Faith Works column draft 2005 [note: this ran 3-19 in place of the St. Patrick story seen below]
The Purpose Driven Life Returns
Jeff Gill
Recent events overturn our own well-made plans; Ashley Smith knows this even better than Rick Warren, let alone yours truly.
Ashley Smith is the quietly heroic captive of the Atlanta courthouse shooter from just a few weeks back; she read aloud to her kidnaper a section she was reading that day from “The Purpose Driven Life,” a book written by Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren, a two year and still going strong bestseller (in hardback, no less), which her church was reading together through Lent, the worship season leading up to Easter.
Among regular Christian churchgoers, the question is not so much “have you read it” as “how is your church reading it?” Some congregations have done the “40 Days of Purpose” official program through Saddleback’s outreach ministry, others have done a less formal version of congregation-wide reading a day at a time together, and many churches have small groups reading the book for 40 days together.
The idea that your life has a purpose, set by God, and waiting for you to discover to achieve a truly fulfilled life, is not unique to Pastor Warren. But his material, written to give an entire faith community a context to ask this question of one another, and of their church life as well, has created a new opportunity in modern Christendom. The 100-plus weeks this volume has stayed on the New York Times bestseller list show that a chord across America was struck by this book.
So in one sense, the fact that Ashley Smith was reading “The Purpose Driven Life” when she was held captive is not surprising (although how she used it gives her credit beyond my ability to praise in a brief column).
What caught my attention in the coverage over the next two days after the capture and telling of the story was how most TV journalists were utterly unaware of this phenomenon. It started to get painful to me hearing on-air personalities, after segments of Ms. Smith’s narrative, say “This will sure put that book on the bestseller list!”
No, I’m not saying all reporters should know the top ten lists of all media at all times. But it was painfully indicative to me that there was clearly no one on TV who had heard of this book in the first blush of coverage, and mostly fairly stilted descriptions of what this “chapter 33” and who Warren was and what this book meant well into the new cycle.
I know a number of Christian pastors, actually, who have concerns and objections to “The Purpose Driven Life” or the 40 day program for churches. They think it oversold and overhyped. But I don’t know many active Christians who have never heard of it.
Of course, the idea that few media figures are committed religious people is not a new one. But the lack of awareness of such a widespread phenomenon did catch me a bit by surprise. If this were a pop cultural artifact like a hula hoop or pet rock, I’d bet most high profile reporters would know what the deal was, even if they didn’t own one.
Is religious life an aspect of the culture worth knowing about? Inquiring minds want to know . . .Ashley Smith has a story to tell that is of interest to both the culture and to Christians. Her faith is an absolutely necessary part of that narrative, if we’re to make sense of her heroism and strength in a situation of absolute weakness.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who has used “The Purpose Driven Life” with a congregation; if you have an opinion pro- or con- about this or other trends in church life, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
* * *
Faith Works column draft [note: this has not yet run, and is "parked" here; it will move to the proper chronology when it sees the light of newsprint -- jbg]
Why do we pray in Licking County?
Jeff Gill
Christians pray. The Lord’s Prayer, morning prayers, bedtime prayers; we pray in worship services and we pray in private. We speak to God, addressing ourselves to the Creator of the Universe, with a sense of trust in the belief that God listens, and a sense of wonder that God might answer.
Moslems pray, offering their submission, or “Islam” (the literal meaning of that awkward transliteration from the Arabic) to Allah, five times a day at minimum, whether alone or in association with other believers.
Jews pray, both in corporate worship that calls for a “minyan,” the ten men needed for official services, or alone before the Lord Who is One, Adonai.
Hindus pray, to a variety of divine figures who embody manifestations of the Divine Nature, but prayers both “set” and spontaneous are part of their tradition as well, no matter how different their worship spaces look to Western eyes.
Native Americans, or members of the First Nations as the Canadians say, pray; they speak most often of what they do devotionally as “listening,” with much less emphasis on asking or requesting than what they hear Anglo-Europeans do in prayer. Those who happily accept the label “Pagan” or Wiccam say much the same about their prayers.
Buddhists . . . well, they are more comfortable, for the most part, with the word “meditate,” but there are many traditional petitions and praises to the embodiments of Buddha-nature that sound like nothing other than prayer.
And the profane speak the name of God in a variety of forms, most of which are rude and disrespectful . . . but often with a frustrated or helpless tone that almost makes you think they could even be . . . naaaahhh. But Jesus really doesn’t have a middle name as far as anyone can tell from the Bible, in case you wondered.
So what are we all doing when we pray? Of course, there are those who would say that if you are not praying to the real, actual God, you are moving your lips and wasting oxygen; there are also those militantly atheistic enough to say we’re all doing that.
Others, a fair number around these parts I would guess, believe that prayers not intended and aimed and shaped by the right or true or orthodox position are getting much less communion and communication out of their prayers than they might. There is more of an economy of efficiency than an assertion of accuracy among Licking County believers of all faiths. Even very conservative Christians around here would agree that prayers of the monotheistic faiths, Jewish, Christian, and Moslem are spoken to the same one God, but with less efficacy depending on one’s spiritual disciplines and personal faithfulness. Most would even say God hears the misuse of divine labels by the profane; they just would not want to be in their shoes when the answer comes back.
Do those who pray think they talk to God? Almost without exception, yes. Do they think they change God? Generally, no. Serious pray-ers mostly see their prayers as having effects on those who offer the prayers, opening a channel for God’s grace and peace to work in them through a powerful non-verbal communication in response; they also understand their prayers as having an effect on others by being the vehicle for allowing that grace-filled power to flow more freely in a world often intent on blocking God’s intention. While free will, in this post-Calvinistic world, is widely understood by believers as the autonomy God respects in human persons, those who freely choose prayer can give an appropriate and effective nudge to events in the world by opening doors for God to work. And such openness allows our will to be aligned with the will of God, a source of power for those who believe.
Prayer is . . . how would you answer that?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. Share your story of prayer at work with him at disciple@voyager.net.
Monday, March 14, 2005
“Think Ability First”
The Community Booster 3-14-05
Jeff Gill
Ability. We rarely think about the everyday actions we perform, from walking across a room to driving a car. We just do.
Disability is more vivid in our minds, whether a temporary loss of capacity like a broken leg or sprained wrist, or the prospect of something larger and long-lasting.
If some one is described as “having a disability,” that kind of thinking leads to our defining a person by that lack, or absence of ability.
Ashley and Danielle and Stephanie and David don’t see their world as a list of what they can’t do, or at least no more than any other high schooler does. Thanks to Rhonda and Dorothy and Raydelle and Molly and dozens of others, children as well as adults with special needs see themselves as people with abilities. Do we?
MRDD Awareness Day and Month is designed by the Licking County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (you can see why they go by MRDD, can’t you?) as one of many efforts they take on to help the wider community “Think Ability First.”
How can you stop from seeing what someone can’t do as their defining characteristic? Well, one way is to put yourself in their shoes, by working a wheelchair through doors and down hallways, or wearing vision-limiting goggles. At first you are all about what you can’t do, but the gentle hints of those who live with these situations and a little persistence can show how you “do different” what you’re used to doing another way.
Or you can simply walk alongside, and learn that from adaptive technology to dogged persistence to a whole lotta love, there’s always a way.
Think ability first, says the MRDD Board, and you see a thousand Licking County residents in a very different way.
Awareness Day was an event involving some 40 community members invited to start a morning at the E.S. Weiant Center (formerly known as the “Starlight School”) with breakfast together and a brief orientation, followed by breaking into teams of 2 to 6 members visiting various locations where special needs students, young adults working on the transition to independent living, and working people with disabilities at the LICCO workshop and other sites through Community Employment Services. They ended their experience with lunch back at Weiant where participants shared what they did and saw with each other.
MRDD also works very closely with the Licking County Schools and their Educational Service Center, which provides appropriate education experiences for children from kindergarten through age 22. While many are able to graduate in one form or another, some need special services to get ready for as much independent living as they can.
This writer was with a group that went to one of three high school based multi-handicap units, or a “MH room.” Every child needing such services through their individual education plan, or IEP, has access, but not every school has their own program and intervention specialist with aides.
Children from five different districts in the county were beginning a series of exercises when our Awareness Day group arrived. The roomful was grouped by skill level rather than by grade or simple age divisions, but the exercises were done by everyone, including visitors, who were considerably less flexible than the 14 to 19 year olds.
Rhonda Taylor, the room coordinator and intervention specialist at the Granville High MH room, explained that these were exercises designed not so much to stretch the muscles as the mind, working left and right limbs over to the opposite sides, which forces the two sides of the brain to work together. This is one “stretch” that most of us could probably use to start a day, but is particularly useful for many of the students in the MH room.
We saw how each child has their own “objectives list” for the day and week, tailored to their own unique situation. When they reach 10th grade level, they also take an alternative assessment version of the Ohio Graduation Test, just their peers all across the state this week.
After some time for individual work, most of the group was scheduled for a field trip to Newark and “The Citadel,” formerly the YWCA building. Licking County School ESC has a program there for transitioning to independent living, where life skills are sharpened and aimed at their goals for their later years. Raydelle Matthews, the specialist there, was cooking a lunch that tempted us all to veer off our plan, but she invited us to just walk around the room with our escorts and join the activities.
Playing ball with young adults who are legally blind, like Robin, seeing crafts prettier than anything their guests knew they were capable of making, or getting whooped on at cards by almost anyone there (who had the disability at that table?) were some of the experiences to be had while other students worked to set up for lunch.
Here, as throughout the system, MRDD caseworkers are in close consultation with the school staff, but particularly as the emphasis shifts from the more academic to primarily vocational after age 19 or post-graduation. Adult services, with CES and the LICCO workshop, create a safety net for these able, but vulnerable members of our community.
Licking County MRDD is funded largely through our own local tax levy, some federal and state funding, and small amount of revenue. Their activities go “around the clock and around the county” in the words of Sherry Steinman, MRDD’s public relations director.
At the closing luncheon, participants like John Gard of Park National Bank noted their amazement at “how vast a transportation system it takes to do this work.”
Nancy Neely, the superintendent of MRDD, spoke of their “huge responsibility to connect with the various service programs around the county.” That kind of co-ordination, between a variety of organizations and structures, is something that is often beyond the skills of the “regularly abled,” let alone those who need assistance. From the preschool at the Weiant Center, the ten ESC school-based programs around the county, and through the work-based settings all the way to the Licking County Aging Program, people with special needs are all around us, aided and served well by the staff and volunteers of LCMRDD. Your purchases may have been made or wrapped by their clients, you may have eaten off of dishes they wash, or a bed you slept in during the ice storm was likely made by a CES worker. They are a vital part of our economy as well as our community.
Together, they invite us all to “think ability first.”
The Community Booster 3-14-05
Jeff Gill
Ability. We rarely think about the everyday actions we perform, from walking across a room to driving a car. We just do.
Disability is more vivid in our minds, whether a temporary loss of capacity like a broken leg or sprained wrist, or the prospect of something larger and long-lasting.
If some one is described as “having a disability,” that kind of thinking leads to our defining a person by that lack, or absence of ability.
Ashley and Danielle and Stephanie and David don’t see their world as a list of what they can’t do, or at least no more than any other high schooler does. Thanks to Rhonda and Dorothy and Raydelle and Molly and dozens of others, children as well as adults with special needs see themselves as people with abilities. Do we?
MRDD Awareness Day and Month is designed by the Licking County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (you can see why they go by MRDD, can’t you?) as one of many efforts they take on to help the wider community “Think Ability First.”
How can you stop from seeing what someone can’t do as their defining characteristic? Well, one way is to put yourself in their shoes, by working a wheelchair through doors and down hallways, or wearing vision-limiting goggles. At first you are all about what you can’t do, but the gentle hints of those who live with these situations and a little persistence can show how you “do different” what you’re used to doing another way.
Or you can simply walk alongside, and learn that from adaptive technology to dogged persistence to a whole lotta love, there’s always a way.
Think ability first, says the MRDD Board, and you see a thousand Licking County residents in a very different way.
Awareness Day was an event involving some 40 community members invited to start a morning at the E.S. Weiant Center (formerly known as the “Starlight School”) with breakfast together and a brief orientation, followed by breaking into teams of 2 to 6 members visiting various locations where special needs students, young adults working on the transition to independent living, and working people with disabilities at the LICCO workshop and other sites through Community Employment Services. They ended their experience with lunch back at Weiant where participants shared what they did and saw with each other.
MRDD also works very closely with the Licking County Schools and their Educational Service Center, which provides appropriate education experiences for children from kindergarten through age 22. While many are able to graduate in one form or another, some need special services to get ready for as much independent living as they can.
This writer was with a group that went to one of three high school based multi-handicap units, or a “MH room.” Every child needing such services through their individual education plan, or IEP, has access, but not every school has their own program and intervention specialist with aides.
Children from five different districts in the county were beginning a series of exercises when our Awareness Day group arrived. The roomful was grouped by skill level rather than by grade or simple age divisions, but the exercises were done by everyone, including visitors, who were considerably less flexible than the 14 to 19 year olds.
Rhonda Taylor, the room coordinator and intervention specialist at the Granville High MH room, explained that these were exercises designed not so much to stretch the muscles as the mind, working left and right limbs over to the opposite sides, which forces the two sides of the brain to work together. This is one “stretch” that most of us could probably use to start a day, but is particularly useful for many of the students in the MH room.
We saw how each child has their own “objectives list” for the day and week, tailored to their own unique situation. When they reach 10th grade level, they also take an alternative assessment version of the Ohio Graduation Test, just their peers all across the state this week.
After some time for individual work, most of the group was scheduled for a field trip to Newark and “The Citadel,” formerly the YWCA building. Licking County School ESC has a program there for transitioning to independent living, where life skills are sharpened and aimed at their goals for their later years. Raydelle Matthews, the specialist there, was cooking a lunch that tempted us all to veer off our plan, but she invited us to just walk around the room with our escorts and join the activities.
Playing ball with young adults who are legally blind, like Robin, seeing crafts prettier than anything their guests knew they were capable of making, or getting whooped on at cards by almost anyone there (who had the disability at that table?) were some of the experiences to be had while other students worked to set up for lunch.
Here, as throughout the system, MRDD caseworkers are in close consultation with the school staff, but particularly as the emphasis shifts from the more academic to primarily vocational after age 19 or post-graduation. Adult services, with CES and the LICCO workshop, create a safety net for these able, but vulnerable members of our community.
Licking County MRDD is funded largely through our own local tax levy, some federal and state funding, and small amount of revenue. Their activities go “around the clock and around the county” in the words of Sherry Steinman, MRDD’s public relations director.
At the closing luncheon, participants like John Gard of Park National Bank noted their amazement at “how vast a transportation system it takes to do this work.”
Nancy Neely, the superintendent of MRDD, spoke of their “huge responsibility to connect with the various service programs around the county.” That kind of co-ordination, between a variety of organizations and structures, is something that is often beyond the skills of the “regularly abled,” let alone those who need assistance. From the preschool at the Weiant Center, the ten ESC school-based programs around the county, and through the work-based settings all the way to the Licking County Aging Program, people with special needs are all around us, aided and served well by the staff and volunteers of LCMRDD. Your purchases may have been made or wrapped by their clients, you may have eaten off of dishes they wash, or a bed you slept in during the ice storm was likely made by a CES worker. They are a vital part of our economy as well as our community.
Together, they invite us all to “think ability first.”
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 03-20-05
By Jeff Gill
Local school districts, and educators all over Ohio, are having to take a very serious look at their projections for funding and student counts for the next five years.
Almost without exception, school boards and superintendents have done this for decades just in the course of providing good leadership. What is a little bit different is that they now are required by the state to present these projections and proposed budgets for five years out, and that they are not, by state law, allowed to present an intentional deficit.
What is a whole lot different is that, for the most part, district treasurers are legally obligated to create these budgets for which they will be held accountable, while the lawmakers themselves are playing fruit-basket-upset with the sources of revenue.
From the futzing around with the millage rollback (perish the thought that education might benefit from increasing property values, which they likely contributed to!) on through the slow bleed of eliminating what’s known as “inventory taxes” to myriad other complex intricacies of the tax code that result in simple reductions to local school districts, education in Ohio is taking it on the chin. Big time.
So be aware, and be supportive of what school boards and the professional staffs of districts are going through, as the Statehouse hints and winks at what they may or may not do with funding formulas and tax reform, fiddling ‘til June while responsible officials close to where the hard work of citizenship happens are having to produce figures right now. They’re not supposed to guess, they can’t overspend, and they have no idea what they’ll be allowed to receive. Sound fair to you?
Oh, there in the third row: you want to know why they spend so much more, per capita, even adjusted for inflation? Thank you for raising your hand, and I’m delighted to answer that question. The reason is not a “problem,” but it is a new factor which we should celebrate and support, along with taking into account as we hold (as we should) our schools accountable.
Not so very long ago, within the personal experience of many of us who are old enough to read, most developmentally disabled, handicapped, and chronically ill students were told “Sorry.” If you couldn’t run up a flight of stairs, use a restroom on your own, or hang upside down on the monkey bars by your knees, you didn’t go to school.
That was it.
A few motivated districts and caring teachers might have gone out of their way to bring schooling to children in such situations, and institutionalized kids may or may not have gotten some kind of education wherever they were warehoused, but that wasn’t the school district’s expectation, by either the law or in the minds of local residents.
What has changed, and costs more, and what we should be very, very thankful for, is that the law now clearly says there aren’t any kids we can spare. No child is “someone else’s problem.” Every school district is required – and who wants to say this is a bad idea? – to educate every child in their care, no matter what the obstacles.
The law does not require football or baseball, or band, or busing for older youth. It does require that, if it takes an aide or special equipment or assisting devices to get a child on the road to the three R’s and beyond, that’s gotta be done. I like sports and music and science fairs, but that legal distinction makes sense to me, it really does.
Add to that the fact that graduation rates 50 years ago were close to 50% in most school districts (calculated as the number of ninth graders who got diplomas four years later), with the social assumption that the “other” 50% would be educated on the job, in the military, or along the railroad tracks catching a westbound freight, and that was just fine, you can see why education costs more, head-for-head, than it did.
I’m open to any good idea about the best mechanism for levying the taxes to support schools without harming business. Abso-bloomin-lutely. But let’s not blame kids in wheelchairs, or castigate treasurers and board members who are playing a perverse game of “Wheel” with your host Pat Housemember and the lovely Vanna Senatechamber changing the rules in mid-game.
Got an idea? E-mail me at disciple@voyager.net and I’ll give you room in this column to propose your plan. Give me three weeks worth of material, OK? This random roulette with kids’ futures has to stop.
By Jeff Gill
Local school districts, and educators all over Ohio, are having to take a very serious look at their projections for funding and student counts for the next five years.
Almost without exception, school boards and superintendents have done this for decades just in the course of providing good leadership. What is a little bit different is that they now are required by the state to present these projections and proposed budgets for five years out, and that they are not, by state law, allowed to present an intentional deficit.
What is a whole lot different is that, for the most part, district treasurers are legally obligated to create these budgets for which they will be held accountable, while the lawmakers themselves are playing fruit-basket-upset with the sources of revenue.
From the futzing around with the millage rollback (perish the thought that education might benefit from increasing property values, which they likely contributed to!) on through the slow bleed of eliminating what’s known as “inventory taxes” to myriad other complex intricacies of the tax code that result in simple reductions to local school districts, education in Ohio is taking it on the chin. Big time.
So be aware, and be supportive of what school boards and the professional staffs of districts are going through, as the Statehouse hints and winks at what they may or may not do with funding formulas and tax reform, fiddling ‘til June while responsible officials close to where the hard work of citizenship happens are having to produce figures right now. They’re not supposed to guess, they can’t overspend, and they have no idea what they’ll be allowed to receive. Sound fair to you?
Oh, there in the third row: you want to know why they spend so much more, per capita, even adjusted for inflation? Thank you for raising your hand, and I’m delighted to answer that question. The reason is not a “problem,” but it is a new factor which we should celebrate and support, along with taking into account as we hold (as we should) our schools accountable.
Not so very long ago, within the personal experience of many of us who are old enough to read, most developmentally disabled, handicapped, and chronically ill students were told “Sorry.” If you couldn’t run up a flight of stairs, use a restroom on your own, or hang upside down on the monkey bars by your knees, you didn’t go to school.
That was it.
A few motivated districts and caring teachers might have gone out of their way to bring schooling to children in such situations, and institutionalized kids may or may not have gotten some kind of education wherever they were warehoused, but that wasn’t the school district’s expectation, by either the law or in the minds of local residents.
What has changed, and costs more, and what we should be very, very thankful for, is that the law now clearly says there aren’t any kids we can spare. No child is “someone else’s problem.” Every school district is required – and who wants to say this is a bad idea? – to educate every child in their care, no matter what the obstacles.
The law does not require football or baseball, or band, or busing for older youth. It does require that, if it takes an aide or special equipment or assisting devices to get a child on the road to the three R’s and beyond, that’s gotta be done. I like sports and music and science fairs, but that legal distinction makes sense to me, it really does.
Add to that the fact that graduation rates 50 years ago were close to 50% in most school districts (calculated as the number of ninth graders who got diplomas four years later), with the social assumption that the “other” 50% would be educated on the job, in the military, or along the railroad tracks catching a westbound freight, and that was just fine, you can see why education costs more, head-for-head, than it did.
I’m open to any good idea about the best mechanism for levying the taxes to support schools without harming business. Abso-bloomin-lutely. But let’s not blame kids in wheelchairs, or castigate treasurers and board members who are playing a perverse game of “Wheel” with your host Pat Housemember and the lovely Vanna Senatechamber changing the rules in mid-game.
Got an idea? E-mail me at disciple@voyager.net and I’ll give you room in this column to propose your plan. Give me three weeks worth of material, OK? This random roulette with kids’ futures has to stop.
Faith Works 03-19-05
By Jeff Gill
[note: this did not appear in print, since the Atlanta hostage incident with Ashley Smith and the Purpose Driven Life story kind of overrode events; i wrote a new column seen above, and this exists only here...but enjoy anyhow! jbg]
A Children’s Sermon For Grown-ups
Now that the flood of green beer has crested, and the “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons put back at the bottom of the sweater drawer, we can talk about Saint Patrick. Not the winkin’ wee feller of St. Paddy’s Day, but the good missionary bishop himself, and that hunk of Emerald Isle landscape in his hand.
“The Wearin’ o’ the Green,” with or without the pinch penalty (hope you checked workplace guidelines on sexual harassment before you tried that on anyone last week) is part of the adoptive Irishness that has trickled down to the wholesale embrace of “Celtic spirituality,” a broad table with an assortment of dishes set out, not many of which would Bishop Patrick recognize a millennium and a half ago.
Shamrock symbolism for the day and place and person is a good quick identifier, like pumpkins for Hallowe’en and fireworks for the Fourth of July. We’ve come to associate it with Ireland as a whole, in tourism ads or decorating the margins of our family tree from County Sligo.
What Patrick first plucked a shamrock for was to make a point, and a difficult one at that, one that has challenged Christian teachers and preachers for many an age. He held up the lowly green ground cover to make three points, or maybe three points in one.
What the good bishop was trying to get across to his pagan and Druid listeners was what Christians meant when they said they believed in “One God, not many” but could also call Jesus “truly God and truly human,” and, oh yes, there was this “Holy Spirit” authentically divine as well.
OK, said the Irish. So you worship three gods, which is fine by us; many do. No, no, answered Patrick, we worship God in three persons, a blessed Trinity, where the eternal Oneness of God is manifested in three. . .
And then Patrick saw the shamrock.
Aside from general theological illiteracy, a big reason for folks here and now not knowing the religious roots of the shamrock symbol is that we point at our common clover as the closest analogy (and look for luck in the four leaf variety, just as they did in the Auld Sod for four leaf shamrocks).
But clover is three distinct leaflets off of a central stem. Shamrocks were a, well, God-send for Patrick because they look like three leaves until you consider them up close and personal. A true shamrock is actually one leaf, with divisions between the three lobes so deep that they look like three different sections. Careful observation, instead of a casual glance, shows that the shamrock is in fact one coherent, connected, unified leaf.
Thus, Patrick to-be-saint would have said, is our understanding of the inner relationships of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From a distance, three distinct forms and roles; draw near, and see and feel the oneness.
Town after town, county after county, king after king heard Patrick’s shamrock theology talk about Christianity, and asked for baptism. This way of understanding the doctrine of the Trinity became so attached to the Irish Church that the shamrock became the symbol of the whole island.
And may the road rise to meet all those preparing for baptism this Easter season, and may the gentle wind be at everyone’s back, Irish or not.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. If you have other ethnic faith traditions to share, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
[note: this did not appear in print, since the Atlanta hostage incident with Ashley Smith and the Purpose Driven Life story kind of overrode events; i wrote a new column seen above, and this exists only here...but enjoy anyhow! jbg]
A Children’s Sermon For Grown-ups
Now that the flood of green beer has crested, and the “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons put back at the bottom of the sweater drawer, we can talk about Saint Patrick. Not the winkin’ wee feller of St. Paddy’s Day, but the good missionary bishop himself, and that hunk of Emerald Isle landscape in his hand.
“The Wearin’ o’ the Green,” with or without the pinch penalty (hope you checked workplace guidelines on sexual harassment before you tried that on anyone last week) is part of the adoptive Irishness that has trickled down to the wholesale embrace of “Celtic spirituality,” a broad table with an assortment of dishes set out, not many of which would Bishop Patrick recognize a millennium and a half ago.
Shamrock symbolism for the day and place and person is a good quick identifier, like pumpkins for Hallowe’en and fireworks for the Fourth of July. We’ve come to associate it with Ireland as a whole, in tourism ads or decorating the margins of our family tree from County Sligo.
What Patrick first plucked a shamrock for was to make a point, and a difficult one at that, one that has challenged Christian teachers and preachers for many an age. He held up the lowly green ground cover to make three points, or maybe three points in one.
What the good bishop was trying to get across to his pagan and Druid listeners was what Christians meant when they said they believed in “One God, not many” but could also call Jesus “truly God and truly human,” and, oh yes, there was this “Holy Spirit” authentically divine as well.
OK, said the Irish. So you worship three gods, which is fine by us; many do. No, no, answered Patrick, we worship God in three persons, a blessed Trinity, where the eternal Oneness of God is manifested in three. . .
And then Patrick saw the shamrock.
Aside from general theological illiteracy, a big reason for folks here and now not knowing the religious roots of the shamrock symbol is that we point at our common clover as the closest analogy (and look for luck in the four leaf variety, just as they did in the Auld Sod for four leaf shamrocks).
But clover is three distinct leaflets off of a central stem. Shamrocks were a, well, God-send for Patrick because they look like three leaves until you consider them up close and personal. A true shamrock is actually one leaf, with divisions between the three lobes so deep that they look like three different sections. Careful observation, instead of a casual glance, shows that the shamrock is in fact one coherent, connected, unified leaf.
Thus, Patrick to-be-saint would have said, is our understanding of the inner relationships of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From a distance, three distinct forms and roles; draw near, and see and feel the oneness.
Town after town, county after county, king after king heard Patrick’s shamrock theology talk about Christianity, and asked for baptism. This way of understanding the doctrine of the Trinity became so attached to the Irish Church that the shamrock became the symbol of the whole island.
And may the road rise to meet all those preparing for baptism this Easter season, and may the gentle wind be at everyone’s back, Irish or not.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. If you have other ethnic faith traditions to share, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Faith Works 03-12-05
By Jeff Gill
Contemporary and Traditional Worship
One of the more vexed questions in today’s congregational life is how to approach the widespread move to what’s called “contemporary worship.”
Actually, there’s no more a contemporary style than there is a single “traditional worship” style. Variations from religious body to religious body, between geographic and cultural regions, and out of ethnic backgrounds as well make any use of standard terminology tricky.
For central Ohio, mostly among Protestant Christian bodies, the distinction is largely one of music, at least on the surface. Traditional worship is marked by hymnals, music mostly 40 years old or older, often a bulletin with an “order of worship” built around regularly recurring songs and prayers or acts that stay pretty much the same from week to week.
Traditional worship is orderly, generally more formal, with mostly professional leadership in front of the congregation, and from the worshipers there is less active involvement in the service, with clapping or applause less welcome.
Contemporary worship is marked by music presented by a “praise team” usually made up of mostly volunteers, playing guitars, drums, and keyboards or synthesizers to offer music written in the last few decades. Hymnals are all but invisible, as words are projected before the congregation, freeing the hands to clap, applaud, or even raise up during prayer and praise. While contemporary worship isn’t necessarily “charismatic” in the Pentecostal sense, a freedom for individual expression and spontaneous flow in the elements of the service are similar to what has been found in charismatic fellowships for many years.
Obviously, these styles resist blending in one service. Some churches, such as Jacksontown United Methodist Church, have been able to do this successfully, but more common is either having two (or more) services clearly presented as “contemporary” at blank o’clock and “traditional” at other o’clock.
One concern raised with this approach is the question “aren’t we going to have two separate congregations under one roof if we do that?” Actually, the results in churches doing this are pretty much what happens anywhere there are multiple services. Even in places which have chosen to stick with traditional as their style across the board, the “early” and “late” services have their own set of regular attenders, and a different feel between the experiences of worship.
To have multiple services for worship means taking on an extra obligation to have a variety of fellowship experiences that can cut across generational boundaries and issues of musical taste. It can be done, and two or three healthy services will always total more worshipers than the most crowded single service over time, anyhow.
My wife loves being part of a praise team ensemble, working out harmonies and accompaniment for new pieces of music (which often are Biblical texts or phrases from ancient music: it ain’t all new!), and seeing the active involvement of an entire sanctuary in the entire experience of worship. My mom can’t stand contemporary worship of any sort, period. My dad is, to quote “baffled by why anyone would enjoy all this noise in church,” but also says “if you can get all these people to church who weren’t coming before, there must be something to it.”
Me? Well, like any good columnist, I have an assortment of feelings about all this. But I keep coming back to a keepsake I have on a shelf in my office, a hymnal from the roots of my own background, whose proceeds built Bethany College, churches across the US in the 19th century, and funded missionary efforts all around the world. My great-great-grandmother, her daughter, and her daughter sang from this hymn book.
It has over 600 hymns in it. There are precisely two – “Amazing Grace” & “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” – that anyone still sings.
Will we still sing much of contemporary praise music a hundred years from now? Probably not. But it’s worth giving it a try today. I’ll bet my great-grandmother thought “Old Rugged Cross” didn’t sound right the first time she heard it, either.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have a favorite hymn you’d like to read more about, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Contemporary and Traditional Worship
One of the more vexed questions in today’s congregational life is how to approach the widespread move to what’s called “contemporary worship.”
Actually, there’s no more a contemporary style than there is a single “traditional worship” style. Variations from religious body to religious body, between geographic and cultural regions, and out of ethnic backgrounds as well make any use of standard terminology tricky.
For central Ohio, mostly among Protestant Christian bodies, the distinction is largely one of music, at least on the surface. Traditional worship is marked by hymnals, music mostly 40 years old or older, often a bulletin with an “order of worship” built around regularly recurring songs and prayers or acts that stay pretty much the same from week to week.
Traditional worship is orderly, generally more formal, with mostly professional leadership in front of the congregation, and from the worshipers there is less active involvement in the service, with clapping or applause less welcome.
Contemporary worship is marked by music presented by a “praise team” usually made up of mostly volunteers, playing guitars, drums, and keyboards or synthesizers to offer music written in the last few decades. Hymnals are all but invisible, as words are projected before the congregation, freeing the hands to clap, applaud, or even raise up during prayer and praise. While contemporary worship isn’t necessarily “charismatic” in the Pentecostal sense, a freedom for individual expression and spontaneous flow in the elements of the service are similar to what has been found in charismatic fellowships for many years.
Obviously, these styles resist blending in one service. Some churches, such as Jacksontown United Methodist Church, have been able to do this successfully, but more common is either having two (or more) services clearly presented as “contemporary” at blank o’clock and “traditional” at other o’clock.
One concern raised with this approach is the question “aren’t we going to have two separate congregations under one roof if we do that?” Actually, the results in churches doing this are pretty much what happens anywhere there are multiple services. Even in places which have chosen to stick with traditional as their style across the board, the “early” and “late” services have their own set of regular attenders, and a different feel between the experiences of worship.
To have multiple services for worship means taking on an extra obligation to have a variety of fellowship experiences that can cut across generational boundaries and issues of musical taste. It can be done, and two or three healthy services will always total more worshipers than the most crowded single service over time, anyhow.
My wife loves being part of a praise team ensemble, working out harmonies and accompaniment for new pieces of music (which often are Biblical texts or phrases from ancient music: it ain’t all new!), and seeing the active involvement of an entire sanctuary in the entire experience of worship. My mom can’t stand contemporary worship of any sort, period. My dad is, to quote “baffled by why anyone would enjoy all this noise in church,” but also says “if you can get all these people to church who weren’t coming before, there must be something to it.”
Me? Well, like any good columnist, I have an assortment of feelings about all this. But I keep coming back to a keepsake I have on a shelf in my office, a hymnal from the roots of my own background, whose proceeds built Bethany College, churches across the US in the 19th century, and funded missionary efforts all around the world. My great-great-grandmother, her daughter, and her daughter sang from this hymn book.
It has over 600 hymns in it. There are precisely two – “Amazing Grace” & “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” – that anyone still sings.
Will we still sing much of contemporary praise music a hundred years from now? Probably not. But it’s worth giving it a try today. I’ll bet my great-grandmother thought “Old Rugged Cross” didn’t sound right the first time she heard it, either.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have a favorite hymn you’d like to read more about, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 3-13-05
By Jeff Gill
Calvinists from Wales, landless Anglican prone to the Arminian heresy (said the Calvinists), German Dunkards and Congregational New Englanders – religious refugees, sectarian churches, and pilgrim colonists are not just the story of the settling of the East Coast of North America.
We know the legends of Plymouth Rock (Myles Standish and John Alden) and the Hudson Valley (Rip VanWinkle and Sleepy Hollow) or even Revolutionary Piedmonters (Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox) from the far edge of America, but what about our story? The narrative of Licking County and her European pioneers is all too little known, but with dramatic characters and startling scenes all its own.
John Jones, Elias Ratliff, Lucius Mower, or Billy Dragoo deserve to be known to a wider audience in this area, and the religious underpinnings of migrant bands ending up along Raccoon Creek are vital to understanding their story.
Dick Shiels may not get to Billy Dragoo, but he will talk this Tuesday about how churches and colonists created the core of Licking County in the Granville area in the early 1800’s. Dick is a popular teacher of history at OSU-Newark both of events long ago and far away, as well as the history just at our feet.
7:30 pm on March 15 at the Granville Inn is your chance to come hear about the creation of a tale that is not only still being re-told, but re-edited as well!
Quite a few congregations in Licking County are celebrating their bicentennials over the next few years: White Chapel United Methodist Church off Hog Run west of Rt. 13, Licking Baptist Church on Beaver Run Road near Hebron, and both First Presbyterians in Newark and Granville. A number of sesqui’s are coming up, too: Perryton’s Church of Christ, Johnstown Baptist Church, Croton and Hebron United Methodist Churches soon and Denison University this next year. Please send me news of any anniversary events you know about, and what will be a public portion of the commemorations.
Most of our local school systems didn’t come into being as organized entities until after 1838 with state legislation helping put the pieces together, and many (like Newark’s) didn’t get going until 1850 or so. Civic affairs were in log structures and based on infrequent meetings until about the same time.
Church buildings and the congregational life in them was often the only structure outside of family life for much of the early history in Ohio, as in most of this country. It can be fairly assumed that the structures of church life also shaped the still developing social and cultural life around them, simply by being first and in having a shape and solidity to copy.
Were all our pioneer forebearers active and faithful members of the churches they attended? A close reading of history says they were individually less so than you might think, but that same careful observation shows how unique and idiosyncratic elements of the denominations found on the frontier created much of the foundation for civil government. I’m looking forward to hearing Dick Shiels trace the marks of these formative influences on the community we continue to build.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have a story to add to the files of historic Licking County or for tomorrow’s tale, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Calvinists from Wales, landless Anglican prone to the Arminian heresy (said the Calvinists), German Dunkards and Congregational New Englanders – religious refugees, sectarian churches, and pilgrim colonists are not just the story of the settling of the East Coast of North America.
We know the legends of Plymouth Rock (Myles Standish and John Alden) and the Hudson Valley (Rip VanWinkle and Sleepy Hollow) or even Revolutionary Piedmonters (Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox) from the far edge of America, but what about our story? The narrative of Licking County and her European pioneers is all too little known, but with dramatic characters and startling scenes all its own.
John Jones, Elias Ratliff, Lucius Mower, or Billy Dragoo deserve to be known to a wider audience in this area, and the religious underpinnings of migrant bands ending up along Raccoon Creek are vital to understanding their story.
Dick Shiels may not get to Billy Dragoo, but he will talk this Tuesday about how churches and colonists created the core of Licking County in the Granville area in the early 1800’s. Dick is a popular teacher of history at OSU-Newark both of events long ago and far away, as well as the history just at our feet.
7:30 pm on March 15 at the Granville Inn is your chance to come hear about the creation of a tale that is not only still being re-told, but re-edited as well!
Quite a few congregations in Licking County are celebrating their bicentennials over the next few years: White Chapel United Methodist Church off Hog Run west of Rt. 13, Licking Baptist Church on Beaver Run Road near Hebron, and both First Presbyterians in Newark and Granville. A number of sesqui’s are coming up, too: Perryton’s Church of Christ, Johnstown Baptist Church, Croton and Hebron United Methodist Churches soon and Denison University this next year. Please send me news of any anniversary events you know about, and what will be a public portion of the commemorations.
Most of our local school systems didn’t come into being as organized entities until after 1838 with state legislation helping put the pieces together, and many (like Newark’s) didn’t get going until 1850 or so. Civic affairs were in log structures and based on infrequent meetings until about the same time.
Church buildings and the congregational life in them was often the only structure outside of family life for much of the early history in Ohio, as in most of this country. It can be fairly assumed that the structures of church life also shaped the still developing social and cultural life around them, simply by being first and in having a shape and solidity to copy.
Were all our pioneer forebearers active and faithful members of the churches they attended? A close reading of history says they were individually less so than you might think, but that same careful observation shows how unique and idiosyncratic elements of the denominations found on the frontier created much of the foundation for civil government. I’m looking forward to hearing Dick Shiels trace the marks of these formative influences on the community we continue to build.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have a story to add to the files of historic Licking County or for tomorrow’s tale, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Faith Works 03-05-05
By Jeff Gill
One of my little personal treasures is a carefully laminated newspaper photograph of Jim Short going in to vote. His wife, Virginia, is holding his arm, and a neighbor is holding the door of their local school where the polling place was set up.
Jim died not very long after this picture was taken, with the effects of Parkinson’s disease finally overwhelming his ability to breath. He knew he was likely to not see those he voted for sworn in, let alone serve out their terms, but this veteran of World War II knew where his place and duty lay, and his family and friends were going to help him fulfill his calling.
I think of Jim when I watch Pope John Paul II on television, a man I’ve never met but whose service, like Jim’s in the Marine Corps, has touched my life and for the better. My freedom and confidence in the world my family lives in is due to the steadfastness and faithfulness of those who have stood against Nazism and Communism.
And I laugh, and think of Jim again when I hear people ask, “will the Pope step down?” The former archbishop of Krakow has often said “Jesus did not step down from the cross” in answer to that question, a response which says volumes to those of us who have known individuals who put the greater good over personal comfort. Whether in combat, in ministry, or simply in getting out of their home for one of the last times to cast a vote for candidates they respected, there are heroes all around us, and John Paul, bishop of Rome, knows he represents many such lesser known folk even as he is also “the vicar of Christ.”
Parkinson’s is a disease, and like breathing, it will lead to death if given enough time. It does not carry away brain cells, or rewire your thoughts, but it does mask the emotions you still feel just as strongly behind a frozen set of facial muscles. The mask, the tremors, and the slow debilitation of walking and working leads far too many to assume it has mental effects. (Ask a blind person how tired they get of people talking slowly and too loudly to them!)
Recently, two movies won Academy Awards for best film and best foreign language film that affirm what some call the “right to die,” but many others would call the “right to assisted suicide.” One disability rights activist said the next morning after the Oscars: “Good thing there wasn’t an animated feature about putting us out of everyone else’s misery, or it would have been a clean sweep.”
I think the Pope would agree. He is aware and active and ready to serve, whether for a month or a year or possibly another decade. Whose misery is he needing to sooth: his own, or that of those who see a once vital man weighed down by illness and see possibilities for themselves they’d rather not confront?
May God bless John Paul for his faithful example before the world, and in another of the marvels of this modern age, if you’d like to say thank you this Lent, just drop “Il Papa” an e-mail through john_paul_II@vatican.va.
He can’t type anymore, but he can hear a “thank you” as well as any of us. Maybe even better.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. You can e-mail him at a less impressive address, disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
One of my little personal treasures is a carefully laminated newspaper photograph of Jim Short going in to vote. His wife, Virginia, is holding his arm, and a neighbor is holding the door of their local school where the polling place was set up.
Jim died not very long after this picture was taken, with the effects of Parkinson’s disease finally overwhelming his ability to breath. He knew he was likely to not see those he voted for sworn in, let alone serve out their terms, but this veteran of World War II knew where his place and duty lay, and his family and friends were going to help him fulfill his calling.
I think of Jim when I watch Pope John Paul II on television, a man I’ve never met but whose service, like Jim’s in the Marine Corps, has touched my life and for the better. My freedom and confidence in the world my family lives in is due to the steadfastness and faithfulness of those who have stood against Nazism and Communism.
And I laugh, and think of Jim again when I hear people ask, “will the Pope step down?” The former archbishop of Krakow has often said “Jesus did not step down from the cross” in answer to that question, a response which says volumes to those of us who have known individuals who put the greater good over personal comfort. Whether in combat, in ministry, or simply in getting out of their home for one of the last times to cast a vote for candidates they respected, there are heroes all around us, and John Paul, bishop of Rome, knows he represents many such lesser known folk even as he is also “the vicar of Christ.”
Parkinson’s is a disease, and like breathing, it will lead to death if given enough time. It does not carry away brain cells, or rewire your thoughts, but it does mask the emotions you still feel just as strongly behind a frozen set of facial muscles. The mask, the tremors, and the slow debilitation of walking and working leads far too many to assume it has mental effects. (Ask a blind person how tired they get of people talking slowly and too loudly to them!)
Recently, two movies won Academy Awards for best film and best foreign language film that affirm what some call the “right to die,” but many others would call the “right to assisted suicide.” One disability rights activist said the next morning after the Oscars: “Good thing there wasn’t an animated feature about putting us out of everyone else’s misery, or it would have been a clean sweep.”
I think the Pope would agree. He is aware and active and ready to serve, whether for a month or a year or possibly another decade. Whose misery is he needing to sooth: his own, or that of those who see a once vital man weighed down by illness and see possibilities for themselves they’d rather not confront?
May God bless John Paul for his faithful example before the world, and in another of the marvels of this modern age, if you’d like to say thank you this Lent, just drop “Il Papa” an e-mail through john_paul_II@vatican.va.
He can’t type anymore, but he can hear a “thank you” as well as any of us. Maybe even better.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. You can e-mail him at a less impressive address, disciple@voyager.net.
Notes From My Knapsack 03-06-05
By Jeff Gill
Give ‘Em The Works
So far this winter, the Little Guy and yours truly have made krispy squares, irish soda bread, fresh pasta, and some spectacular messes. Iron Chefs in training we ain’t, but we can demolish a Kitchen Stadium with the best of them.
Many more snow days and delays, and we’ll be making deoxyribonucleic paper chains, with an atcg cgat gatc hey ho!
As a stay-home dad, my Y chromosome seems to lack certain craft alleles, but moms who hold down the home fort daytimes tell me that this is not just a guy thing, after all. Too many days with the kids a) at home and b) not able to go outside can result in tensions, trauma, and too much snack-bribing (or is that a guy thing?).
Then we have Spring Break looming on the horizon. Some of you may be heading for Cabo San Lucas, but most of us are likely to be cruising around Cabo San Licking County for the week. What to do? Should we load up some neighbor kids in a fit of altruism and head for the screaming steelcage scrum called COSI and kill a day in Franklin County?
OK, I’m exaggerating (a bit), but while COSI costs about half a home equity loan (see first half of sentence) and leaves your ears ringing for the rest of the week (no exaggeration at all), what about “The Works”?
Y’know, “The Works: Ohio Center for History, Art & Technology” just south of Courthouse Square in Newark, at 55 S. First St. Haven’t been there yet? That’s true for far too many Licking County parents and kids. Think it’s expensive? Try $6 for adults, $4 for seniors (all you grandmas and grandpas watching kids the last week o’ March), and kids are $2.
“The Works” is a locally focused museum, but also a Smithsonian affiliate, which tells you something about the quality of what’s interpreted there about “History, Art & Technology.”
We went there for their free day on President’s Day Monday a few weeks ago. It was full of kids and families, but you could hear yourself think. There were lots of activities going on, but not of the “slap a few buttons and run to the next so-called exhibit” that so many sci/tech museums have. The glassblower was putting on a show that kept a certain six year old interested for a straight through twenty minutes (Aaron, would you come by our house and do that, just so my wife believes me?), but the glowing orange maw of the furnace helped, too.
I grew up on the famed Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and about the only thing I didn’t feel matched up at The Works is that they don’t have a captured German sub out back to tour (Howard, are you working on that one?), but they have a Print Shop, Wood Shop, and Art Studios that are all real working sites, not just displays.
Speaking of art, if you want to invest a few more dollars but get more time out of The Works experience for your elementary kids, they have some Spring Break “camps” coming up.
There’s a “Spring Break Art Camp”for students in grades 4-6 that runs from 9:30am-12:30pm, where you produce your own children’s picture book during a one-week camp.
From their web site www.attheworks.org: “Each day you will create a page for your book using a different illustration technique including drawing, watercolor, printmaking and collage. You will also tour The Works Print Shop, create your book cover and bind your book. By the end of the week, you will have a complete, handmade book that you can read to your little siblings or friends!”
Or there’s also a “Spring Break Museum Camp” for students grades 3-6 from 1:00pm-4:00pm.
They plan to help your child “learn about Bridges and Structures ... Discover the History of Flight and experiment with your own glider ... Work with wood to build your own birdhouse” and of course “much more.”
Both Spring Break Camps are held Monday, March 28 through Friday, April 1.
Cost for each camp is $85 per student.
For more information, call The Works at (740) 349-9277.
If you just want to pick your time and length of visit, they are open any week Tuesday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm; or on Saturday from 11 am to 4pm.
The admission is cheap at twice the price, and a family membership is just $50 for the year. Marcia Downs and the staff have put a great facility together for Licking County, so come see and spend some time there this Spring Break. You’ll see us there for sure.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply pastor around central Ohio; he and his wife have worked on designing a number of museums and exhibits, and they know good stuff when they see it! If you have news of another visitor experience in central Ohio you’d like to share, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Give ‘Em The Works
So far this winter, the Little Guy and yours truly have made krispy squares, irish soda bread, fresh pasta, and some spectacular messes. Iron Chefs in training we ain’t, but we can demolish a Kitchen Stadium with the best of them.
Many more snow days and delays, and we’ll be making deoxyribonucleic paper chains, with an atcg cgat gatc hey ho!
As a stay-home dad, my Y chromosome seems to lack certain craft alleles, but moms who hold down the home fort daytimes tell me that this is not just a guy thing, after all. Too many days with the kids a) at home and b) not able to go outside can result in tensions, trauma, and too much snack-bribing (or is that a guy thing?).
Then we have Spring Break looming on the horizon. Some of you may be heading for Cabo San Lucas, but most of us are likely to be cruising around Cabo San Licking County for the week. What to do? Should we load up some neighbor kids in a fit of altruism and head for the screaming steelcage scrum called COSI and kill a day in Franklin County?
OK, I’m exaggerating (a bit), but while COSI costs about half a home equity loan (see first half of sentence) and leaves your ears ringing for the rest of the week (no exaggeration at all), what about “The Works”?
Y’know, “The Works: Ohio Center for History, Art & Technology” just south of Courthouse Square in Newark, at 55 S. First St. Haven’t been there yet? That’s true for far too many Licking County parents and kids. Think it’s expensive? Try $6 for adults, $4 for seniors (all you grandmas and grandpas watching kids the last week o’ March), and kids are $2.
“The Works” is a locally focused museum, but also a Smithsonian affiliate, which tells you something about the quality of what’s interpreted there about “History, Art & Technology.”
We went there for their free day on President’s Day Monday a few weeks ago. It was full of kids and families, but you could hear yourself think. There were lots of activities going on, but not of the “slap a few buttons and run to the next so-called exhibit” that so many sci/tech museums have. The glassblower was putting on a show that kept a certain six year old interested for a straight through twenty minutes (Aaron, would you come by our house and do that, just so my wife believes me?), but the glowing orange maw of the furnace helped, too.
I grew up on the famed Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and about the only thing I didn’t feel matched up at The Works is that they don’t have a captured German sub out back to tour (Howard, are you working on that one?), but they have a Print Shop, Wood Shop, and Art Studios that are all real working sites, not just displays.
Speaking of art, if you want to invest a few more dollars but get more time out of The Works experience for your elementary kids, they have some Spring Break “camps” coming up.
There’s a “Spring Break Art Camp”for students in grades 4-6 that runs from 9:30am-12:30pm, where you produce your own children’s picture book during a one-week camp.
From their web site www.attheworks.org: “Each day you will create a page for your book using a different illustration technique including drawing, watercolor, printmaking and collage. You will also tour The Works Print Shop, create your book cover and bind your book. By the end of the week, you will have a complete, handmade book that you can read to your little siblings or friends!”
Or there’s also a “Spring Break Museum Camp” for students grades 3-6 from 1:00pm-4:00pm.
They plan to help your child “learn about Bridges and Structures ... Discover the History of Flight and experiment with your own glider ... Work with wood to build your own birdhouse” and of course “much more.”
Both Spring Break Camps are held Monday, March 28 through Friday, April 1.
Cost for each camp is $85 per student.
For more information, call The Works at (740) 349-9277.
If you just want to pick your time and length of visit, they are open any week Tuesday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm; or on Saturday from 11 am to 4pm.
The admission is cheap at twice the price, and a family membership is just $50 for the year. Marcia Downs and the staff have put a great facility together for Licking County, so come see and spend some time there this Spring Break. You’ll see us there for sure.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply pastor around central Ohio; he and his wife have worked on designing a number of museums and exhibits, and they know good stuff when they see it! If you have news of another visitor experience in central Ohio you’d like to share, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Faith Works 2-26-05
By Jeff Gill
If you look into the breaks left on so many trees from our year end ice storm, the exposed areas tell a variety of stories.
Quite a few show hidden flaws, patches of rot or wear invisible before the stress of added weight revealed the inner weakness. Lightning strikes, insect infestation, tree diseases were at work long before the freezing rain fell.
Some are just a split where the fault was just waiting to collapse. And there are a few that are just a mystery: why this branch broken, and not another more likely to splinter or crack?
Recent revelations of clergy sexual abuse, crossing a variety of denominational boundaries, shake out very like those tree branches. Occasionally, the story that finally comes out is still a mysterious one: why did this preacher or teacher "fall"? More often, the sadness of the tale is intensified by revelations that the cracks were visible long before from the right perspective, and those who could see what was going on turned a blind eye.
Many area churches are going to a "two deep" approach to ministries of all sorts, especially with youth; Scouting has used the idea of "no adult alone with a child out of eyeshot or hearing for any reason whatsoever," or "two deep leadership" since the early 1980’s, and this has reduced both incidents and claims of improper contact with children to almost none.
Background checks usually only reveal convictions, which are rare even against long-term predators, who often are passed from church to church, area to area, state to state, until they do something so heinous as to get all the way into the court system. By then, they may have a wide swath of damage already behind them, known to those immediately involved but nowhere official.
Does your church or religious organization have policies or procedures for contact and interaction with youth? By bringing up the subject, and suggesting a plan, you may be helping your youth leaders or clergy, who aren’t always sure what to say when folks resist taking steps. "Oh, preacher, we trust you!" Trust, where earned, is wonderful, but some kind of reference check, background check, or two-deep absolute standard for youth outings can protect leaders and the entire institution against both false claims, and the occasional invisibility of problems until they explode in your faith community’s midst.
And if you see a problem, don’t be afraid to speak up. Being a voice for the voiceless is at the heart of what most congregations are called to be, anyhow! Keeping silence is what most predators and problem adults count on to cover their tracks, and can be the moral equivalent of helping them commit their crimes.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and has directed youth camps for almost 25 years. If you have suspicions of child abuse, call 349-6333 or 6400; if you have news or stories for the upcoming Easter season, e-mail Jeff at disciple@voyager.net.
s
By Jeff Gill
If you look into the breaks left on so many trees from our year end ice storm, the exposed areas tell a variety of stories.
Quite a few show hidden flaws, patches of rot or wear invisible before the stress of added weight revealed the inner weakness. Lightning strikes, insect infestation, tree diseases were at work long before the freezing rain fell.
Some are just a split where the fault was just waiting to collapse. And there are a few that are just a mystery: why this branch broken, and not another more likely to splinter or crack?
Recent revelations of clergy sexual abuse, crossing a variety of denominational boundaries, shake out very like those tree branches. Occasionally, the story that finally comes out is still a mysterious one: why did this preacher or teacher "fall"? More often, the sadness of the tale is intensified by revelations that the cracks were visible long before from the right perspective, and those who could see what was going on turned a blind eye.
Many area churches are going to a "two deep" approach to ministries of all sorts, especially with youth; Scouting has used the idea of "no adult alone with a child out of eyeshot or hearing for any reason whatsoever," or "two deep leadership" since the early 1980’s, and this has reduced both incidents and claims of improper contact with children to almost none.
Background checks usually only reveal convictions, which are rare even against long-term predators, who often are passed from church to church, area to area, state to state, until they do something so heinous as to get all the way into the court system. By then, they may have a wide swath of damage already behind them, known to those immediately involved but nowhere official.
Does your church or religious organization have policies or procedures for contact and interaction with youth? By bringing up the subject, and suggesting a plan, you may be helping your youth leaders or clergy, who aren’t always sure what to say when folks resist taking steps. "Oh, preacher, we trust you!" Trust, where earned, is wonderful, but some kind of reference check, background check, or two-deep absolute standard for youth outings can protect leaders and the entire institution against both false claims, and the occasional invisibility of problems until they explode in your faith community’s midst.
And if you see a problem, don’t be afraid to speak up. Being a voice for the voiceless is at the heart of what most congregations are called to be, anyhow! Keeping silence is what most predators and problem adults count on to cover their tracks, and can be the moral equivalent of helping them commit their crimes.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and has directed youth camps for almost 25 years. If you have suspicions of child abuse, call 349-6333 or 6400; if you have news or stories for the upcoming Easter season, e-mail Jeff at disciple@voyager.net.
s
Monday, February 21, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 2-27-05by Jeff Gill
Hunter S. Thompson is not likely to be claimed as a journalistic inspiration by many columnists in weekly local broadsheets, and I'm not going to qualify as one so inspired myself.But I will always be glad I read his long article on "Hell's Angels" before encountering "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (hey, I was in high school in the 70's and worked in radio through the 70's and early 80's: of course I read it, I'm not recommending it...exactly).Thompson really did have a style all his own, and it wasn't the parody style of drug-addled incoherence with punctuation and periodic ALL CAPS that has now become the standard verbiage of weblog posting, a style which he sadly began to live down to and produce without any assistance from outside mockers.The creator of "gonzo journalism" was a skilled and proficient writer who, like a modern artist who has mastered drawing and perspective and color before going off on an abstract binge, knew exactly what he was doing even when he seemed most out of control.He got the story, and he told the tale, at least the early Thompson did. There is a touch of HST in any of us who are trying to use a personal voice while getting something newsworthy out in front of eyeballs (yours, dear reader!), even for those who'd never read him.With the passing of Warren Zevon and Hunter Thompson, a piece and a period of American pop cultural history is no longer open for revision or correction. Time will judge (and Zevon much less harshly than Mr. Gonzo), but Boomers aplenty will hold high their Bic, aloft and alight, in memory of both. May they rest in peace.Is that all? Well, I was going to write about Iron Chef America, but since the startling outcome of Battle Crab, I'm going to have to think about it a bit more. Or maybe Trish Mumme will be the challenger on an upcoming episode, and she can explain these things better than I. Tune in next week!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who enjoys making his own pasta...occasionally. If you have recipes, send them to Trish; if you have stories of culinary disasters, send them to disciple@voyager.net.
Hunter S. Thompson is not likely to be claimed as a journalistic inspiration by many columnists in weekly local broadsheets, and I'm not going to qualify as one so inspired myself.But I will always be glad I read his long article on "Hell's Angels" before encountering "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (hey, I was in high school in the 70's and worked in radio through the 70's and early 80's: of course I read it, I'm not recommending it...exactly).Thompson really did have a style all his own, and it wasn't the parody style of drug-addled incoherence with punctuation and periodic ALL CAPS that has now become the standard verbiage of weblog posting, a style which he sadly began to live down to and produce without any assistance from outside mockers.The creator of "gonzo journalism" was a skilled and proficient writer who, like a modern artist who has mastered drawing and perspective and color before going off on an abstract binge, knew exactly what he was doing even when he seemed most out of control.He got the story, and he told the tale, at least the early Thompson did. There is a touch of HST in any of us who are trying to use a personal voice while getting something newsworthy out in front of eyeballs (yours, dear reader!), even for those who'd never read him.With the passing of Warren Zevon and Hunter Thompson, a piece and a period of American pop cultural history is no longer open for revision or correction. Time will judge (and Zevon much less harshly than Mr. Gonzo), but Boomers aplenty will hold high their Bic, aloft and alight, in memory of both. May they rest in peace.Is that all? Well, I was going to write about Iron Chef America, but since the startling outcome of Battle Crab, I'm going to have to think about it a bit more. Or maybe Trish Mumme will be the challenger on an upcoming episode, and she can explain these things better than I. Tune in next week!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who enjoys making his own pasta...occasionally. If you have recipes, send them to Trish; if you have stories of culinary disasters, send them to disciple@voyager.net.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Faith Works 2-19-05
By Jeff Gill
"What Not To Wear"
So, you’ve been inspired by Lent or frightened by a falling tree limb from the ice storm, and you’ve decided to go to a place of worship this weekend.
What do you wear?
Not so long ago, this was a fairly simple issue. "Sunday go to meeting" clothes were what you called your good suit or nicest dress through much of American history, from New England Puritans in the 1600’s to Californian Catholics in 1960’s, and most groups large and small in between.
Then John Kennedy didn’t wear a hat to his inauguration, and with a whoosh, standards for special occasions swirled within society. Jimmy Carter wore a sweater for a presidential address, pants suits became the norm, not an exception, for women in many situations, and people on planes went from ties and pearls to tie-dye Pearl Jam t-shirts with sandals.
So what do you wear to church?
The standard answer for and from many has been "wear your best for God." Complicating that stock response is that what hangs in many closets as "the best" ain’t what it used to be (like my grammar), and what looks like grunge to one may be the best for another. You can have in one pew a sharp suit, polished shoes, and a tie seated next to a clean white t-shirt under a worn mud streaked denim jacket, and both are wearing their best.
Most complicated is the new vocabulary of workplace dress that makes "casual Friday" strike fear into the hearts of many. Is this too grubby? Do I look so formal people think I’m making a point? There are many points on a continuum that for many used to be a two or three point line: good clothes, work clothes, leisure clothes.
Now we have business casual, leisure formal ("no short shorts or collarless shirts, please"), and more categories each day as we have more clothes to categorize.
But what to wear to church?
The simple answer is: it depends. Many congregations in Licking County have contemporary and traditional services (now there’s a column!), which tends to tell you that ties and dresses are the norm at traditional, but are likely to stand out in the contemporary format. Many pastors at evangelical churches wear a kind of tieless look under a jacket that says "we’re not business stuffy, but we honor God," while a more liturgical church with robes and stoles and vestments tend to support a more formal look among the worshipers.
Ideally, any place of worship will accept a newcomer however they’re dressed, and most do. Some talk about "people looked at me funny," but that can be as much an internal unease as something really being communicated – after all, some folks just look that way all the time.
Places where a higher truth and deeper reality is affirmed should be able to look past the outer appearance, and building community can start with welcoming openly and honestly those who, well, choose to wear a dress to the contemporary service, as well as the sweat suit wearing person sitting next to them.
But every faith community has it’s own internal norm of dress, which may vary a little for those active in the service, but is fairly standard across the congregation.
Which is another reason why first time visitors tend to arrive late and leave early. They’re checking out what to wear if they want to come back.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. His tie rack gets less of a workout than it once did; if you have a story of "what not to wear" in worship, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
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By Jeff Gill
"What Not To Wear"
So, you’ve been inspired by Lent or frightened by a falling tree limb from the ice storm, and you’ve decided to go to a place of worship this weekend.
What do you wear?
Not so long ago, this was a fairly simple issue. "Sunday go to meeting" clothes were what you called your good suit or nicest dress through much of American history, from New England Puritans in the 1600’s to Californian Catholics in 1960’s, and most groups large and small in between.
Then John Kennedy didn’t wear a hat to his inauguration, and with a whoosh, standards for special occasions swirled within society. Jimmy Carter wore a sweater for a presidential address, pants suits became the norm, not an exception, for women in many situations, and people on planes went from ties and pearls to tie-dye Pearl Jam t-shirts with sandals.
So what do you wear to church?
The standard answer for and from many has been "wear your best for God." Complicating that stock response is that what hangs in many closets as "the best" ain’t what it used to be (like my grammar), and what looks like grunge to one may be the best for another. You can have in one pew a sharp suit, polished shoes, and a tie seated next to a clean white t-shirt under a worn mud streaked denim jacket, and both are wearing their best.
Most complicated is the new vocabulary of workplace dress that makes "casual Friday" strike fear into the hearts of many. Is this too grubby? Do I look so formal people think I’m making a point? There are many points on a continuum that for many used to be a two or three point line: good clothes, work clothes, leisure clothes.
Now we have business casual, leisure formal ("no short shorts or collarless shirts, please"), and more categories each day as we have more clothes to categorize.
But what to wear to church?
The simple answer is: it depends. Many congregations in Licking County have contemporary and traditional services (now there’s a column!), which tends to tell you that ties and dresses are the norm at traditional, but are likely to stand out in the contemporary format. Many pastors at evangelical churches wear a kind of tieless look under a jacket that says "we’re not business stuffy, but we honor God," while a more liturgical church with robes and stoles and vestments tend to support a more formal look among the worshipers.
Ideally, any place of worship will accept a newcomer however they’re dressed, and most do. Some talk about "people looked at me funny," but that can be as much an internal unease as something really being communicated – after all, some folks just look that way all the time.
Places where a higher truth and deeper reality is affirmed should be able to look past the outer appearance, and building community can start with welcoming openly and honestly those who, well, choose to wear a dress to the contemporary service, as well as the sweat suit wearing person sitting next to them.
But every faith community has it’s own internal norm of dress, which may vary a little for those active in the service, but is fairly standard across the congregation.
Which is another reason why first time visitors tend to arrive late and leave early. They’re checking out what to wear if they want to come back.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. His tie rack gets less of a workout than it once did; if you have a story of "what not to wear" in worship, e-mail disciple@voyager.net.
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Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 2-20-05
By Jeff Gill
"Conservation Hearts and Dollar George"
The Little Guy is a bit sad over the end of Valentine’s season; no promises of cherry pie for Washington’s Birthday can assuage his grief.
(Cranky columnist note: President’s Day implies that we are celebrating James Buchanan and Millard Fillmore, which I will not be on the morrow. I trust you solemnly honored Lincoln’s Birthday last weekend in the manner you find fit, but this one, Monday-ed holiday or Feb. 22, is about the Man, George Himself. End of small tantrum.)
The feast of Saint Valentinus was a real festival in the Little Guy’s life, as he enjoyed getting cards made for Mom, and carefully reading his heart-shaped hard candy from the New England Confectionary Company (you knew that was what NECCO stood for, right?).
It is probably a sign of the kind of conversation our first grader overhears around the house that they were, irreversibly, "Conservation Hearts." Even after he got the mistake, his evil genius then saw the pleasure of insisting on the new label.
Which got the Lovely Wife and me to thinking. What would "Conservation Hearts" say on them?
"Be Green."
"Turn Down the Heat."
"Light a Candle."
"Recycle Now."
"Shall We Hike?"
"Composting Is Fun."
Or, my energy-conscious favorite, "Let’s Shower Together."
NECCO, there’s a market here…
I can’t say that Presidents are far from the LG’s mind, since his presidential place mat has him as charmingly tedious about the names and numbers of our parade of POTUS’s as he was about state capitals when the dinner time mat was a map of the US.
An intriguing confusion came up when he saw a $20.
"That’s not James Garfield," stated the LG.
"No, that’s right," answered the LW, puzzled. Now, since Daddy has spoken of Garfield with approval before (only ordained minister to be president, Civil War vet, progressive Republican, died tragically), it wasn’t unheard of to hear about Garfield in the house, but why now?
Long quizzicality finally produced an answer. George Washington is on the One Dollar Bill, Lincoln a little further along, so the $20 should have POTUS #20, i.e. Garfield.
We thought this was clarified, but then he saw a $50 on the counter (no, this isn’t a common event here, as that’s more than my allowance, let alone LG’s).
He picked it up, looked at it, and laid it down dismissively.
"There haven’t even been 50 presidents."
Grant never did get any respect.
A quick closing note: tomorrow, Monday, Feb. 21, the Village of Hebron has a blood drive in the municipal complex from 1:00 to 6:00 pm. The American Red Cross in central Ohio, and just about everywhere else, really needs donors. If you think because you’ve been turned down twelve years ago you still can’t give, it might be worth stopping by and checking.
The restrictions based on where you’ve traveled, or surgery, or medications have all changed greatly in recent years. There still are some, but many have been eliminated due to improved testing technology.
So go open a vein! They have great cookies for after, too.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. If you have close encounters with presidential history or news to share, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
ñ
By Jeff Gill
"Conservation Hearts and Dollar George"
The Little Guy is a bit sad over the end of Valentine’s season; no promises of cherry pie for Washington’s Birthday can assuage his grief.
(Cranky columnist note: President’s Day implies that we are celebrating James Buchanan and Millard Fillmore, which I will not be on the morrow. I trust you solemnly honored Lincoln’s Birthday last weekend in the manner you find fit, but this one, Monday-ed holiday or Feb. 22, is about the Man, George Himself. End of small tantrum.)
The feast of Saint Valentinus was a real festival in the Little Guy’s life, as he enjoyed getting cards made for Mom, and carefully reading his heart-shaped hard candy from the New England Confectionary Company (you knew that was what NECCO stood for, right?).
It is probably a sign of the kind of conversation our first grader overhears around the house that they were, irreversibly, "Conservation Hearts." Even after he got the mistake, his evil genius then saw the pleasure of insisting on the new label.
Which got the Lovely Wife and me to thinking. What would "Conservation Hearts" say on them?
"Be Green."
"Turn Down the Heat."
"Light a Candle."
"Recycle Now."
"Shall We Hike?"
"Composting Is Fun."
Or, my energy-conscious favorite, "Let’s Shower Together."
NECCO, there’s a market here…
I can’t say that Presidents are far from the LG’s mind, since his presidential place mat has him as charmingly tedious about the names and numbers of our parade of POTUS’s as he was about state capitals when the dinner time mat was a map of the US.
An intriguing confusion came up when he saw a $20.
"That’s not James Garfield," stated the LG.
"No, that’s right," answered the LW, puzzled. Now, since Daddy has spoken of Garfield with approval before (only ordained minister to be president, Civil War vet, progressive Republican, died tragically), it wasn’t unheard of to hear about Garfield in the house, but why now?
Long quizzicality finally produced an answer. George Washington is on the One Dollar Bill, Lincoln a little further along, so the $20 should have POTUS #20, i.e. Garfield.
We thought this was clarified, but then he saw a $50 on the counter (no, this isn’t a common event here, as that’s more than my allowance, let alone LG’s).
He picked it up, looked at it, and laid it down dismissively.
"There haven’t even been 50 presidents."
Grant never did get any respect.
A quick closing note: tomorrow, Monday, Feb. 21, the Village of Hebron has a blood drive in the municipal complex from 1:00 to 6:00 pm. The American Red Cross in central Ohio, and just about everywhere else, really needs donors. If you think because you’ve been turned down twelve years ago you still can’t give, it might be worth stopping by and checking.
The restrictions based on where you’ve traveled, or surgery, or medications have all changed greatly in recent years. There still are some, but many have been eliminated due to improved testing technology.
So go open a vein! They have great cookies for after, too.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. If you have close encounters with presidential history or news to share, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
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Monday, February 07, 2005
Faith/Works 2-12-05
By Jeff Gill
Many of the events in the Christian calendar are “baptized” dates. While no one wonders whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was born, the exact date has never been known, since none of the Biblical accounts mention a day.
In the Roman empire, where Christianity spread first and fastest, a number of dates in the Roman calendar were “baptized,” converted from their cultic purposes along the Tiber to mark major points in the stories from the Gospels, such as late December’s Saturnalia turned into Christmas, or Spring rites of the Vestal Virgins into Lent. Many Celtic dates and names in western Europe were “baptized” the same way, such as Eostre, a Spring fertility rite, taken to mark the date finally agreed upon to mark the Resurrection at the Synod of Whitby.
While few Roman pagans have shown up on the public scene to reclaim holidays for Saturn, Juno, or Mercury, pop culture has done a strange reworking on the reworked festival that is Valentine’s Day.
Originally an ancient, mysterious cultic observance called “Lupercalia,” where the devotees of Bacchus, god of wine and drunken frenzy, would tear an animal apart with their bare hands and then crowd around to be whipped with bloody strips of hide, the early Roman Christians said, and I quote, “Whoa nelly!”
This “bacchanal” (there’s that Bacchus/Dionysus again) was oddly popular, largely because being left with a red mark from one of the flails was believed by women to promote fertility for wives who could not bear children, the summum bonum of ancient life.
So the church leaders did a very clever “baptism” of even the lurid Lupercalia in mid-February, and tied it to the commemoration of an early Christian martyr, who witnessed to the power of love between young believers held captive before their own deaths in the arena, and to God’s power shown through them all. You still had drama, tragedy, hope, and faith all twined together, but with the blood left as a symbolic indicator in emblems of red.
Less to clean up, too.
So for practical and faithful reasons, the feast of Saint Valentinus of Rome washed away the excesses of Lupercalia in love letters and symbols of the heart marking February 14, two weeks before year’s end. (Roman years began in March, but that’s another column.)
Today, St. Valentine is the one who’s co-opted: it’s Valentine’s Day, or V-Day, with even hearts and cupids steadily supplanted by lace, chocolate, and fertility rites of a sort that might be recognized by a Roman matron in training for a Lupercalia street festival.
Renewing that baptism of old, some churches are working to reclaim the day for Saint V and his affirmation of romantic love as a manifestation of divine love, holding special dinners for couples, holding marriage retreats or Marriage Enrichment programs around Feb. 14. Hebron Christian Church even combines a celebration of couples’ and families’ love for each other with their love for a camp program that has built strong relationships over many years, and make their Valentine’s dinner a fundraiser for Camp Christian.
It could be sharing how many years you’ve been married around a sanctuary on a Sunday morning this time of year, or sharing in small groups or in testimony time what has strengthened your marriage recently, but let’s not let Valentine’s Day go back to the wolves!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. Tell him your story of a loving faith community or renewed history at disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Many of the events in the Christian calendar are “baptized” dates. While no one wonders whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was born, the exact date has never been known, since none of the Biblical accounts mention a day.
In the Roman empire, where Christianity spread first and fastest, a number of dates in the Roman calendar were “baptized,” converted from their cultic purposes along the Tiber to mark major points in the stories from the Gospels, such as late December’s Saturnalia turned into Christmas, or Spring rites of the Vestal Virgins into Lent. Many Celtic dates and names in western Europe were “baptized” the same way, such as Eostre, a Spring fertility rite, taken to mark the date finally agreed upon to mark the Resurrection at the Synod of Whitby.
While few Roman pagans have shown up on the public scene to reclaim holidays for Saturn, Juno, or Mercury, pop culture has done a strange reworking on the reworked festival that is Valentine’s Day.
Originally an ancient, mysterious cultic observance called “Lupercalia,” where the devotees of Bacchus, god of wine and drunken frenzy, would tear an animal apart with their bare hands and then crowd around to be whipped with bloody strips of hide, the early Roman Christians said, and I quote, “Whoa nelly!”
This “bacchanal” (there’s that Bacchus/Dionysus again) was oddly popular, largely because being left with a red mark from one of the flails was believed by women to promote fertility for wives who could not bear children, the summum bonum of ancient life.
So the church leaders did a very clever “baptism” of even the lurid Lupercalia in mid-February, and tied it to the commemoration of an early Christian martyr, who witnessed to the power of love between young believers held captive before their own deaths in the arena, and to God’s power shown through them all. You still had drama, tragedy, hope, and faith all twined together, but with the blood left as a symbolic indicator in emblems of red.
Less to clean up, too.
So for practical and faithful reasons, the feast of Saint Valentinus of Rome washed away the excesses of Lupercalia in love letters and symbols of the heart marking February 14, two weeks before year’s end. (Roman years began in March, but that’s another column.)
Today, St. Valentine is the one who’s co-opted: it’s Valentine’s Day, or V-Day, with even hearts and cupids steadily supplanted by lace, chocolate, and fertility rites of a sort that might be recognized by a Roman matron in training for a Lupercalia street festival.
Renewing that baptism of old, some churches are working to reclaim the day for Saint V and his affirmation of romantic love as a manifestation of divine love, holding special dinners for couples, holding marriage retreats or Marriage Enrichment programs around Feb. 14. Hebron Christian Church even combines a celebration of couples’ and families’ love for each other with their love for a camp program that has built strong relationships over many years, and make their Valentine’s dinner a fundraiser for Camp Christian.
It could be sharing how many years you’ve been married around a sanctuary on a Sunday morning this time of year, or sharing in small groups or in testimony time what has strengthened your marriage recently, but let’s not let Valentine’s Day go back to the wolves!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. Tell him your story of a loving faith community or renewed history at disciple@voyager.net.
Notes From My Knapsack 2-13-05
By Jeff Gill
Tuesday, Feb. 15 is certainly just around the corner, but there’s an event and opportunity coming up just around that corner you should know about, but that I didn’t think I could promote loudly and widely until just now. But first…
If you are interested in the long (I mean looooong) human history of Licking County, going back to what appears to be the very first human occupants of this area 12,000 years ago and on down to the latecomers from Europe a mere 200 years back, then you should read the rest of this column.
If not, check back next week under this header. Bye!
OK, for those of you still with me, one more request before I get to the meaty details. Don’t turn the page just because I happen to use the words “Granville Bicentennial” in a sentence, because this is a program of interest to anyone who lives in and is intrigued by the Native American prehistory of central Ohio.
Tuesday at 7:30 pm is the next featured speaker in the Granville Bicentennial series, and I was reluctant to shout too much from the housetops because the venue was going to a relatively small room. But the huge turnout for the opening talk by Dale Knobel, Denison president and historian in his own right, led the wonderful management at the Granville Inn to offer their “Great Room” for the rest of the series, with seating enough for hundreds (as we had for Pres. Knobel).
Brad Lepper, curator of archaeology for the Ohio Historical Society, was one of the authors of the new Granville history volume(s), and is widely known as not only the leading expert on early residents in Licking County from after the glaciers to just before the settlers arrived, but also as a great public speaker. In the interests of full disclosure, Brad is a good and longstanding friend, but for many who have heard me rattle on interminably about the Newark Earthworks, the Burning Tree Mastodon, Alligator Mound, Flint Ridge, etc., may I note that all my A-list material has been swiped directly from Brad.
Dr. Lepper, in his professional persona, also has a book coming out this month titled “Ohio Archaeology” (go ahead, check Amazon.com for details; we’ll be here when you get back). His many publications, appearance with former National Park Service director Roger Kennedy on the Discovery Channel, and column in (ahem) another newspaper mean that many of you have read something or another by Brad, but if you’ve never heard him speak on Ohio’s First Residents, you should head for the Granville Inn this week and get a good seat before 7:30 pm.
I will personally offer a money back guarantee for your enjoyment of the evening’s program, which is free and open to the public.
You might also note that Dick Shiels, another author for the Granville history books and a presenter a few weeks on down the road, and Brad are working on co-ordinating a number of events next fall relating to the Octagon Moonrise, the “once in a generation” alignment of the largest assembly in the Newark Earthworks and a unique moonrise that won’t be seen again until 2024. Check out octagonmoonrise.org for the first stage of a website that will tell you more as the big date gets closer. Dick teaches at OSU-Newark, and between he and Brad Licking County has a remarkable wealth of teaching talent and public presentation skills to share our “land of legend” story with a national and global audience.
So come on into Granville Tuesday night, where the natives are friendly (just don’t speed, fer Pete’s sake), and hear a story where we all have a part in telling the growing tale of Licking County wonders.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and he’s been known to do an archaeology talk or two himself. If you have local stories of general interest, send ‘em to disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Tuesday, Feb. 15 is certainly just around the corner, but there’s an event and opportunity coming up just around that corner you should know about, but that I didn’t think I could promote loudly and widely until just now. But first…
If you are interested in the long (I mean looooong) human history of Licking County, going back to what appears to be the very first human occupants of this area 12,000 years ago and on down to the latecomers from Europe a mere 200 years back, then you should read the rest of this column.
If not, check back next week under this header. Bye!
OK, for those of you still with me, one more request before I get to the meaty details. Don’t turn the page just because I happen to use the words “Granville Bicentennial” in a sentence, because this is a program of interest to anyone who lives in and is intrigued by the Native American prehistory of central Ohio.
Tuesday at 7:30 pm is the next featured speaker in the Granville Bicentennial series, and I was reluctant to shout too much from the housetops because the venue was going to a relatively small room. But the huge turnout for the opening talk by Dale Knobel, Denison president and historian in his own right, led the wonderful management at the Granville Inn to offer their “Great Room” for the rest of the series, with seating enough for hundreds (as we had for Pres. Knobel).
Brad Lepper, curator of archaeology for the Ohio Historical Society, was one of the authors of the new Granville history volume(s), and is widely known as not only the leading expert on early residents in Licking County from after the glaciers to just before the settlers arrived, but also as a great public speaker. In the interests of full disclosure, Brad is a good and longstanding friend, but for many who have heard me rattle on interminably about the Newark Earthworks, the Burning Tree Mastodon, Alligator Mound, Flint Ridge, etc., may I note that all my A-list material has been swiped directly from Brad.
Dr. Lepper, in his professional persona, also has a book coming out this month titled “Ohio Archaeology” (go ahead, check Amazon.com for details; we’ll be here when you get back). His many publications, appearance with former National Park Service director Roger Kennedy on the Discovery Channel, and column in (ahem) another newspaper mean that many of you have read something or another by Brad, but if you’ve never heard him speak on Ohio’s First Residents, you should head for the Granville Inn this week and get a good seat before 7:30 pm.
I will personally offer a money back guarantee for your enjoyment of the evening’s program, which is free and open to the public.
You might also note that Dick Shiels, another author for the Granville history books and a presenter a few weeks on down the road, and Brad are working on co-ordinating a number of events next fall relating to the Octagon Moonrise, the “once in a generation” alignment of the largest assembly in the Newark Earthworks and a unique moonrise that won’t be seen again until 2024. Check out octagonmoonrise.org for the first stage of a website that will tell you more as the big date gets closer. Dick teaches at OSU-Newark, and between he and Brad Licking County has a remarkable wealth of teaching talent and public presentation skills to share our “land of legend” story with a national and global audience.
So come on into Granville Tuesday night, where the natives are friendly (just don’t speed, fer Pete’s sake), and hear a story where we all have a part in telling the growing tale of Licking County wonders.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and he’s been known to do an archaeology talk or two himself. If you have local stories of general interest, send ‘em to disciple@voyager.net.
The Scouter -- March 2005Simon Kenton Council BSA
Licking District Trailmarkers
23 counties across two states are in the Simon Kenton Council BSA, with 16 Silver Beavers awarded here this year.
Licking County is proud to claim Trevor Gamble as our honoree in 2005, but Licking District has to share him with Connecticut, his wife Carolyn and family, the US Navy, Denison University, and the United Way.
Amazingly enough, there’s Trig to go ‘round for all of those claims. Our district chairman was honored at the council court of honor along with a distinguished crew gathered from the Ohio River banks to Delaware’s northern edge. Among that throng, what stood out in the photo montage at the end of the evening were the pictures of our guy on his carrier-based aircraft with a bit more and darker hair, and then a shot with his missing twin brother, a more recent snap with two distinguished men of whom one looked very like John Glenn…or as we’d say in Licking District, John Glenn bears a striking resemblance to Trevor Gamble.
As you get this, our district should be about at mid-point of a flurry of “Blue & Gold” banquets for Cub Scout packs , celebrating the 75 year anniversary of this arm of the Scouting Movement. 1930 began a program which, with the expansion into Tiger Cubs almost 25 years ago (how the time flies!), is the Cub Scout program we know today. It isn’t too late to work on the Diamond Anniversary Award for Cubs, units, and leaders, with opportunities to celebrate the long history and accomplishments of Cub Scouting.
One interesting suggestion on the requirement sheets in the yellow and blue packets is for adults and youth to read Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book.” Those who only know the (very fine!) animated version done by the Disney folks may not catch the degree to which much of the Cubbing program is indebted to Kipling’s great children’s book: Akela, Baloo, bears and wolves and tigers, growing and mentoring, all are part and parcel of the book and the program.
In fact, this could lead you to a slightly more obscure work by Kipling, a kind of “Jungle Book” for older kids and a good read for the grown-ups: “Kim.” Kim is another orphaned young boy who is raised and mentored by an assortment of parental figures who give both his mental and physical development careful and loving attention, with special care to introducing him to the outdoors as a tool to inner growth.
Historians of Scouting have long acknowledged that “Kim” is one of the two fictional works that shaped Baden-Powell’s work on the original “Scouting for Boys,” the source of Scouting itself whose centennial is coming in another couple years. B-P quotes “Kim” frequently, and a number of the activities in the book are taken directly from Kipling’s tale. Thanks to Amazon, you can run down a copy in a heartbeat…but if anyone in the Scout Shop is reading this, “Kim” and “The Jungle Book” would make a bunch of sense to stock!
One of two, you say? What’s the other, you ask? I’m glad you asked that…
“Finding Neverland” is a recent movie many of you may have seen without thinking too much about a Scouting connection. One more in what seems like an annual stream of “Peter Pan” movies, remakes, different takes, and background shadings about Sir James Barrie, a very popular author and playwright of the late 1800’s. The book and play “Peter Pan” were greatly beloved by Baden-Powell, and he and Barrie became good friends. The original Scout handbook, “Scouting for Boys,” contains many quotes and references to “Peter Pan,” as does the first “Scoutmaster’s Manual.”
And in “The Chief Scout’s Last Letter,” the note Baden-Powell wrote before his death to World Scouting and to all Scouts who would come after, he quotes from “Peter Pan” not once, but twice.
So there’s some late winter reading for you all as we prepare for Spring Camporees, Cub Day Camp, and summer camp at Falling Rock. You might even want to carry your copy with you to read by the campfire. They’re great for boys and for the men who never stopped being boys in the best way, just like Trig Gamble!
Yours in Scouting,Jeff Gilldisciple@voyager.net(Please send info for April or May to this e-mail,and we'll print it right here)
Licking District Trailmarkers
23 counties across two states are in the Simon Kenton Council BSA, with 16 Silver Beavers awarded here this year.
Licking County is proud to claim Trevor Gamble as our honoree in 2005, but Licking District has to share him with Connecticut, his wife Carolyn and family, the US Navy, Denison University, and the United Way.
Amazingly enough, there’s Trig to go ‘round for all of those claims. Our district chairman was honored at the council court of honor along with a distinguished crew gathered from the Ohio River banks to Delaware’s northern edge. Among that throng, what stood out in the photo montage at the end of the evening were the pictures of our guy on his carrier-based aircraft with a bit more and darker hair, and then a shot with his missing twin brother, a more recent snap with two distinguished men of whom one looked very like John Glenn…or as we’d say in Licking District, John Glenn bears a striking resemblance to Trevor Gamble.
As you get this, our district should be about at mid-point of a flurry of “Blue & Gold” banquets for Cub Scout packs , celebrating the 75 year anniversary of this arm of the Scouting Movement. 1930 began a program which, with the expansion into Tiger Cubs almost 25 years ago (how the time flies!), is the Cub Scout program we know today. It isn’t too late to work on the Diamond Anniversary Award for Cubs, units, and leaders, with opportunities to celebrate the long history and accomplishments of Cub Scouting.
One interesting suggestion on the requirement sheets in the yellow and blue packets is for adults and youth to read Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book.” Those who only know the (very fine!) animated version done by the Disney folks may not catch the degree to which much of the Cubbing program is indebted to Kipling’s great children’s book: Akela, Baloo, bears and wolves and tigers, growing and mentoring, all are part and parcel of the book and the program.
In fact, this could lead you to a slightly more obscure work by Kipling, a kind of “Jungle Book” for older kids and a good read for the grown-ups: “Kim.” Kim is another orphaned young boy who is raised and mentored by an assortment of parental figures who give both his mental and physical development careful and loving attention, with special care to introducing him to the outdoors as a tool to inner growth.
Historians of Scouting have long acknowledged that “Kim” is one of the two fictional works that shaped Baden-Powell’s work on the original “Scouting for Boys,” the source of Scouting itself whose centennial is coming in another couple years. B-P quotes “Kim” frequently, and a number of the activities in the book are taken directly from Kipling’s tale. Thanks to Amazon, you can run down a copy in a heartbeat…but if anyone in the Scout Shop is reading this, “Kim” and “The Jungle Book” would make a bunch of sense to stock!
One of two, you say? What’s the other, you ask? I’m glad you asked that…
“Finding Neverland” is a recent movie many of you may have seen without thinking too much about a Scouting connection. One more in what seems like an annual stream of “Peter Pan” movies, remakes, different takes, and background shadings about Sir James Barrie, a very popular author and playwright of the late 1800’s. The book and play “Peter Pan” were greatly beloved by Baden-Powell, and he and Barrie became good friends. The original Scout handbook, “Scouting for Boys,” contains many quotes and references to “Peter Pan,” as does the first “Scoutmaster’s Manual.”
And in “The Chief Scout’s Last Letter,” the note Baden-Powell wrote before his death to World Scouting and to all Scouts who would come after, he quotes from “Peter Pan” not once, but twice.
So there’s some late winter reading for you all as we prepare for Spring Camporees, Cub Day Camp, and summer camp at Falling Rock. You might even want to carry your copy with you to read by the campfire. They’re great for boys and for the men who never stopped being boys in the best way, just like Trig Gamble!
Yours in Scouting,Jeff Gilldisciple@voyager.net(Please send info for April or May to this e-mail,and we'll print it right here)
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 2-06-05
By Jeff Gill
Avalon.
The name has such a ring to it: “Avalon.”
A place of wonder and mystery, Avalon appears in Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur,” the story of Britain’s mythic early king, his court at Camelot and his final battle with Mordred. Wounded, King Arthur is borne off by three queens to the Blessed Isle, with a Vale of Apples, Avalon, where he might heal from his injuries and weariness.
The word “Avalon” has looked over West Main Street in Newark for a century and a quarter or so, just across from the new library. An apartment block with bay windows and balconies, turrets and peaks, the mystique has in recent years been more one of the Castle Perilous, with decay exhaling from broken windows and cracked slate askew marking the roofline.
But no more! Healed from its grievous wounds, returning like the once and future king himself, the Avalon Apartments have returned to health and beauty, looking proudly back across to the shining windows of the library that reflect back a reborn building.
And what Merlin accomplished this wizardry? No less than the workaday magic of Licking County LEADS, our local community action agency headed by Ken Kempton. With yeoman (or yeowoman) efforts from Charlene Wray who now works elsewhere, and many, many other local partners, Ken proudly shared the restored and renewed building with the community last week.
Shirley Colley from Buckeye Lake was among the visitors delighting in the new apartments, reserved for older Licking Countians below certain income guidelines. She recalled visiting her aunt and uncle in brighter days, when the Avalon was an address claimed with pride, and marveled at the views, so different and still the same, out what would have been their windows.
For everyone involved, from public officials to architects to builders . . . but most especially, to the staff at LEADS, thank you for bringing Avalon back to our community as a place for secure rest and a base for new adventures. There’s more than a bit of romance in the idea of a reborn building, and with a name like Avalon, the mist clears and the magic is seen clearly by the bright light of day.
What blessed isles of refuge could yet be restored? Let’s support our public officials and organizations like LEADS and the Licking County Coalition for Housing as they work to preserve our built heritage for a very human but still magical present.
Jeff Gill is an Arthurian troubadour and occasional scribbler who can be reached, when not attending building dedications, at disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Avalon.
The name has such a ring to it: “Avalon.”
A place of wonder and mystery, Avalon appears in Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur,” the story of Britain’s mythic early king, his court at Camelot and his final battle with Mordred. Wounded, King Arthur is borne off by three queens to the Blessed Isle, with a Vale of Apples, Avalon, where he might heal from his injuries and weariness.
The word “Avalon” has looked over West Main Street in Newark for a century and a quarter or so, just across from the new library. An apartment block with bay windows and balconies, turrets and peaks, the mystique has in recent years been more one of the Castle Perilous, with decay exhaling from broken windows and cracked slate askew marking the roofline.
But no more! Healed from its grievous wounds, returning like the once and future king himself, the Avalon Apartments have returned to health and beauty, looking proudly back across to the shining windows of the library that reflect back a reborn building.
And what Merlin accomplished this wizardry? No less than the workaday magic of Licking County LEADS, our local community action agency headed by Ken Kempton. With yeoman (or yeowoman) efforts from Charlene Wray who now works elsewhere, and many, many other local partners, Ken proudly shared the restored and renewed building with the community last week.
Shirley Colley from Buckeye Lake was among the visitors delighting in the new apartments, reserved for older Licking Countians below certain income guidelines. She recalled visiting her aunt and uncle in brighter days, when the Avalon was an address claimed with pride, and marveled at the views, so different and still the same, out what would have been their windows.
For everyone involved, from public officials to architects to builders . . . but most especially, to the staff at LEADS, thank you for bringing Avalon back to our community as a place for secure rest and a base for new adventures. There’s more than a bit of romance in the idea of a reborn building, and with a name like Avalon, the mist clears and the magic is seen clearly by the bright light of day.
What blessed isles of refuge could yet be restored? Let’s support our public officials and organizations like LEADS and the Licking County Coalition for Housing as they work to preserve our built heritage for a very human but still magical present.
Jeff Gill is an Arthurian troubadour and occasional scribbler who can be reached, when not attending building dedications, at disciple@voyager.net.
Faith Works 2-05-05
By Jeff Gill
Father Tom Shonebarger, pastor some years back at Blessed Sacrament in Newark, had an observation about the beginning of Lent that has stuck with me. (Yes, Lent starts this week!)
Father Tom suggested that “we should contemplate our mortality” as a spiritual discipline. Contemplate our mortality as finite beings, as human persons who will have a date on the other end of a “dash,” and meditate on the fact that the world will continue to rotate and vegetate and motivate even after we’ve, well, died.
Right: as a Catholic priest (now serving over in Columbus at St. Timothy’s), Tom affirms the Christian teaching of resurrection. But his point was that we shouldn’t skip right ahead to heaven and eternity, but let the solid grounding of our limitations enter into our hopes and dreams. Many of you will hear versions of this further on in Lent, when clergy of many denominations try to get us to not skip from peak to peak in Holy Week, neglecting Maundy Thursday and Good Friday to jump straight from Palm Sunday to Easter.
A different take on “contemplating our mortality” is making a splash on television right now, a show called “Medium.” An hour long drama based on a woman who claims to see and talk to the dead, helping to solve crimes (of course), has been one of NBC’s biggest new hits.
Meanwhile, Sylvia Browne is a regular on Larry King’s CNN show chatting with the dearly departed, with shows featuring James VanPraagh and John Edwards (no, not the coiffed lawyer who ran for something lately) racking up decent cable ratings while asking “do you know someone who has passed with a ‘T’ in their name? They’re behind you now.”
And this very newspaper runs ads from local psychic counselors who claim much the same skill, and are making enough of a living to indicate that there’s a market for mediums in this large county. In fact, just off the Sweet Corn Festival grounds in Millersport is Summerland Beach Road, almost all that’s left of a century-ago camp for Spiritualists who had organized an church around services where you talked to those who had passed over to the “Summerland.” Members of this church can be found dotted around central Ohio.
For many believers, this subject is a tricky one. Most Christians would strongly affirm “life after death,” while being, shall we say, “agnostic” about communications with the saints in heaven. Some point to Deuteronomic passages and call it wrong if not evil, while others can rightly note that Saul consulted the medium at Endor in I Samuel 28 to speak to Samuel’s shade…note how that all turned out, though.
Best known is the encounter known as the “Transfiguration,” where Peter sees Moses and Elijah standing conversing with Jesus. No one other than Jesus heard what the departed had to say, however, and putting ourselves in Jesus’ place is dicey for this kind of situation.
I’m quite certain that there are people who are sincerely convinced that loved ones have returned to communicate something important to them, most often in dreams. These encounters can be very significant for both the resolution of grief and and the solution of personal problems of the living, and I take them very seriously when talking to a person about them.But do people really hear from the dead? I can’t rule it out, scripturally or personally. They are, perhaps, moments when we are indirectly, gingerly acknowledging that endings and resolution are matters rarely far from our minds, consciously or not.With Father Tom, i'd have to agree that "contemplating our mortality" is harder to do than envisioning eternity, but might just be a good way to bring both mind and heart into alignment.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. You can reach him (while alive!) at disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
Father Tom Shonebarger, pastor some years back at Blessed Sacrament in Newark, had an observation about the beginning of Lent that has stuck with me. (Yes, Lent starts this week!)
Father Tom suggested that “we should contemplate our mortality” as a spiritual discipline. Contemplate our mortality as finite beings, as human persons who will have a date on the other end of a “dash,” and meditate on the fact that the world will continue to rotate and vegetate and motivate even after we’ve, well, died.
Right: as a Catholic priest (now serving over in Columbus at St. Timothy’s), Tom affirms the Christian teaching of resurrection. But his point was that we shouldn’t skip right ahead to heaven and eternity, but let the solid grounding of our limitations enter into our hopes and dreams. Many of you will hear versions of this further on in Lent, when clergy of many denominations try to get us to not skip from peak to peak in Holy Week, neglecting Maundy Thursday and Good Friday to jump straight from Palm Sunday to Easter.
A different take on “contemplating our mortality” is making a splash on television right now, a show called “Medium.” An hour long drama based on a woman who claims to see and talk to the dead, helping to solve crimes (of course), has been one of NBC’s biggest new hits.
Meanwhile, Sylvia Browne is a regular on Larry King’s CNN show chatting with the dearly departed, with shows featuring James VanPraagh and John Edwards (no, not the coiffed lawyer who ran for something lately) racking up decent cable ratings while asking “do you know someone who has passed with a ‘T’ in their name? They’re behind you now.”
And this very newspaper runs ads from local psychic counselors who claim much the same skill, and are making enough of a living to indicate that there’s a market for mediums in this large county. In fact, just off the Sweet Corn Festival grounds in Millersport is Summerland Beach Road, almost all that’s left of a century-ago camp for Spiritualists who had organized an church around services where you talked to those who had passed over to the “Summerland.” Members of this church can be found dotted around central Ohio.
For many believers, this subject is a tricky one. Most Christians would strongly affirm “life after death,” while being, shall we say, “agnostic” about communications with the saints in heaven. Some point to Deuteronomic passages and call it wrong if not evil, while others can rightly note that Saul consulted the medium at Endor in I Samuel 28 to speak to Samuel’s shade…note how that all turned out, though.
Best known is the encounter known as the “Transfiguration,” where Peter sees Moses and Elijah standing conversing with Jesus. No one other than Jesus heard what the departed had to say, however, and putting ourselves in Jesus’ place is dicey for this kind of situation.
I’m quite certain that there are people who are sincerely convinced that loved ones have returned to communicate something important to them, most often in dreams. These encounters can be very significant for both the resolution of grief and and the solution of personal problems of the living, and I take them very seriously when talking to a person about them.But do people really hear from the dead? I can’t rule it out, scripturally or personally. They are, perhaps, moments when we are indirectly, gingerly acknowledging that endings and resolution are matters rarely far from our minds, consciously or not.With Father Tom, i'd have to agree that "contemplating our mortality" is harder to do than envisioning eternity, but might just be a good way to bring both mind and heart into alignment.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio. You can reach him (while alive!) at disciple@voyager.net.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Faith/Works 1-22-05
By Jeff Gill
Inauguration. You don’t see this word every day, and even in national political affairs you only see it every four years or so.
We know inauguration as the event surrounding the swearing in of officials, when the oath of office is administered by a judge or comparable public official.
Inaugural events are a good example of what Robert Bellah famously called "civil religion," that complex of symbols, acts, and rituals that take public life and give the community a wider sense of meaning through otherwise commonplace events.
Under the law (as not a few Democrats have pointed out), President Bush could re-take the oath of office in, well, the Oval Office, with Laura holding the family Bible, Chief Justice Rehnquist (pray for him, by the way, as the thyroid cancer progresses) showing up after lunch, and business proceeding on, with a champagne toast out since the President doesn’t drink, anyhow.
But the decision is made to keep the pomp and circumstance, the hailing of the chief by the Marine Band, a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue and grand balls in the evening all across the district. We need these events for the common good, argue administration officials, and they shape our identity.
Without agreeing to the former, I can see the point of the latter. Did you know, for instance, that the very term "inauguration" comes from the rituals of ancient Rome around the beginning of any endeavor? "Augurs" are literally "intestines" in Latin (auger, spiral, twisting innards . . . how’s your breakfast, anyhow?), and the priests would ceremonially slaughter an animal the morning of a public event and read the markings on the entrails to see whether things "augured well" for the day, using ancient guides from the earlier Etruscans.
I’ve not heard of entrail reading on Jan. 20 before the noon swearing-in, but they are roasting a few sides of beef in Washington, so the opportunity exists, I guess. Yet we read much into these kind of superstitious signs. Think of all the sayings around a rainy wedding day, or Groundhog Day coming up shortly.
We look to public ceremony as a sign and indicator showing us how confident and eager our public officials are about the task they begin with their inauguration, and we all know that words alone can twist faster than a pigeon’s . . . well, you know what I mean. Rather than go just with what they say, we read into the music they choose (Fleetwood Mac for Clinton, Lee Greenwood for Bush) and the clothes they wear (Clinton’s sunglasses, Bush’s cowboy boots) to tell us what the future holds.
Licking County on New Year’s Eve didn’t kill any animals, but we did have a ceremony, with black robed solemn judges, the glory that is the West Courtroom in our courthouse, and family gathered near for an oath and the ritual act of . . .picture taking. With both parties present and common purpose affirmed in word and deed, it augured well for the democracy that is our community. That is civil religion at its best.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. Contact him at disciple@voyager.net.
Faith/Works 1-29-05
By Jeff Gill
In sermons and prayers and messages and reflections, worship leaders in many places wrestled with the question of theodicy these last few weeks. But they probably didn’t call it that.
Theodicy is not a word in general use. In fact, my version of word processing keeps angrily underlining "theodicy" in red, telling me that not only does the program not have it in the dictionary, but I haven’t used it enough myself to have put it in through spell checking. (There, now I have. . .)
Theodicy is the category of theology that deals with what’s also known as "the problem of evil." How can a God who is loving and also powerful allow evil to happen? How does one "justify God," which is the literal meaning of the term, just as "theo-logos" is "words about God," or God-talk as one of my seminary professors put it.
The narrow and sharp angle of theology that is theology was honed to a razor’s edge with the Tsunami Event on last Dec. 26. So many innocent lives lost, so much unjustifiable tragedy. How does a believer in a God who cares and has power beyond our own human limits explain this? Or, what’s your "theodicy"?
There are, even within the Christian community, a number of ways to approach the problem. The only one all religious thinkers agree about is the "ignore it" approach. They agree that won’t do.
So some say God has chosen to be limited, the "Camelot" option. God could intervene, as Arthur could to save Gwen, but does not because the entire structure of law and justice would be threatened if he did. The big picture approach, much as we hear at the close of the Biblical book of Job: "where were you when I created the heavens and the earth?"
A very small, but vocal number argue that the reason God would permit such an event is sin: that of those who died. They might allow that children were innocent, but caught up in the sin of those around them. Before you write that off as the ravings of an angry few, note that the growth of Islam in, believe it or not, Sumatra (where the tsunami hit hardest) stems from such preaching that followed the eruption of Krakatoa and massive loss of life in the 19th century.
Much more common is answering this problem by pointing to sin as a general, cosmic problem. Sin is seen as having broken and fractured the world, and it is God’s grace that is about the work of healing that breach, which will not be completed until the end of time.
Theodicy may be a modern problem, at least in one sense. The term was coined by a German philosopher, Leibnitz, in 1710. In Bible times, people asked about whether God is kind and caring or stern and judging, or if a particular god is only interested in what happens between these two rivers and not on the other side, as opposed to the universality of one God in monotheism.
Modernism introduces the question: Is there a God? Theodicy is different entirely when one option is . . . this existent evil demonstrates that there isn’t.
How does your faith community justify "the ways of God to humankind"? How do you do theodicy?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. Write him at disciple@voyager.net
c
By Jeff Gill
Inauguration. You don’t see this word every day, and even in national political affairs you only see it every four years or so.
We know inauguration as the event surrounding the swearing in of officials, when the oath of office is administered by a judge or comparable public official.
Inaugural events are a good example of what Robert Bellah famously called "civil religion," that complex of symbols, acts, and rituals that take public life and give the community a wider sense of meaning through otherwise commonplace events.
Under the law (as not a few Democrats have pointed out), President Bush could re-take the oath of office in, well, the Oval Office, with Laura holding the family Bible, Chief Justice Rehnquist (pray for him, by the way, as the thyroid cancer progresses) showing up after lunch, and business proceeding on, with a champagne toast out since the President doesn’t drink, anyhow.
But the decision is made to keep the pomp and circumstance, the hailing of the chief by the Marine Band, a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue and grand balls in the evening all across the district. We need these events for the common good, argue administration officials, and they shape our identity.
Without agreeing to the former, I can see the point of the latter. Did you know, for instance, that the very term "inauguration" comes from the rituals of ancient Rome around the beginning of any endeavor? "Augurs" are literally "intestines" in Latin (auger, spiral, twisting innards . . . how’s your breakfast, anyhow?), and the priests would ceremonially slaughter an animal the morning of a public event and read the markings on the entrails to see whether things "augured well" for the day, using ancient guides from the earlier Etruscans.
I’ve not heard of entrail reading on Jan. 20 before the noon swearing-in, but they are roasting a few sides of beef in Washington, so the opportunity exists, I guess. Yet we read much into these kind of superstitious signs. Think of all the sayings around a rainy wedding day, or Groundhog Day coming up shortly.
We look to public ceremony as a sign and indicator showing us how confident and eager our public officials are about the task they begin with their inauguration, and we all know that words alone can twist faster than a pigeon’s . . . well, you know what I mean. Rather than go just with what they say, we read into the music they choose (Fleetwood Mac for Clinton, Lee Greenwood for Bush) and the clothes they wear (Clinton’s sunglasses, Bush’s cowboy boots) to tell us what the future holds.
Licking County on New Year’s Eve didn’t kill any animals, but we did have a ceremony, with black robed solemn judges, the glory that is the West Courtroom in our courthouse, and family gathered near for an oath and the ritual act of . . .picture taking. With both parties present and common purpose affirmed in word and deed, it augured well for the democracy that is our community. That is civil religion at its best.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. Contact him at disciple@voyager.net.
Faith/Works 1-29-05
By Jeff Gill
In sermons and prayers and messages and reflections, worship leaders in many places wrestled with the question of theodicy these last few weeks. But they probably didn’t call it that.
Theodicy is not a word in general use. In fact, my version of word processing keeps angrily underlining "theodicy" in red, telling me that not only does the program not have it in the dictionary, but I haven’t used it enough myself to have put it in through spell checking. (There, now I have. . .)
Theodicy is the category of theology that deals with what’s also known as "the problem of evil." How can a God who is loving and also powerful allow evil to happen? How does one "justify God," which is the literal meaning of the term, just as "theo-logos" is "words about God," or God-talk as one of my seminary professors put it.
The narrow and sharp angle of theology that is theology was honed to a razor’s edge with the Tsunami Event on last Dec. 26. So many innocent lives lost, so much unjustifiable tragedy. How does a believer in a God who cares and has power beyond our own human limits explain this? Or, what’s your "theodicy"?
There are, even within the Christian community, a number of ways to approach the problem. The only one all religious thinkers agree about is the "ignore it" approach. They agree that won’t do.
So some say God has chosen to be limited, the "Camelot" option. God could intervene, as Arthur could to save Gwen, but does not because the entire structure of law and justice would be threatened if he did. The big picture approach, much as we hear at the close of the Biblical book of Job: "where were you when I created the heavens and the earth?"
A very small, but vocal number argue that the reason God would permit such an event is sin: that of those who died. They might allow that children were innocent, but caught up in the sin of those around them. Before you write that off as the ravings of an angry few, note that the growth of Islam in, believe it or not, Sumatra (where the tsunami hit hardest) stems from such preaching that followed the eruption of Krakatoa and massive loss of life in the 19th century.
Much more common is answering this problem by pointing to sin as a general, cosmic problem. Sin is seen as having broken and fractured the world, and it is God’s grace that is about the work of healing that breach, which will not be completed until the end of time.
Theodicy may be a modern problem, at least in one sense. The term was coined by a German philosopher, Leibnitz, in 1710. In Bible times, people asked about whether God is kind and caring or stern and judging, or if a particular god is only interested in what happens between these two rivers and not on the other side, as opposed to the universality of one God in monotheism.
Modernism introduces the question: Is there a God? Theodicy is different entirely when one option is . . . this existent evil demonstrates that there isn’t.
How does your faith community justify "the ways of God to humankind"? How do you do theodicy?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. Write him at disciple@voyager.net
c
Notes From My Knapsack 1-23-05
By Jeff Gill
You Are In Training
Pretty much all of us have been in a training program of one sort or another. Workplace, volunteer, skill development, school all offer training to help us master a new technology or way of doing things.
We are all just about done with a training program that we have all been in without quite noticing it. Modern society is completing the process (will there be a certificate mailed to us at the end?) and we’ll go on using our newfound skills for the rest of our lives, I suspect.
You and I are becoming well-trained voice-mail menu operators. We’re getting good at this, aren’t we? Somewhere over the last five years, the idea of a human voice being the first, rather than the last step of a contact process with a business or institution started phasing out. Fewer and fewer places, even fairly small operations, have a "receptionist-operator" on the phone.
And now we expect to be greeted by "welcome to our voice mail network; some menu options have changed, so please listen for the option which most closely meets your needs."
Personally, I can’t be trained enough to ever like "your call is very important to us, so please stay on the line for the next available operator." What industrial psychologist did the study that told everyone who designs these things that we want to hear automated affirmation? And when the robovoice says "your call is extremely important to us," I can’t help but think, "No. If it really was extremely important, you’d sit by the phone, eyes locked to the handset, waiting for it to ring, or buzz, or chirp, or whatever. But extremely important ain’t Ms. Autophone, dude."
But there is a logic which has started to convince me about these menus. Many concerns or questions can be answered "automatically" with a touch-tone menu. Most of us have some kind of internet access, where we could be routed to get a better answer than a minimum wage part-timer would give us, no matter how politely, so thanks for the hints to go to the internet while I’m waiting on hold. And the amount of mindless work that can be punched in before I talk to a live person has got to be a savings for both me and the company in time and money.
So I’m getting myself trained, like all the rest of you. I’m getting better at navigating without hesitation or aggravation through the "press 2 for a billing question, press 3 for service options, and to register a complaint, hang up and shout at the phone."
A few tips from those of us a little further along in the training program: when you absolutely, positively, have to talk to a people-person, press 0. You may get another menu: press 0 again. Press it once or twice more, if you like (really, some places make it 4 tries at 0 to get an operator, in the theory that you’ll get frustrated enough between 2 and 3 tries to either stick with the menu or hang up), but that’s how every commercially available voice mail system routes callers to the elusive "live operator."
If any professionals with these systems are still reading, a last note. Aside from my own frustrations when holding a pencil, three forms with long numbers on them that all look alike, and a daily planner on my lap, I think of elderly relatives and friends when a system gives you about four-and-a-half seconds before either chiding you or routing your call into an unwanted queue. Guys, some of us out here in consumer land who understand you gotta have these systems and want to work with y’all: we can’t all see great, we’re a bit overwhelmed by life or events, we have shaky hands or uncertain reflexes. Can you put a "go slower" button in the menu as an option, before Aunt Tilly completely gives up on the modern world? Thanks.
And yes, I have moved recently. How did you know?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; if you have adventures in voice mail to share, write (don’t call!) disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
You Are In Training
Pretty much all of us have been in a training program of one sort or another. Workplace, volunteer, skill development, school all offer training to help us master a new technology or way of doing things.
We are all just about done with a training program that we have all been in without quite noticing it. Modern society is completing the process (will there be a certificate mailed to us at the end?) and we’ll go on using our newfound skills for the rest of our lives, I suspect.
You and I are becoming well-trained voice-mail menu operators. We’re getting good at this, aren’t we? Somewhere over the last five years, the idea of a human voice being the first, rather than the last step of a contact process with a business or institution started phasing out. Fewer and fewer places, even fairly small operations, have a "receptionist-operator" on the phone.
And now we expect to be greeted by "welcome to our voice mail network; some menu options have changed, so please listen for the option which most closely meets your needs."
Personally, I can’t be trained enough to ever like "your call is very important to us, so please stay on the line for the next available operator." What industrial psychologist did the study that told everyone who designs these things that we want to hear automated affirmation? And when the robovoice says "your call is extremely important to us," I can’t help but think, "No. If it really was extremely important, you’d sit by the phone, eyes locked to the handset, waiting for it to ring, or buzz, or chirp, or whatever. But extremely important ain’t Ms. Autophone, dude."
But there is a logic which has started to convince me about these menus. Many concerns or questions can be answered "automatically" with a touch-tone menu. Most of us have some kind of internet access, where we could be routed to get a better answer than a minimum wage part-timer would give us, no matter how politely, so thanks for the hints to go to the internet while I’m waiting on hold. And the amount of mindless work that can be punched in before I talk to a live person has got to be a savings for both me and the company in time and money.
So I’m getting myself trained, like all the rest of you. I’m getting better at navigating without hesitation or aggravation through the "press 2 for a billing question, press 3 for service options, and to register a complaint, hang up and shout at the phone."
A few tips from those of us a little further along in the training program: when you absolutely, positively, have to talk to a people-person, press 0. You may get another menu: press 0 again. Press it once or twice more, if you like (really, some places make it 4 tries at 0 to get an operator, in the theory that you’ll get frustrated enough between 2 and 3 tries to either stick with the menu or hang up), but that’s how every commercially available voice mail system routes callers to the elusive "live operator."
If any professionals with these systems are still reading, a last note. Aside from my own frustrations when holding a pencil, three forms with long numbers on them that all look alike, and a daily planner on my lap, I think of elderly relatives and friends when a system gives you about four-and-a-half seconds before either chiding you or routing your call into an unwanted queue. Guys, some of us out here in consumer land who understand you gotta have these systems and want to work with y’all: we can’t all see great, we’re a bit overwhelmed by life or events, we have shaky hands or uncertain reflexes. Can you put a "go slower" button in the menu as an option, before Aunt Tilly completely gives up on the modern world? Thanks.
And yes, I have moved recently. How did you know?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio; if you have adventures in voice mail to share, write (don’t call!) disciple@voyager.net.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Homelessness at Home January 2005
Summary of Facilitation for LCHI task group
Jeff Gill – 13 Jan 05
Good news – What you heard as a pleasant surprise
Basic efforts of Salvation Army (SA), Coalition of Care (CoC), and
St. Vincent de Paul conferences & center (StVdP) – (x 5)
So much co-operation - (x 3)
How much is being put "out there" in resources - (x 2)
Focus already in community on shelter needs beyond current capacity – (x 2)
50 beds already on drawing boards – (x 2)
SA went from 6 to 18 beds (w/ a visit to 24 for a time)_
That SA and StVdP have met and are co-ordinating
This room and the cross-section it represents
Decrease in 2004 Point in Time count #
Support of faith communities
Focus on God
Child care available through DJFS
Meals available through SA (noted in later discussion, might have been a x 4 or 5)
Troubling News
Average age of a homeless person = 9 years old – (x 12)
Lack of immediate access shelter/services – (x 4)
Seeing the pictures of the where and how – (x 4)
Likely competition for $$$ locally – (x 3)
Lack of awareness of available resources – (x 3)
$12.43 an hour wage rate needed to afford 2 bdr rental in LC – (x 3)
68 turnaways at SA since Jan. 1, 12 days – (x 3)
The amount spent now for current results – (x 2)
Trends vs. pop. Growth, or will 50 beds be enough in 5 yrs.? – (x 2)
Amer. Red Cross (ARC) out of $$ right now – (x 2)
(including no renter’s insurance among all of the 70% cases that are renters)
No daily soup kitchen
Potential disagreements over priorities, esp. subpopulations
(i.e., you may have statistics, but I know what I see. . .)
Church response should be much better than 60 of 240
Family support shouldn’t be an obstacle to getting assistance
Prejudice against the visibly impoverished ("Them as got, gets")
Bricks & mortar vs. people
1 is too many/no one (even molesters) deserves homelessness
Noted in this section: Lancaster has "The Foundation" with 100 beds;
Zanesville has "Christ’s Table" daily soup kitchen; should look and learn
If I could tell everyone in LC one thing, it would be. . .
Average age of homeless person: 9 years old
12 days, 68 turned away from a full-capacity SA shelter
Tomorrow, w/out family & friends, YOU could be homeless
Homelessness is REAL, and could happen to anyone
Stop discarding your teens (18 emancipation, 50%? drop-out rate at NHS)
Homelessness is everyone’s responsibility;
A community thing, not an agency thing
345-HELP
Remember the ice storm, and how you felt
The Main Place exists
There is help, and hope
T
Summary of Facilitation for LCHI task group
Jeff Gill – 13 Jan 05
Good news – What you heard as a pleasant surprise
Basic efforts of Salvation Army (SA), Coalition of Care (CoC), and
St. Vincent de Paul conferences & center (StVdP) – (x 5)
So much co-operation - (x 3)
How much is being put "out there" in resources - (x 2)
Focus already in community on shelter needs beyond current capacity – (x 2)
50 beds already on drawing boards – (x 2)
SA went from 6 to 18 beds (w/ a visit to 24 for a time)_
That SA and StVdP have met and are co-ordinating
This room and the cross-section it represents
Decrease in 2004 Point in Time count #
Support of faith communities
Focus on God
Child care available through DJFS
Meals available through SA (noted in later discussion, might have been a x 4 or 5)
Troubling News
Average age of a homeless person = 9 years old – (x 12)
Lack of immediate access shelter/services – (x 4)
Seeing the pictures of the where and how – (x 4)
Likely competition for $$$ locally – (x 3)
Lack of awareness of available resources – (x 3)
$12.43 an hour wage rate needed to afford 2 bdr rental in LC – (x 3)
68 turnaways at SA since Jan. 1, 12 days – (x 3)
The amount spent now for current results – (x 2)
Trends vs. pop. Growth, or will 50 beds be enough in 5 yrs.? – (x 2)
Amer. Red Cross (ARC) out of $$ right now – (x 2)
(including no renter’s insurance among all of the 70% cases that are renters)
No daily soup kitchen
Potential disagreements over priorities, esp. subpopulations
(i.e., you may have statistics, but I know what I see. . .)
Church response should be much better than 60 of 240
Family support shouldn’t be an obstacle to getting assistance
Prejudice against the visibly impoverished ("Them as got, gets")
Bricks & mortar vs. people
1 is too many/no one (even molesters) deserves homelessness
Noted in this section: Lancaster has "The Foundation" with 100 beds;
Zanesville has "Christ’s Table" daily soup kitchen; should look and learn
If I could tell everyone in LC one thing, it would be. . .
Average age of homeless person: 9 years old
12 days, 68 turned away from a full-capacity SA shelter
Tomorrow, w/out family & friends, YOU could be homeless
Homelessness is REAL, and could happen to anyone
Stop discarding your teens (18 emancipation, 50%? drop-out rate at NHS)
Homelessness is everyone’s responsibility;
A community thing, not an agency thing
345-HELP
Remember the ice storm, and how you felt
The Main Place exists
There is help, and hope
T
LICKING DISTRICT
CUB SCOUT DAY CAMP 2005
"KNIGHTS OF THE ROUNDTABLE"
At: Camp Falling Rock
On: June 14 thru June 17, 2005
Tuesday thru Friday
Picnic and Awards Ceremony on
Friday, June 17th starting at 12:00 p.m.
The Webelos Overnighter
Will be Friday, June 17th
Registration Fees:
$45.00/Scout
Due On or Before the May 3rd Roundtable
$55.00/Scout
Due On or Before May 27th
NO APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER MAY 27TH!
Except New Tiger Cub Registrations.
Questions Contact Camp Directors Angela & Ric Eader At:
Ldesdaycamp@earthlinck.net
* * *
CUB SCOUT LEADER BASIC TRAINING
There will be a training course held on
Saturday, March 5, 2005
From
8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Cost: $5.00 per person
Location:
Church on the Rock
Etna, Ohio
Questions, call:
Debbie Neighbarger
P.O. Box 94
Utica, Ohio 43080
740-892-3671
740-745-2118
Send registrations to:
Simon Kenton Council, BSA
1901 E. Dublin-Granville Rd.
PO Box 29207
Columbus, Ohio 43229-0207
Attn.: Licking District Training
CUB SCOUT DAY CAMP 2005
"KNIGHTS OF THE ROUNDTABLE"
At: Camp Falling Rock
On: June 14 thru June 17, 2005
Tuesday thru Friday
Picnic and Awards Ceremony on
Friday, June 17th starting at 12:00 p.m.
The Webelos Overnighter
Will be Friday, June 17th
Registration Fees:
$45.00/Scout
Due On or Before the May 3rd Roundtable
$55.00/Scout
Due On or Before May 27th
NO APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER MAY 27TH!
Except New Tiger Cub Registrations.
Questions Contact Camp Directors Angela & Ric Eader At:
Ldesdaycamp@earthlinck.net
* * *
CUB SCOUT LEADER BASIC TRAINING
There will be a training course held on
Saturday, March 5, 2005
From
8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Cost: $5.00 per person
Location:
Church on the Rock
Etna, Ohio
Questions, call:
Debbie Neighbarger
P.O. Box 94
Utica, Ohio 43080
740-892-3671
740-745-2118
Send registrations to:
Simon Kenton Council, BSA
1901 E. Dublin-Granville Rd.
PO Box 29207
Columbus, Ohio 43229-0207
Attn.: Licking District Training
Notes From My Knapsack 1-16-05
By Jeff Gill
Been Homeless Lately?
Quite a few Licking Countians (a quarter? a third? half?) have recently known, at least in part, what homelessness feels like, from the inside.
Sure, it was an ice storm, and you knew the utilities would come back (they would, wouldn’t they?), and that you’d return to your home (but when?), but the experience was still there.
You didn’t want to go, you weren’t sure where to go (sorry, we’re full up tonight), and you were making stressful decisions under difficult circumstances (why didn’t we just go to cousin Jean’s instead of Aunt Bertie’s?), which probably didn’t always show you at your best.
For folks who work with the ongoing housing and homelessness problem in Licking County, this all sounds very familiar.
What’s been different is that people from Utica to Buckeye Lake, from Toboso to Pataskala had the experience – and are talking about it.
Actually, in any given year, people from that many different parts of the area, from about as many economic backgrounds, run into a slower motion crisis that results in the same impact as the ice storm: where do I go? How do I get heat and water for my children?
There’s quite a bit we know about homelessness. We know that the emergency shelter on East Main in Newark run by the Salvation Army, with 18 beds, has been operating at full capacity for over two years now. We know they are forced to turn away people because of capacity and fire code issues: 68 were turned away between Jan. 1 and Jan. 12 just in the start of this year. And we know the average age of a homeless person is . . . 9 years old.
How do we know things like this, that the average age of homelessness is 9? Local groups like the Salvation Army, the Licking County Coalition for Housing, the American Red Cross, or Moundbuilders Guidance Center all are expected to keep careful records for the state and federal funds they receive, such as through FEMA. They want to know more about the how and the where and the who of homelessness, not to mention the why.
They work together, too, such as in a recent meeting at the Reese Center on the OSU-N campus, comparing notes and dreams, and making plans.
Next week, these groups are preparing to work together to try to do a "one night count" of both unsheltered and sheltered homeless people. Teams with training will go out between 10 pm and 1 am on Wednesday night, Jan. 26, and check their assigned area for people sleeping out and around. They will carry some items to give out that might be of use to those in that situation (gloves, blankets, flashlights), and they will walk away from anyone who doesn’t want to be bothered.
That’s not what happened last year, the first time this was tried in Licking County. From I-70 truck stops to railroad overpasses, most wanted to talk and appreciated the effort to find them and tell their story.
So if your own recent brush with homelessness makes you want to help, you can be trained this Tuesday, Jan 18. Show up from either 1 to 3 pm or 6 to 8 pm, your choice, at the MRDD Office at 565 Industrial Parkway in Heath, just east of Rt. 79 (think behind Wendy’s).
Last year they counted 97 homeless people in Licking County on that one night. We hope this year is lower, and suspect it’s higher. But why talk more about it, when we can go out and count, and talk to those folks who really know what it’s like.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. You can contact him for more information about the "1 Night Homelessness Count" through disciple@voyager.net.
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By Jeff Gill
Been Homeless Lately?
Quite a few Licking Countians (a quarter? a third? half?) have recently known, at least in part, what homelessness feels like, from the inside.
Sure, it was an ice storm, and you knew the utilities would come back (they would, wouldn’t they?), and that you’d return to your home (but when?), but the experience was still there.
You didn’t want to go, you weren’t sure where to go (sorry, we’re full up tonight), and you were making stressful decisions under difficult circumstances (why didn’t we just go to cousin Jean’s instead of Aunt Bertie’s?), which probably didn’t always show you at your best.
For folks who work with the ongoing housing and homelessness problem in Licking County, this all sounds very familiar.
What’s been different is that people from Utica to Buckeye Lake, from Toboso to Pataskala had the experience – and are talking about it.
Actually, in any given year, people from that many different parts of the area, from about as many economic backgrounds, run into a slower motion crisis that results in the same impact as the ice storm: where do I go? How do I get heat and water for my children?
There’s quite a bit we know about homelessness. We know that the emergency shelter on East Main in Newark run by the Salvation Army, with 18 beds, has been operating at full capacity for over two years now. We know they are forced to turn away people because of capacity and fire code issues: 68 were turned away between Jan. 1 and Jan. 12 just in the start of this year. And we know the average age of a homeless person is . . . 9 years old.
How do we know things like this, that the average age of homelessness is 9? Local groups like the Salvation Army, the Licking County Coalition for Housing, the American Red Cross, or Moundbuilders Guidance Center all are expected to keep careful records for the state and federal funds they receive, such as through FEMA. They want to know more about the how and the where and the who of homelessness, not to mention the why.
They work together, too, such as in a recent meeting at the Reese Center on the OSU-N campus, comparing notes and dreams, and making plans.
Next week, these groups are preparing to work together to try to do a "one night count" of both unsheltered and sheltered homeless people. Teams with training will go out between 10 pm and 1 am on Wednesday night, Jan. 26, and check their assigned area for people sleeping out and around. They will carry some items to give out that might be of use to those in that situation (gloves, blankets, flashlights), and they will walk away from anyone who doesn’t want to be bothered.
That’s not what happened last year, the first time this was tried in Licking County. From I-70 truck stops to railroad overpasses, most wanted to talk and appreciated the effort to find them and tell their story.
So if your own recent brush with homelessness makes you want to help, you can be trained this Tuesday, Jan 18. Show up from either 1 to 3 pm or 6 to 8 pm, your choice, at the MRDD Office at 565 Industrial Parkway in Heath, just east of Rt. 79 (think behind Wendy’s).
Last year they counted 97 homeless people in Licking County on that one night. We hope this year is lower, and suspect it’s higher. But why talk more about it, when we can go out and count, and talk to those folks who really know what it’s like.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher around central Ohio. You can contact him for more information about the "1 Night Homelessness Count" through disciple@voyager.net.
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Monday, January 10, 2005
February 2005 "Scouter" Simon Kenton Council
Licking District Trailmarkers
(Insert CSLBT article first)
(Insert Cub Day Camp article second)
Boy Scout Leader Basic Training
For you troop Scouters, we've got training coming up for you folks as well; contact Kelly O'Reilly for details. They will be meeting for two weekends in February and March. We need a better percentage of unit leaders on all levels trained in Licking District, and especially on the Boy Scout level. Do you have assistant Scoutmasters or newer troop committee members who could benefit from exposure to the entire Scouting program? Give 'em a nudge!
Commissioner's Staff
Kudos from Trig Gamble, district chairman, and Mike Deeslie, district commissioner, to the unit commissioners and Bill Burgess' invaluable assistance: at year's end, 42 of 49 units were chartered On Time! This is an advance on recent years, and a good step forward. We can take a few steps more (about 7, it looks like), but this is great for starting 2005 the right way.
Cub Scout 75th
This month and next are most of our Cub Scout Pack Blue & Gold banquets, with special attention to 75 years of Cubbing in the Scout Movement. Do you have a "Friends of Scouting" presentation planned as part of the program? Call Larry Lorance or Bill Burgess if you don't have one set yet.
These presentations are simply to offer the opportunity to give to support Scouting, not an arm-twist session. Often there are parents and grandparents who would like to share something for the support of the district and council, but don't know how. And don't forget, it costs Simon Kenton and Licking District about $110 to provide Scouting per youth; United Way covers about $10, leaving $100 per Scout for us to raise each year for district and council operations.
So don't skip the FoS presentation!
Last Calendar Reminders
March 17, registration starts at noon in Indian Mound Mall for district Pinewood Derby
April 17, District Recognition Dinner
April 22-23, Spring Camporee
Licking District Trailmarkers
(Insert CSLBT article first)
(Insert Cub Day Camp article second)
Boy Scout Leader Basic Training
For you troop Scouters, we've got training coming up for you folks as well; contact Kelly O'Reilly for details. They will be meeting for two weekends in February and March. We need a better percentage of unit leaders on all levels trained in Licking District, and especially on the Boy Scout level. Do you have assistant Scoutmasters or newer troop committee members who could benefit from exposure to the entire Scouting program? Give 'em a nudge!
Commissioner's Staff
Kudos from Trig Gamble, district chairman, and Mike Deeslie, district commissioner, to the unit commissioners and Bill Burgess' invaluable assistance: at year's end, 42 of 49 units were chartered On Time! This is an advance on recent years, and a good step forward. We can take a few steps more (about 7, it looks like), but this is great for starting 2005 the right way.
Cub Scout 75th
This month and next are most of our Cub Scout Pack Blue & Gold banquets, with special attention to 75 years of Cubbing in the Scout Movement. Do you have a "Friends of Scouting" presentation planned as part of the program? Call Larry Lorance or Bill Burgess if you don't have one set yet.
These presentations are simply to offer the opportunity to give to support Scouting, not an arm-twist session. Often there are parents and grandparents who would like to share something for the support of the district and council, but don't know how. And don't forget, it costs Simon Kenton and Licking District about $110 to provide Scouting per youth; United Way covers about $10, leaving $100 per Scout for us to raise each year for district and council operations.
So don't skip the FoS presentation!
Last Calendar Reminders
March 17, registration starts at noon in Indian Mound Mall for district Pinewood Derby
April 17, District Recognition Dinner
April 22-23, Spring Camporee
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Faith/Works Column
The Newark Advocate
Intro column
Faith/Works 1-16-05
By Jeff Gill
Last week, I just started talking without introducing myself. The tsunami response (and the needs continue, which we’ll speak of again, I’m sure) took first priority, but I tend to do that kind of thing in person, too.
My name is Jeff Gill, and I’ve lived in Licking County on and off since 1989 (the off part was a six year sabbatical in West Virginia). As an ordained Disciples of Christ pastor who is now an active lay member of a Methodist church, directs camps at a United Church of Christ conference center and goes on regular retreats at a Roman Catholic convent, I like to think I have some good coverage in the ecumenical department. My knowledge of interfaith matters hasn’t caught up to my curiosity or interest, but I know that there are Tibetan Buddhists, Hindus, and Native American healers who are deeply involved in community leadership around this area, and I want to open up a window and even a doorway for Licking County residents to those traditions through this column.
Then there’s you. Yep, you. Well, maybe not you, but someone right behind or next door or around the block from you. There’s a big bunch of folks even in red-state, Bible Belt,
"values voter" America that Licking County represents so well, who do not attend a place of worship even twice a year. Some call them "the unchurched," others "unaffiliated," and few would say "the lost." I’m just gonna call you "You."
You have hopes and fears, commitments and areas of indifference, and you have beliefs you may or may not be comfortable talking about with your friends. You may even be in that 22% who told exit polls that "moral values" were a factor in your vote (which, when you think about it, could mean you voted out of concern that too much is being made of moral values and you voted against someone for that reason!), but we know one thing for sure about you.
You represent 50 to 60% of the population. You, my friend, are in the majority, even here in Licking County. What are you thinking about in regard to your faith, and the faith communities of your neighbors? I’d like this column to engage you, You, and your family.
Right, and then there’s all of us regular church-goin’ folk. We do tend to be more likely to vote, run for office, organize events and activities, report a higher degree of personal happiness in general (and, say researchers, even a better sex life!), so it’s no wonder the doings of congregations and ministries tend to get coverage. I intend to comment on all of that, including the parenthetical note, because from Alexis deTocqueville to Alistair Cooke, foreign observers have focused on voluntary involvement, stemming from faith commitments, as what makes the American experience unique.
E-mail me, talk to me on the street or around the programs we’ll bump into each other at, and we will learn together about the creative tension between faith and works for believers, and how faith works in Licking County!
?
The Newark Advocate
Intro column
Faith/Works 1-16-05
By Jeff Gill
Last week, I just started talking without introducing myself. The tsunami response (and the needs continue, which we’ll speak of again, I’m sure) took first priority, but I tend to do that kind of thing in person, too.
My name is Jeff Gill, and I’ve lived in Licking County on and off since 1989 (the off part was a six year sabbatical in West Virginia). As an ordained Disciples of Christ pastor who is now an active lay member of a Methodist church, directs camps at a United Church of Christ conference center and goes on regular retreats at a Roman Catholic convent, I like to think I have some good coverage in the ecumenical department. My knowledge of interfaith matters hasn’t caught up to my curiosity or interest, but I know that there are Tibetan Buddhists, Hindus, and Native American healers who are deeply involved in community leadership around this area, and I want to open up a window and even a doorway for Licking County residents to those traditions through this column.
Then there’s you. Yep, you. Well, maybe not you, but someone right behind or next door or around the block from you. There’s a big bunch of folks even in red-state, Bible Belt,
"values voter" America that Licking County represents so well, who do not attend a place of worship even twice a year. Some call them "the unchurched," others "unaffiliated," and few would say "the lost." I’m just gonna call you "You."
You have hopes and fears, commitments and areas of indifference, and you have beliefs you may or may not be comfortable talking about with your friends. You may even be in that 22% who told exit polls that "moral values" were a factor in your vote (which, when you think about it, could mean you voted out of concern that too much is being made of moral values and you voted against someone for that reason!), but we know one thing for sure about you.
You represent 50 to 60% of the population. You, my friend, are in the majority, even here in Licking County. What are you thinking about in regard to your faith, and the faith communities of your neighbors? I’d like this column to engage you, You, and your family.
Right, and then there’s all of us regular church-goin’ folk. We do tend to be more likely to vote, run for office, organize events and activities, report a higher degree of personal happiness in general (and, say researchers, even a better sex life!), so it’s no wonder the doings of congregations and ministries tend to get coverage. I intend to comment on all of that, including the parenthetical note, because from Alexis deTocqueville to Alistair Cooke, foreign observers have focused on voluntary involvement, stemming from faith commitments, as what makes the American experience unique.
E-mail me, talk to me on the street or around the programs we’ll bump into each other at, and we will learn together about the creative tension between faith and works for believers, and how faith works in Licking County!
?
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Winter Storm With Spring Impact
by Jeff Gill
Our Christmas week ice storm in Licking County has left piles of fallen branches and not a few toppled trees along streets and even across housetops.
With power restored over most of the area, residents are counting their blessings and starting the task of tidying up woodpiles or replacing gutters and shingles. The affected trees, though, may not be done having an effect on homes and structures.
“Some damage may not be immediately apparent,” said Howard Siegrist, OSU Extension Educator for Licking County. Even some very large branches could be cracked to the point where the added weight of leaves in the spring can bring them down. “Decay, as well as cracks, may lead to structural loss, causing the tree or large branches to become hazardous,” he adds.
While the inches of ice, adding up to several tons of weight, literally killed many trees, bringing them down in whole or in part, most of those damaged can survive: they may just need a little help. But work on damaged trees carefully!
“Homeowners working on their trees need to use extreme caution,” Siegrist urges. OSU Extension recommends not climbing a damaged tree, or touching trees near electrical wires. You should never climb a tree with a chain saw (lift it to yourself with a rope once you’re in place), and always assess your situation carefully with an eye to safety hazards.
“Most tree work needs to be done by professional arborists,” Siegrist notes, “especially when the work requires climbing or the tree is leaning against another tree or structure.”
Much “hidden” damage will be revealed in the spring, when discolored leaves or bare branches show that a limb that looks fine from below is actually broken through above. Breaks in the bark also will attract pests such as borers and bark beetles, so these diseased limbs should be removed to reduce the threat to neighboring healthy trees. If you have specific landscape damage questions, you can call Licking County Extension at 349-6900.
Outside of your own yard or property, a careful eye above will be vitally important for months to come.
“Widowmaker” is the term old woodsfolk use for dead tree limbs that hang high and out of sight, ready to drop without warning on passersby. A hunter climbing into a treestand, birders out to see warblers perching in the early spring, or just a family of hikers could find their day interrupted by a potentially fatal incident.
The existence of the term shows that this is a long-standing and well-known piece of woods lore that is all the more relevant this year. The ice storm that closed 2004 may have a second shot at Licking County long into 2005 if we’re not careful!
by Jeff Gill
Our Christmas week ice storm in Licking County has left piles of fallen branches and not a few toppled trees along streets and even across housetops.
With power restored over most of the area, residents are counting their blessings and starting the task of tidying up woodpiles or replacing gutters and shingles. The affected trees, though, may not be done having an effect on homes and structures.
“Some damage may not be immediately apparent,” said Howard Siegrist, OSU Extension Educator for Licking County. Even some very large branches could be cracked to the point where the added weight of leaves in the spring can bring them down. “Decay, as well as cracks, may lead to structural loss, causing the tree or large branches to become hazardous,” he adds.
While the inches of ice, adding up to several tons of weight, literally killed many trees, bringing them down in whole or in part, most of those damaged can survive: they may just need a little help. But work on damaged trees carefully!
“Homeowners working on their trees need to use extreme caution,” Siegrist urges. OSU Extension recommends not climbing a damaged tree, or touching trees near electrical wires. You should never climb a tree with a chain saw (lift it to yourself with a rope once you’re in place), and always assess your situation carefully with an eye to safety hazards.
“Most tree work needs to be done by professional arborists,” Siegrist notes, “especially when the work requires climbing or the tree is leaning against another tree or structure.”
Much “hidden” damage will be revealed in the spring, when discolored leaves or bare branches show that a limb that looks fine from below is actually broken through above. Breaks in the bark also will attract pests such as borers and bark beetles, so these diseased limbs should be removed to reduce the threat to neighboring healthy trees. If you have specific landscape damage questions, you can call Licking County Extension at 349-6900.
Outside of your own yard or property, a careful eye above will be vitally important for months to come.
“Widowmaker” is the term old woodsfolk use for dead tree limbs that hang high and out of sight, ready to drop without warning on passersby. A hunter climbing into a treestand, birders out to see warblers perching in the early spring, or just a family of hikers could find their day interrupted by a potentially fatal incident.
The existence of the term shows that this is a long-standing and well-known piece of woods lore that is all the more relevant this year. The ice storm that closed 2004 may have a second shot at Licking County long into 2005 if we’re not careful!
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Notes From My Knapsack 1-09-05
By Jeff Gill
“Three removes equal one fire” said Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac. Old firehorse that he was, Ben knew a bit about fires, and his earlier poorer days gave him and Deborah his wife some familiarity with moving.
The Lovely Wife and I have moved now ten times in not quite twenty years of marriage, five of them with the Little Guy and the appurtenances that come with a young’un (most of them clearly labeled “Matchbox,” which they are emphatically larger than, worse luck). By Mr. Franklin’s count, we’ve had over three fires together . . . but wait, there really was one fire (with flames and everything), just not in a house. Yes, I’ve managed to misplace one church I once served through conflagration, but it wasn’t me; at least, that’s what the arson squad said. LW still is thankful that we don’t have those hundreds of books still to move that added a nice blue tinge to the flames over the building, what with all the pretty colors in the covers.
Still, we have progressively more stuff each move, one way or another, which is a sobering experience to assess, and my back muscles have assessed very accurately that we either must never move again, or get rid of stuff.
She of the loveliness at home sayeth: Both.
And, of course, she is right.
More on getting rid of stuff in some future column, you can be sure.
But what about this “(re)moves and fires” business? Well, you have to recall that both fires were more common and moving was much more challenging in 1757.
If you visit Ben Franklin’s house site in Philadelphia, just a few blocks from Independence Hall, you’ll find just that, a site. The architect Robert Venturi designed a very nice steel framework that evokes the outlines of the building once behind the print shop which would have been his longest domicile, but it fell (as did most Colonial era homes) to a chimney fire.
Out in the wilds of a place like, say, the Ohio country in the 1700’s, the chimney was oftimes literally built on a slant, a pile of stone propped up with long poles that could be kicked out by a householder when the first whiff of fire was in the air.
In the city, where structures were so close, this simple method of fire protection was generally not possible, and so they tended to catch more often. Still, with large solid timbers, it wasn’t unusual for homes and buildings to catch fire many times over their lives. Smoke damage, singeing, and the stray splash of water from one of the volunteer fire companies (another area in which Franklin was a pioneer, perhaps out of no little self-interest); this would be the worst most fires would bring to your three linen undershirts, two waistcoats, and extra breeches and buckled shoes. Pottery rode out your average house fire quite well, and even the family Bible, thick and bound in thicker leather, might just pick up a stray scorch or two as a souvenir.
Moving, on the other hand, with wooden crates a precious commodity, meant goods heaped into the back of an open wagon, buffered by a few burlap sacks if you could find some not in use.
If you didn’t have a sharp eye and quick hand riding the tailgate as you bumped through the narrow, crowded streets of town to your new address, a sharper, quicker hand might filch a pitcher or plate.
On arrival, you could find that the jostling against the wagonbed could not only scramble your goods, but dent, scratch, and smash even pewter.
So it was that Franklin could say, to knowing nods of agreement, “Three removes equal one fire.”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher in central Ohio; if you have tales to tell of moves gone well or awry, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
By Jeff Gill
“Three removes equal one fire” said Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac. Old firehorse that he was, Ben knew a bit about fires, and his earlier poorer days gave him and Deborah his wife some familiarity with moving.
The Lovely Wife and I have moved now ten times in not quite twenty years of marriage, five of them with the Little Guy and the appurtenances that come with a young’un (most of them clearly labeled “Matchbox,” which they are emphatically larger than, worse luck). By Mr. Franklin’s count, we’ve had over three fires together . . . but wait, there really was one fire (with flames and everything), just not in a house. Yes, I’ve managed to misplace one church I once served through conflagration, but it wasn’t me; at least, that’s what the arson squad said. LW still is thankful that we don’t have those hundreds of books still to move that added a nice blue tinge to the flames over the building, what with all the pretty colors in the covers.
Still, we have progressively more stuff each move, one way or another, which is a sobering experience to assess, and my back muscles have assessed very accurately that we either must never move again, or get rid of stuff.
She of the loveliness at home sayeth: Both.
And, of course, she is right.
More on getting rid of stuff in some future column, you can be sure.
But what about this “(re)moves and fires” business? Well, you have to recall that both fires were more common and moving was much more challenging in 1757.
If you visit Ben Franklin’s house site in Philadelphia, just a few blocks from Independence Hall, you’ll find just that, a site. The architect Robert Venturi designed a very nice steel framework that evokes the outlines of the building once behind the print shop which would have been his longest domicile, but it fell (as did most Colonial era homes) to a chimney fire.
Out in the wilds of a place like, say, the Ohio country in the 1700’s, the chimney was oftimes literally built on a slant, a pile of stone propped up with long poles that could be kicked out by a householder when the first whiff of fire was in the air.
In the city, where structures were so close, this simple method of fire protection was generally not possible, and so they tended to catch more often. Still, with large solid timbers, it wasn’t unusual for homes and buildings to catch fire many times over their lives. Smoke damage, singeing, and the stray splash of water from one of the volunteer fire companies (another area in which Franklin was a pioneer, perhaps out of no little self-interest); this would be the worst most fires would bring to your three linen undershirts, two waistcoats, and extra breeches and buckled shoes. Pottery rode out your average house fire quite well, and even the family Bible, thick and bound in thicker leather, might just pick up a stray scorch or two as a souvenir.
Moving, on the other hand, with wooden crates a precious commodity, meant goods heaped into the back of an open wagon, buffered by a few burlap sacks if you could find some not in use.
If you didn’t have a sharp eye and quick hand riding the tailgate as you bumped through the narrow, crowded streets of town to your new address, a sharper, quicker hand might filch a pitcher or plate.
On arrival, you could find that the jostling against the wagonbed could not only scramble your goods, but dent, scratch, and smash even pewter.
So it was that Franklin could say, to knowing nods of agreement, “Three removes equal one fire.”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional preacher in central Ohio; if you have tales to tell of moves gone well or awry, e-mail him at disciple@voyager.net.
Monday, January 03, 2005
You May Already Be Sharing9.0 earthquake, 500 mile an hour tidal waves, 60 feet high walls of water mixed with concrete block and palm tree trunks. These basic facts have become well known. The day after Christmas became something like the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" for southeast Asia.Less well known is that the day after that, a Sunday, was a day for giving and sharing whose impact will not be known for some time to come.In faith communities around the world, across the United States, and right here in Licking County where the roads to church were often still blocked by downed trees and power lines, churches and congregations started to open up their hearts and wallets in record numbers.Governmental assistance will fly the helicopters and float the large machinery for de-salting water and treating waste, but much of the disaster response will come from church-related groups that were heading into the affected area even before many of us knew the tragedy had occured.In fact, you may have already given aid to the relief effort. Licking County has a CROP Walk each fall, largely made up of walkers along a ten kilometer route who got pledges from fellow worshipers and neighbors (you?). CROP Walks are a major part of the budget for Church World Service (CWS), the combined agency for 36 Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican denominations to deal with international emergencies like floods, famines, or . . . earthquakes and tsunamis.CWS already has $900,000 in supplies on the way to Indonesia and Sri Lanka out of what they have on hand, and hope to send millions more.(See churchworldservice.org to share more in their work.)Catholic Relief Services is "the official international relief and development agency of the U.S. Catholic community"(See catholicrelief.org for their web site and secure link for donations.)Representing the 23% of the U.S. that is Catholic, they have sent $500,000 in aid and commit to another $25 million on behalf of their 60 million members.Five million souls are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and Lutheran World Relief has sent $150,000, with a pledge of more to come.(See elca.org and follow the links.)Even more modestly sized denominations like the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) with less than a million members in the U.S. and Canada have sent $55,000 to expedite shipping for CWS, and pledge a minimum of $250,000. They work through another co-operative body, "Week of Compassion," known in other denominations as "One Great Hour of Sharing," where the money and materials for disaster relief is held ready for a time like this.(See onegreathourofsharing.org for denominational links and donation options.)What all of these relief agencies have in common, along with their work in our names, are two more things.Each effort notes the importance of prayer in supporting the hearts and intentions of those who are face to face with tragedy, and they all remind us, cautiously, that the needs in places like western Sudan and Afghanistan continue.It's good that we've often already given, but the work clearly goes on. At least we're not alone, in many ways!
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