Notes from my Knapsack 1-29-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 1-29-2026
Jeff Gill

Sports and our body politic, active or not
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Having the Winter Olympics start before the Super Bowl seems odd, but so does noting the latter is happening in February. Meanwhile, we're only two weeks and change away from pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training.

As sports guys go, I'm not much of one. I watch more than I should, less than most. I played some football, was manager for high school basketball (a nice short cut to get three varsity letters), but I've never been that athletic.

NFL rules about kickoffs today make sense, except I don't understand them; something about reducing injury which is quite creditable, but there's a "landing zone" which I could look up, but haven't. And when the ball goes where for extra points…

Even though I'm from Indiana, I'll admit to looking past basketball for the most part to baseball, which I played in youth league forms to no good end. My church league softball years are behind me, and probably always were. Designated hitters and infield fly rules, though, I don't get. I knew enough about obscure rules to be amused and prescient when they introduced a character named Tom Wambsgans in "Succession."

When we get into March Madness, which lapses into April before it ends, I'll likely have a bracket online somewhere. I have opened accounts at ESPN and CBS Sports and elsewhere; I probably won't find my user name and password making me do it all over again. Yeah, I pick my mascots as much as by my knowledge of the players or coaches (I do know where Gonzaga is located, which puts me ahead of some).

All these sports, and yet we're all getting out of shape, eating too much, and needing some kind of magic pill to lose weight. I'm sure wiser people than I have pointed out this irony, but here deep in the winter of 2026, it feels particularly sharp. We need to go bundle up and take a walk, not cocoon up and double our television time… but will I watch all the curling I can find, to be perfectly honest with you. It's soothing, pleasant, understandable even when I don't quite understand it.

Thwack. I just like how the rocks sound when they hit. Whooosh, plock, thwack.

All of which makes sports another form of passive entertainment, again not a unique thought on my part. What I wonder about is how we can turn this into something useful, beyond the usual "connect your TV to a treadmill" idea. Fans of pickle ball like to talk about how they're a fitness movement with a social benefit, and I salute them for how they're downright evangelical about their sport. The LCCC has a Pathfinders group that takes hikes a couple times each month in different locations. What I think we might benefit from is some kind of creative interweaving of, say, NCAA brackets and power walking, but I'm afraid we'd just end up with people striding down paths while looking at the Olympics app on their phones.

My own winter fitness routine tends to be walking while listening to podcasts on my ear buds, but my tendency is to political subjects, a sport of a different sort. It does keep the heart pumping these days; the politics, I mean. Audiobooks are an option for some; they don't work for me, but I hear plenty of good things from my spouse about them as an adjunct to exercise.

Walking isn't a sport, but it is activity. You can watch plenty of sports and not be active. My goal this year is to increase my activity, and that might require watching less sporting events. Odd, isn't it?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's trying to keep moving this winter. Tell him how you stay physically active at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 1-23-2026

Faith Works 1-23-2026
Jeff Gill

Faith, politics, and compromise in this America 250 year
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We are celebrating as a country the semi-sesquicentennial of the Declaration of Independence this year.

1776 was the year, and during the summer a committee of five was called to work on a draft for the Continental Congress to declare their intentions towards Great Britain. Some few still hoped for reconciliation, Samuel Adams wanted a clear and clean break, but all wondered how a collection of colonies could justify their "separate and equal station" to the mother country, and independence from their King.

Of that committee, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston of New York fade quickly into the background, not because of their lack of interest in the subject, but because of the press of other business the assembly had to deal with.

Thomas Jefferson of Virginia was quickly elected chair and chief drafter, some say at the strong encouragement of John Adams from Massachusetts, while Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania anchored the group with his notable wisdom, and relatively speaking, great age (I sigh to note the "elderly" Franklin was 70, which doesn't seem that old to me these days).

Obviously, they represented different parts of the emerging United States of America, and they also represented different perspectives, on politics and about faith.

Walter Isaacson has been speaking for years about the drafting process in June of 1776, and just released a book titled "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written," about the Declaration of Independence's key line, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

Jefferson's original draft had early on the phrase "we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable." Franklin, ever the pragmatist, suggested the truths they were describing were "self-evident," the result of reason and wisdom more than from revelation.

But the more religious Adams said after "all men are created equal," where Jefferson states "from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable" the Massachusetts Unitarian asked him to put instead "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

All of this talk of inherent & inalienable rights stems from a document almost a century old when the Declaration was being drafted in 1776. John Locke wrote "Two Treatises of Government" in 1689, in part to defend Great Britain's "Glorious Revolution" of the preceding year, where William and Mary ascend to the throne, deposing King James II (second son of the late King Charles I, who was executed in 1649, Great Britain having had a pretty tumultuous second half of the Seventeenth Century).

John Locke was a major influence on the Founders' generation, as he articulated views of how the social contract between the governed and the government should work, including the assertion that legitimate governments will always be "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" — a line which goes directly into the Declaration.

Locke's fundamental rights for every individual in a properly governed state in 1689 include "life, liberty, and estate" which becomes "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" in our 1776 telling of the tale.

Locke and the Founders argued for the essential starting point of free and equal persons under the law, whose roots could be found in Nature, and in Nature's God. Franklin eased back Jefferson's assertion's about the sacred, while Adams leaned into our Creator's endowment of creation, while Jefferson used Locke's formulas to describe how the consent of the governed brought this new nation closer to divine intentions.

In 2026, we weave history and theology and political philosophy into our more immediate understandings of how we vote, and what we expect of our elected officials. There may be compromise in our common work to those ends, which is not a concession when it brings clarity of purpose.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been looking forward to 2026 and America 250 for some time. Tell him your perspectives on history at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.