would condemn it.

Nope. Seriously, this is where Winston Churchill's counsel about such things and barking dogs comes into play (you can look it up). I can think, offhand, of the DaVinci "Last Supper" visual being referenced by "Lost," "Battlestar Galactica," and "Twin Peaks" (at least in promotional materials if not in the shows themselves); the film version of "MASH" famously had a pivotal scene very directly and more than somewhat inappropriately modeled on Jesus and the disciples all sitting on one side of a long table. Some of us suspect the last scenes of "The Sopranos" had an oblique "Last Supper" reference built into one shot from outside the restaurant (IYKYK).

Christianity can take such homages, whether done respectfully or teasingly or even mildly blasphemously. Was it a good idea in the Olympics? I don't think so, and there even was an apology, so to me it's a dead issue and no big deal.

What I find fascinating is that I've read a large number now of critiques of the Olympic opening ceremony from socially conservative viewpoints, and not seen any of them mention what I thought was a bad choice and worthy of an apology.

Not long after the Last Supper morphing into a Dionysian banquet, we had a trio of young people running around in a vast beautiful library, and quick shots of a series of books which were all, shall we say, sexually adventurous. Sigh, I thought, are we really going for that sort of stereotype for France? Oh yes they were.

The extended scene ends with a shredding of even those transgressive books (huh? still don't get that at all, and I don't like tearing up books, whether I like the contents or not), flinging the pages in the air, then running out, up a flight of stairs getting increasingly frisky with each other, then entering an apartment and teasingly closing the door. I don't think it's prudish at all to observe the point of the scene was a) a menage-a-trois, and b) it was not a quick or glancing aside, it was the point of the sequence.

I just think that was an incredibly stupid choice for a global audience with lots of kids watching. Maybe they thought it was late enough in the show kids were in bed, but the torch hadn't even been lit yet. And again, it plays into a silly stereotype about France but hey, I'm just an Ohioan.

But it was fascinating I've heard nary a peep about it in all the "indignation." What did you think?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has questions. Tell him what yours are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

images, if useful

First the newer replacement stone from 1935, now in Old Colony Burying Ground, and a general and close-up view of the older marker now at the Granville Historical Society Museum: