Faith Works 4-26-08
Jeff Gill

Blossoms Above and Before Open Up Right Now

Eternal springtime may be some people’s idea of heaven, but if your sinuses have strong opinions about pollen, not so much.

The peak of tree pollen, with grass pollen numbers swinging up as the arboreal count eases down, starts a grim season for a few (many?) of us.

Which doesn’t mean that even allergy-prone individuals can’t appreciate the beauty of flowering trees. The good news for my nose is what makes them so remarkable: their brief span of blossoming. Dogwood to redbud to forsythia (ok, the last is a shrub) splash their whites and pinks and yellows, then fade from the scene.

Right now we have lilac trees and crabapples and ornamental pears, plus the frilled luminosity of cherry blossoms. What they don’t bring to our scenery is any sense of permanence, with a carpet of petals around the trunk showing up almost as soon as the flowers appear.

There are magnolias I watch for each spring who seem to have lost over half their petals before I see them opened up the next day, and if a stiff wind or hard rain come at the right moment, the soft color could be a purely ground level phenomenon.

This year has been a good slow steady season for these otherwise shortlived displays. The hillsides and river valleys around central Ohio are fuzzing up with buds and new leaves while the splashes and swaths of blossoming trees are maintaining the contrast over weeks, not just days.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian Old Testament, the signs of new life are quite sensisbly attached to imagery of spring blossoms, which are often woody plants given the rugged landscape. Olive and almond usher in the spring as Ecclesiastes notes, then the terebinths Abram and Sarai camped under with their turpentine scented flowers – three times in Genesis we read about the terebinth marking a good place to camp for a nomadic family. Figs and pomegranates have tough but bright blossoms, and the blossom of the grapevine is not on a tree, but is as short lived while still a crucial sign of the season’s decisive turn.

New life is fragile, and trusting the steady progression of the seasons is both certain and terrifying – if you are feeding your family with the bounty of the earth, you learn that summer surely follows spring, but nothing says there won’t be snows after the almond flowers (like our forsythia myths in the New World).

Ask a farmer about how planting’s gone this year . . . never mind, because you won’t find them unless you go out into the field and flag their tractor down. And they may not slow down for you, because they’ve been wanting to get out into the fields for weeks and couldn’t.

So certainly and insecurity, fragility and the foundation of life itself, all resting in the heart of a flower. Georgia O’Keefe spent the latter half of her career painting larger and larger versions of smaller and smaller flowers, like the spring beautys that pop up now on any older, established lawn before the mowers and sprayers do their busy work. The desert flower paintings looked into the hidden secrets on full display if you would stop and look, which O’Keefe tried to help you do by blowing them up to the size of a wall.

Midwestern flowering trees do much the same for us if we let them. The last major florescence around here is that of the tulip poplar, a few weeks from now. 80, 90, over 100 feet above our heads, atop the branchless trunks in their spreading canopies, green spikes are slowly opening up.

Occasionally a squirrel will knock down one of these half-opened orange and yellow flowers, and you kick it idly aside on the path thinking, as you look around on the ground, where are those growing?

In their full glory, pretty much no one sees them, open to the sky above and the bees and butterflies and birds skipping along the upper reaches of the forest. A steady rain follows of petals and a faint scent of cucumber, scattering across the forest as they fall from the heights where they grew.

Some of the greatest beauties of this world appear just beyond our sight, and we can only pick up the hints by watching the ground for what is happening above.

Sounds like something out of the Psalms, doesn’t it?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he hopes to see you all under the tall trees of the Great Circle next Saturday for the new museum dedication at 6:00 pm on May 3 – see www.octagonmoonrise.org for info under “agenda.”

Notes From My Knapsack 4-27-08
Jeff Gill

Layered History, Lightly Worn

If you make it out to the Great Circle earthwork on Saturday, May 3, make sure to check out the trees.

Jim Kingery is proud of those trees, almost none of which he’s planted and a number he’s had to gently take down, like the blue ash that crumpled near the Great Gateway a few months back in a windstorm.

With years of experience as a forester and with the Ohio Historical Society, he’s gotten to know all the vast, ancient trees within and without the enclosure and more recent plantings that go back to Idlewild Park before the 1920s and the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and then the period of OHS stewardship.

Some ask whether we should cut down all the trees to recover a bit of the sense of what was there in a “pocket prairie” 2,000 years ago when the Newark Earthworks were laid out, but that neglects the fact that they buffer the sound of Rt. 79 and Mathews Ford and 21st St., not to mention the visual buffer as well.

And a recent lecture at OSU-N by Lindsay Jones on the “revalorization” of Mexican ancient sites reminded many of us here in Licking County that many years pull many layers of meaning and use and purpose across a landscape, and to decide which layer or approach is “the” right one is tricky, and unlikely to work for the stakeholders however defined for today. “Revalorization” is a handy academic word for reuse, with a twist.

If subjects like that, or how even older sites like England’s Stonehenge has weathered multiple uses and interpretations and abuses, are of interest to you, then the day of May 3 is filled with speakers in the Reese Center on the OSU-N campus – check www.octagonmoonrise.org for details under “agenda.”

Jim is likely to miss most of our speakers, because he and Susan Fryer, director of the Licking County Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, will be getting ready to greet us along with the Aztec Dancers of Queretaro, Mexico for the 6:00 pm dedication ceremonies for the newly refurbished museum for the Newark Earthworks.

And one of those layers for the Great Circle portion of the Newark Earthworks State Memorial is the fact that the best cluster of truly old trees in the county, maybe even the state, is in and around this spot, which was set aside for our county fairground, as a Civil War training camp, and for the myriad peculiar uses of the 20th century to follow. It became an ad hoc preserve, so 300-plus year old trees were left to stand, likely more for shade over the buggies and applecarts than for any sense at the time of conservationism.

The owls of the neighborhood are the direct result of these aged, ancient trees, which naturally have some hollow cavities set large and high up, some from lightning strikes and others from long-ago fungus that wormed its way within and then fell away, leaving some prime real estate for nocturnal hunters of the air.

There are red oaks and white oaks that are older than Ohio, older than this nation, some that may have been a newly sprouting acorn when the Jamestown settlers first stumbled ashore in Virginia or Juan de Onate planted a cross in New Mexico.

Then on Sunday, May 4, you have a chance to roam the Octagon portion of the Newark Earthworks up off of 33rd St. and Parkview west of Cherry Valley School that was and is. The beech trees on the southern third of that site are broader at the base, but as Jim has taught me, younger, and doomed to an earlier death, both by their shorter lifespan, softer wood, and the general stress on trees today that’s more than it was in 1708.

Whether you have an interest in heritage and history, sacred sites or archaeological study, native dancers or academic lecturers, make sure to look into and around and up through the trees of these parks, and let them anchor a bit of your imaginings. They’re not as old as the mounds, but they’re older than you! Show a little respect, and feel a little awe in return.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is delighted to moderate some of the sessions at Newark Earthworks Day on May 3 (see www.octagonmoonrise.org). Tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 4-19-08
Jeff Gill

Presidential Piety Under Scrutiny

One way or another the religious views of Presidential candidates play a role in election season, if not during their tenure in office.

Most of the country now knows that Barack Obama attends Trinity United Church of Christ when he’s at home on the South Side of Chicago. Whether they know that the UCC denomination is the heir of the tradition that brought the Pilgrims to Massachusetts Bay is more up for grabs.

Jeremiah Wright is more colorful than most UCC pastors I know, but he also fits into a tradition that defended the escaped slaves of the Amistad, supported the abolition movement more than any other denomination before the Civil War, and has long promoted progressive political causes.

Hillary Rodham grew up a Methodist, and when she married a Southern Baptist, Bill Clinton didn’t convert officially, but their attendance and her membership has been in United Methodist congregations, in Washington and up in New York State. Her youth minister growing up in a Chicago suburb took the group to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. preach, and that marked a pivotal moment in her taking both faith and public life very seriously.

John McCain comes from a family with a long heritage in the U.S. Navy (three generations, but he has a son who enlisted in the Marines who just returned from Iraq – Ooh-rah). He probably grew up hearing more non-denominational chaplains’ sermons, but was baptized and confirmed in The Episcopal Church. His second wife Cindy is Baptist, and they attend together there when in Arizona, but he has not transferred his membership into that congregation.

The last election was shaping up in some interesting ways because John Kerry was sort of the odd man out – a Catholic by upbringing and occasional attendance later in life (he had not “registered” with any local parish leading up to the 2004 election, but sometimes attended a campus ministry where Mass was offered by a priest).

But John Edwards is United Methodist, George W. Bush is Methodist, and contrary to all my friends and acquaintances who insist that Dick Cheney is a member of the Church of Eating Babies With Mustard For Lunch, he and Lynne are, in fact . . . Methodist.

George H. W. Bush is named for his mother’s family, the Walkers (where the whole Kennebunkport thing comes from, at Walker’s Point in Maine), and his mother’s favorite poet, the Anglican priest George Herbert. Accordingly, George and Barbara are Episcopalian, but their children have traveled in a variety of directions, with Jeb becoming a Catholic on marrying his wife Columba.

George W. and Laura attend an Episcopal church that is within a block of the White House when in Washington, which is appropriate given that John Wesley lived out his days as an Anglican priest, and hoped to promote a Reformation within the Church of England, not start a new denomination. Francis Asbury in this country had a different view, but the United Methodist Church still shares quite a few qualities and characteristics with The Episcopal Church.

Ron Paul is still running, and he considered becoming a Lutheran pastor (which a brother did, in fact do), but decided on med school at Gettysburg College, where he met and married his wife who was Episcopalian. Their children were all baptized into that tradition, but the Pauls now attend a Baptist church when in Texas.

Ralph Nader, who speaks Arabic fluently from his parents’ heritage out of Lebanon, is Maronite Catholic. If elected, he would be the first Maronite, or Eastern rite Catholic, to hold the office. Mike Gravel (yes, he’s still running) is Unitarian Universalist – but he wouldn’t be the first in the unlikely chance that he’d win.

He’d be the fourth, following John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and William Howard Taft.

Oh, and Pope Benedict XVI, who visited the White House this week? He’s Catholic.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s ordained Disciples of Christ, but speaks fluent Methodist, passable UCC, and broken but understandable Lutheran. Tell him your religious dialects at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 4-12-08
Jeff Gill

Successor to the Apostles

We have plenty of churches in Licking County where the words “apostolic succession” have never been heard. They represent neither a doctrine nor a theological stance for a majority of church bodies in the United States.

The history and traditions behind this idea, though, shape some ideas that many of us brush up against on a regular basis.

It goes back to the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, where in the book of II Kings Elijah passes on his mantle, or his cloak, to Elisha who follows him. The touch of that cloak, and the legitimacy it gives him, is a sign and reality of power and healing for those in the tradition both honored. “Inheriting the mantle” is a phrase that many use with no sense of where it comes from, but read 2 Kings 2 for the source.

Luke’s Gospel tells us in chapter 1 that many thought John the Baptist picked up the mantle of Elijah, and the account of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor continues the image with Jesus himself.

Jesus responds to Simon, nicknamed “Petros,” the Rock, when Peter names Jesus as the Anointed, or “Christos” of God. “Upon this rock I will build my church,” Jesus says, and from this basis, and the Acts 1 account of replenishing the Eleven to become again the Twelve, the idea develops in the early church that the “Apostolos,” or “those who are sent (by God)” continue the vocation given by Jesus.

This is one of the sources of the great excitement around the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger. In the Roman Catholic Christian tradition, the apostolic succession is a very precise and tangible thing, where the original apostles affirmed the “deposit of the faith” by careful selection and ordination of new apostles and overseers, or “episcopos,” or more usually in English, bishops.

Bishops are the source of new ordinations, authorization to preside at communion, and all confirmations into Christian faith in traditions honoring the theological concept of apostolic succession. Each bishop of the Catholic Christian traditions can, in principle if not in historic detail, trace the hands laid upon them at ordination to hands to hands to hands back in direct line to the Twelve Apostles themselves, and so to Christ Jesus.

Martin Luther in beginning the Protestant Reformation did not directly challenge apostolic succession. What he did do was argue against its sufficiency to guarantee the Christian faith with integrity. Because of that, most Lutheran bodies affirm their own practice as being in line with apostolic succession, but few spend much time worrying about the details.

On the other hand of the early Reformation, the Church of England has traditionally maintained their entire fidelity to the line of apostolic succession, though the Roman Catholic hierarchy has not accepted their practices as such. Bishops in The Episcopal Church to this day in the United States still will maintain their “apostolic lineage” upon their ordination to the bishop’s seat, or “cathedra.”

When the Reformation got to Geneva, Switzerland, John Calvin tested the principle against his understanding of Scripture alone, or “sola scriptura,” and found it lacking – so he tossed it. Presbyterian and Congregational and Baptist inheritors of Calvinism for the most part have no idea what you’re talking about on this subject!

Methodists, with streams of heritage from both the Episcopal and Calvinist camps, have bishops, but don’t limit confirmation to a bishop’s administration, while ordination of new clergy is always expected to include a “laying on of hands” from the bishop. The United Methodist Church of this country has a clear break in the chain from the Twelve through the bishops of medieval Europe to the shores of England, since Francis Asbury announced a sort of “connectional” succession, a spiritual inheritance that dismissed the physical contact element as unnecessary.

What modern Methodists and some other Protestant bodies do affirm in a sort of “apostolic succession” is the question of stability and discernment from the larger tradition of a faith community. You need the conference or the region or the association to affirm a call to ministry, rather than any one person being able to set up as a successor to Christ’s apostles.

Of course, quite a few modern groups raise up bishops today exactly that way, essentially by “self-ordination.”

What Christians and others of good will respect when a papal visit comes to this country is the visceral, tangible ideal maintained by the Church of Rome, that an unbroken chain of contact, shown by the “laying on of hands,” literally exists between this cardinal from Bavaria, lifted up by his fellow cardinals as the Vicar of Christ, whose hands touched Peter, and whose blessing can still be felt, and seen, down to the present day.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; his ordination included laying on of hands, in a tent, next to a condemned building, but it may not have been strictly with official succession. Tell him what you think of Benedict’s visit at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 4-20-08
Jeff Gill

How We Got Here in Ten Easy Books

In a conversation with someone whose own history isn’t in the United States, the point was made: “I don’t get this country.”

A land with foundations in slavery, still plagued with racism and sexism, where a woman and African-American are running for the Democratic nomination and a black woman may be considered for the Republican ticket. Yep, we’re a head case all right.

I mentioned a few books that would fill in some gaps, but the end result was this – a list of ten books, mostly short and often novels, that could give a broad panorama of how we got here, wherever here is for 2008 in the USA.

In all fairness, I’m gonna mention more than ten, but you can pick your ten and get off easy. Eight for middle school to high school readers, and the last two for more grown-up tastes, which should include quite a few teenagers.

1. “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” - Ben was the “Sage of Philadelphia,” and he had the ear of a Muse or two, with the writing and storytelling still sharp over two centuries later. A colonial boy grows up to discover electricity, invent bifocals, and invented the very idea of “America.”

2. A choice: “The Light In the Forest” by Conrad Richter, or “The Beaded Moccasins” by Lynda Durrant – the first a boy, the second a girl, taken captive by Native Americans in the 1760s, and both returned at the end of Pontiac’s War in the great exchange at Coshocton in 1764. Born white, raised Indian, and asked to become in their young lives examples of what the recent scholar Richard White called “The Middle Ground” in his great scholarly work of the same name.

3. “Johnny Tremain” by Esther Forbes – not only a precise picture of Revolutionary Boston by a skilled non-professional historian (see her “Paul Revere and the World He Lived In” for the non-fiction version at length), but I firmly believe one of the best novels written in American English. Plot, character, dialogue, imagery . . . and excellent history. (And quite short.)

4. “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain – this was a tough call, but “Huckleberry Finn” is more likely to be required in school, while Tom is fading into the shadows. Yet the picture of everyday village life and American society before the Civil War is in many ways more complete and detailed in this one.

5. “The Killer Angels” by Michael Shaara – to sum up the Civil War in one book is impossible, but this one comes close. The basis for the movie “Gettysburg.”

6. “That Printer of Udell’s” by Harold Bell Wright – my most quirky choice, but this book is still in print, you just have to hunt a bit more. A perfect summary of the Progressive Era at the turn of 1900, and an eye on the Midwest. Dated, but it wears better than Wright’s friend and colleague from down the road here, Zane Grey.

7. “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker – there is assuredly adult content here, but this is not a list for kids, even if a number of these books are often labeled “young adult” in the bookstore. On the other hand, older youth know this is a hard world, and this story tells just how hard it can be for some. Is there hope at the end? For some, mainly for us as readers.

8. “Dandelion Wine” by Ray Bradbury – if you really want to turn your head around, read “The Color Purple” and “Dandelion Wine” back to back. Two young people, at the same historic period, in the same country. Yeah. If you think Bradbury is “just” a science-fiction author, this book will cure that. A boy learns that he is alive, that he will die, and that . . . read the book.

The last two are the over 200 page, take your time, mature reflection picks that fill in the 20th century for you, both memoirs.

9. “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers – if you don’t understand why Communism was a powerfully appealing philosophy and political ideology in the 1920s and ‘30s, you need to read this. A spiritual and intellectual journey.

10. “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” aided by Alex Haley – which closes this circle, echoing intentionally the title of old Ben’s book. When Haley last met with Malcolm X before his assassination, he was told “Now you ought to go write down those stories about your family,” which led to “Roots.”

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’d love for more people to read all of these books (14, if you’re counting each one mentioned). Tell him your reactions to the list at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 4-13-08
Jeff Gill

Jack Black’s Favorite Field Trip

If your kids have made you watch “Nacho Libre,” you may recall that (spoiler alert) after Brother Ignacio wins big in wrestling at the movie’s end, he takes the kids of the orphanage, as promised, on a field trip in the bus he bought for them.

The orphanage is in Oaxacan highlands of southern Mexico, and the field trip is to a majestic place where the children get a chance to experience awe and wonder right in their own backyard, over a thousand feet above the valley floor at Monte Albán. Built about two thousand years ago, they kids may not be directly related to the Zapotecan architects of antiquity, but some of them doubtless are, and the site is their common inheritance.

Kind of like the Newark Earthworks in Licking County, right?

Which has something to do with the fact that a troupe of ten Aztec Dancers from Querétaro, a city in Mexico with a history going back to 1531, are coming to help Licking County observe Newark Earthworks Day on Saturday, May 3, with a ceremonial dance at 6:00 pm at the Great Circle off of Rt. 79 in Heath.

1531 is also when this troupe records their founding, when Spanish conquistadores and Native peoples almost fought a battle, but stopped on seeing a vision of Saint James, or in Spanish “Santiago” in the clouds. The people of Querétaro have not stopped celebrating that peaceful coming together since almost five hundred years ago, dancing in the hundreds of thousands for special holidays, led by troupes such as the group coming to help us dedicate a new museum at the former Moundbuilders State Memorial May 3.

During the day up at OSU-Newark, in the J. Gilbert Reese Center there will be speakers and programs to talk about World Heritage Sites like Stonehenge in England, over 4,000 years old but aligned to the same sun and moon in our common sky. We will hear about Teotihuacán, a complex of vast pyramids 25 miles north of Mexico City (as large as those in Egypt), about the same age as the Newark Earthworks and where the Aztec Dancers of Querétaro offer up their chants and songs and armadillo guitars and dances in the central plaza.

And we’ll hear a bit about how these structures and their sky and the cultures who lived between them have qualities if not relatives in common with our 2,000 year earthworks.

You can see the details of what to hear when at www.octagonmoonrise.org (check the “agenda” link), and even if you don’t check out any of the programs through the day, make sure to come out 21st St. just out of Newark proper or south on Rt. 79, and stand at the entrance of the Great Circle, once the county fairgrounds, and see the dancers escort us into the enclosure from the renewed and refurbished museum, also the new home of the Licking County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (www.lccvb.com).

If you have kids in the house who are fans of Jack Black, just tell ‘em it’s like the end of “Nacho Libre” and bring them out for 6:00 pm. We asked the Captain of the Aztec Dancers, Margarita Xochiyaocihuatl Zárate García, if we should have a rain plan – these folks wear beautiful handmade headdresses and apparel with pheasant and peacock feathers.

The answer was no, since they dance at the pyramids of Teotihuacán rain or shine, just out of sheer gratitude. So come help us be grateful for having a majestic place where our kids can experience awe and wonder right in their own backyard, and maybe learn a few new steps.

You can leave the stretchy pants at home.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he came to a greater appreciation of Jack Black fairly recently. Share your awesome and majestic community events with him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Ted Turner Hearts Christians, or at least Methodists and Lutherans:

http://www.theledger.com/article/20080402/NEWS/581928346/1039

If you live long enough, you'll see everything. Next, Jesse Ventura joins Church World Service to put on a CROP Walk . . .

Faith Works 4-5-08
Jeff Gill

Connections Bring Life, and Seasoning

In this space a few weeks back, I pointed out that our Licking County bicentennial is echoed by a double bicentennial in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with the influence of and statues of Father Lamy tying us both together.

Hispanic culture still has little enough foothold in this area, though the central Ohio region is starting to learn what the rest of the county has long known, that Hispanic culture has been part of American culture from the very beginning – just not at Plymouth Rock or Jamestown.

When a capital was established at Santa Fe in 1608, they were establishing a northern outpost of a larger and older civilization that already had a century of development behind it, bringing Spanish European and Aztecan American traditions and practices and foods together (mmmmm, tamales!).

We will see another wonderful connection between the Newark area and a distant, ancient land on Saturday, May 3. Go back to 1531, three-quarters of a century before even Santa Fe got a two century jump on Licking County, and visit a place in Mexico called Querétaro.

A modern city that today is as large as the Columbus area, Querétaro was an area the Spanish conquistadores planned to conquer, but a vision of Saint James in the clouds, or “Santiago,” meant that Querétaro was not a place of warfare, but of coming together.

Sande Garner, a doctoral student at Ohio State University and a graduate research assistant with the Newark Earthworks Center of OSU-Newark, went down to Querétaro to learn of the traditions that mingled Aztec dance with Catholic devotion to Santiago. She saw 100,000 dancers snake through the streets and alleys and plazas of Querétaro, and caught a vision: what if some of these dancers, with traditions going back hundreds of years and more, could come from their World Heritage Site, Querétaro old town surroundings, and dance here in ours?

You have to be careful about those kinds of hopes and dreams, because that’s exactly what’s going to happen at 6:00 pm on May 3rd. to help dedicate the new museum that is combined with the new Licking County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau at the Great Circle.

Opposite the Arvin-Meritor plant (former Rockwell) just north of Hopewell Drive, or off of 21st St. coming down out of Newark into Heath, you can come out and appreciate the ceremonial dance of a team of Aztec dancers who trace their lineage directly back to that vision of Saint James in 1531, “Palabra del niño Dios Teopiltzintecuhtli” (Word of the Holy Child Teopiltzintecuhtli).

Rain or shine the dancers, as they do throughout the year in Querétaro, will offer up their prayers, their songs, their playing on armadillo guitars, and their dance as a gift to God.

The captain of this dance troupe, Captain Margarita Xochiyaocihuatl Zárate García, is one of the first women dancers to achieve the rank of captain, and regularly dances at Teotihuacán, one of the World Heritage Sites that will be featured at the Newark Earthworks Day on the OSU-N campus earlier in the day. Teotihuacán’s Pyramids of the Sun and of the Moon (both as large as the better known Egyptian pyramids), Stonehenge in England, and the Newark Earthworks will be compared and contrasted through the day – for more info, click on www.octagonmoonrise.org.

The next day, May 4, will even include an open house for tours out at Octagon State Memorial on N. 33rd St., north of West Main in Newark. But the highlight for many of us will be 6:00 pm out at the Great Circle, a once connected part of the Newark Earthworks complex of 2,000 years ago -- when on Saturday night, May 3, the Aztec Dancers will process out into the ancient enclosure. With their headdresses of pheasant and peacock feathers, and with drum and song, they will help make a connection between our culture and theirs, times long past and living time today, between Querétaro and Teotihuacán and Stonehenge and Licking County, Ohio.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he sees connections where others just see extension cords. Make a link with him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 4-6-08
Jeff Gill

Elevate Your Game With John Wooden

John Wooden is at every NCAA basketball national championship, whether he makes it to the hall where it’s played or not.

No one has won more of them as a coach; shoot, no school has won more in their entire history than Wooden did at UCLA, ten of ‘em. (Adolph Rupp won four, and Kentucky has seven.)

He became the “Wizard of Westwood,” but he’s a Hoosier boy through and through, at 97 still giving the occasional interview, though his health – understandably – hasn’t left him free to make every home game the way he once did, let alone travel to the Final Four.

If you watch the coverage, you’ll hear his name. I can pretty much guarantee it.

Growing up in Indiana, and around basketball (I know, that was redundant), you heard about and even saw Wooden – so to speak. When my high school basketball team (full disclosure: I was the manager) played in the state semi-final game at Purdue, our pre-game meal was in a banquet room at the Holiday Inn with a ten foot tall black and white image of a young John Wooden on the wall.

He’s got gyms and post offices named for him from Martinsville, Indiana to the San Fernando Valley, and books of his counsel for coaching and for life are many.

But he says it all boils down to a seven point creed that was printed on a card his father, Joshua Wooden, gave him when he was a boy. Those simple statements Coach Wooden says gave him all he’s needed to build a successful and honorable life – see what you think.

Be true to yourself.
Make each day your masterpiece.
Help others.
Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.
Make friendship a fine art.
Build a shelter against a rainy day.
Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.

These seven lines are on cards John Wooden still hands out, now with pictures of both Joshua and his son John, and what Coach Wooden calls “Two sets of threes” from other counsel that his dad gave him.

The first set is:

Never lie.
Never cheat.
Never steal.

And then:

Don’t whine.
Don’t complain.
Don’t make excuses.

You know, as a life philosophy, you don’t need much more than that. Plus, a really good recruiting strategy that includes having a beach nearby. But if it were just about the beach, Kansas wouldn’t be in the Final Four, so give Coach Wooden the credit.

Kansas, of course, is where the inventor of the game of basketball, James Naismith, closed out his coaching career, which began at the literal beginning in a Springfield, MA YMCA with some peach baskets. He is, ironically, the only losing basketball coach Kansas has ever had – someone should have given him a Wooden card.

Personally, I hope someone gives the entire Cubs lineup a set of these cards this year, the 100th anniversary of the franchise’s last World Series win. They’re gonna need some character building sentiments to buck them up through another year of happy futility.

My take on the Cubs’ plight is simply that you don’t get to play in the most beautiful ballpark in the major leagues (sorry, Boston, what’s with that big ugly green thing in left field?) and also play in the World Series. And any true Cubs fan will tell you – if the choice is between a World Series win while playing at suburban Megacorp Stadium, or losing the pennant again at Wrigley Field, we’ll take the Friendly Confines.

Friday, April 11, from 8 pm until who knows when at Brews Too (their basement bar located waaay upstairs), “Heavens to Betsy” and other musical friends of the Licking County Coalition for Housing are having a benefit concert. Titled “Home Again,” the musicians involved are giving the ten bucks a head to help alleviate homelessness in Licking County. What else you spend is up to you, but you can get a fun evening while helping keep others from a desperate one.

If enough people show up, they might even play “Freebird.”

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; his Wrigley Field memories are rich and full, while he knows little about World Series victors of the last century. Tell him about the Yankees at knapsack77@gmail.com.

[Link set for last weekend's Licking County Jail Ministries series of stories is on down, just keep scrolling -- thanks! jbg]

Faith Works 3-29-08
Jeff Gill

How Simple Life Is, Or Can Be

Spiritual disciplines have some constants, like the written prayers of your tradition (from the “Lord’s Prayer” to entire prayer books), wordless prayer (see Romans 8), time spent in solitude (think Bill Murray in “The Razor’s Edge”), and with the gathered community (often known as “goin’ to church”).

There are also the variables growing out of our unique gifts – song for some, art for others. Making lists, keeping journals: these are all spiritual disciplines that I’m happy to commend, but not as a one-size-fits for all comers.

Along with my Bible reading practice, I find poetry reading a very useful tool for prayer. Not just religious poetry (although George Herbert started me on this, and is still a constant companion), but the craft of paring down words and forms to express the heart and soul sets off a sympathetic echo for me.

Sometimes the echo is in reaction against something I read in a poem. Garrison Keillor, the radio humorist of “Prairie Home Companion,” also has a brief daily piece called “The Writer’s Almanac” on NPR stations, with some literary birthdates and milestones for the day, and a short poem. I don’t often get to hear the broadcast, but you can sign up for a daily e-mail with the text of the almanac and poem.

Over Easter week, Keillor has some wonderful poems that added to my experience of Holy Week. Then the usual secular poetry came back in the cycle, with a pleasant sonnet titled “You Made Crusty Bread Rolls . . .”

Gary Johnson, I find, is head of research for the “Jeopardy!” quiz show, and has been married for over 40 years to the same woman from their hometown of Omaha, now living in Topanga Canyon on the edge of Los Angeles. And I’m happy for him! He wrote this sonnet about a dinner and quiet evening at home with his spouse, closing with two lines that includes the statement “How simple life is.”

Can anyone argue with that, after a recitation of salmon and dill and garlic and olive oil, jeans and stylish green t-shirts, “candles and linens and silver”?

“How simple life is. We buy a fish. We are fed.” Really? The fish comes from an Alaskan salmon farm or wild from declining ocean fisheries, the silver from deep in the earth and forges in China, the t-shirt out of an Indonesian factory. Dill probably grown in Venezuela or India; maybe the garlic came from California, but the olive oil from Italy or Turkey, and brie in the crusty bread rolls from France.

The lights of Topanga Canyon are powered by nuclear energy from Diablo Canyon, or natural gas from Canada, or coal mined out of Black Mesa alongside the Hopi Reservation in Arizona – as is the oven that cooked the salmon and garlic.

How simple life is? To eat, to love, those are simple things, and to be thankful – but thankfulness in the world today I think requires a little more care and attention to what we’re thankful for.

Bill McKibben is an author, a Methodist Sunday school teacher at his congregation in New England, and someone who has helped me reflect and respond to the complexity of modern life with simple faith leavened by a more comprehensive understanding. “Deep Economy” is his best known recent book, subtitled “The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.”

He’s going to speak on the Denison campus, up the hill in Granville and in Herrick Hall (the round building behind Talbot Hall of Science, next to the Slayter parking garage). Wednesday night, April 2, at 8:00 pm, McKibben will speak to students but in terms I’m sure that will be of interest to all, and I’m looking forward to the question and answer time following most of all.

I want to hear what kind of questions the students ask, and I know from previous experience that McKibben is at his best in the back and forth, explaining the implications of the simpler life he suggests should replace the “More” that is the one word poem of today.

And thank you, Gary Johnson, for getting me thinking about it all with your poem.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; one of his prayer disciplines is to read the tags on his clothes when he puts them on in the morning, and lifting up each country where they were made. Tell him about your prayer practices at knapsack77@gmail.com.

[Scroll down for the link set to the Newark Advocate series on the Jail Ministry program]

Notes From My Knapsack 3-30-08
Jeff Gill

Keeping Out of the Trash Heap

In our current economy, most of us are used to seeing senior citizens working at fast food joints.

The first time I saw a grey head wearing a uniform cap and name badged polo shirt asking “do you want fries with that” it was a bit jarring, but I’ve gotten used to it.

Trainers at those fast food joints have told me that there’s an obstacle seniors have to get past in order to be effective, lasting employees in a place like that.

It isn’t the pace, which grandma usually maintains better than her youthful co-workers. Older counter workers may need to sit down from time to time, but not as often as teenagers try to slip into a chair while on the clock.

The equipment holds few terrors for them, since the challenge of computer readout is small change compared to work they did forty years ago (now that thing woulda torn your arm off!) and the many different devices they’ve mastered over the decades.

And they know how to make change. I’ll say no more.

What seniors have trouble adjusting to in the modern fast food workplace is . . . waste. Waste is built into the system in so many ways: pots dumped after twenty minutes, sandwiches tossed in the trash after forty, bags and pouches replaced with quarts of product (orange juice, shake mix, sauce) still visibly sloshing around in the bottom.

“Some of these old timers just can’t take it,” a guy told me (chain and name deleted to protect both the innocent and the guilty). “They want to scrape stuff out or set stuff back, and I tell ‘em it’s company policy and health code rules, and they can’t even take it home, and some just have to quit because it makes them sick to throw out so much stuff they think is good food.”

In most cases, it is good food, but the packaging or the pace just doesn’t allow for frugality of the sort they grew up with. It’s cheaper to toss it, and make more.

I was thinking about this the other day as I was cooking and baking for Easter Sunday, and scraping with a spatula right down to the clean bowl, with a vigor not my own. My long-deceased grandmother was leaning over behind me, watching to make sure I wasted as little as possible.

She wouldn’t have survived one shift at a fast food business.

She might have liked Bill McKibben, though. Author of the recent book “Deep Economy,” he’s also written “Hope: Human and Wild,” and “The Age of Missing Information.” He will be up on the Denison campus in Granville on Wed., April 2, speaking at 8:00 pm in Herrick Hall (the funny round building past Talbot Science Hall).

“Deep Economy” is subtitled “The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.” McKibben makes the practical, ethical, and spiritual case that we can’t build our economy on the value of waste and the imperatives of “more” for much longer. He’s got some questions for us to wrestle with about the meaning of life and what really makes for quality – quality of life, of lives in community, and for a future worth beginning right now.

Is it possible that “more” no longer equals “better”? Could less be best, and small beautiful after all? And what do we need to say and do as a community to make that better future?

It may start with a spatula, and a clean bowl, not to mention cooking a bit more at home, with food that comes a little closer down the road to your counter-top.

See you next week at Herrick Hall!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he makes skewed versions of global recipes with local products, and they aren’t often inedible. If they are, there’s always fast food . . . send him your recipe, righteously twisted, at knapsack77@gmail.com.

FAITH BEHIND BARS -- Licking County Jail Ministries on Easter Weekend 2008

Hooray for the Newark Advocate! This is a remarkable multi-part story about a remarkable ministry (and yes, i'm more than a bit biased, from being involved in getting it going in 1989-93, and being president of it 2001-3). There is really almost no other locally supported, one-staffer, volunteer-based, comprehensive ministry like it around the country; there are large cities that have trouble maintaining a co-operative ministry like this, and almost no smaller counties like this one. Two dozen churches pooling resources and laying aside doctrinal matters (yes, they come up, and that's what board meetings are for!) to serve the staff and inmate population with a heaping helping of Good News right where they are.

This account confirms that "lives do change", which is why Scott Hayes is one of the central characters of this narrative, which probably embarrasses him a bit, but it's all true! There are many folks who think that lives don't change (see the comments in some of the stories below), and that's why we need to tell this tale:

http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080323/NEWS01/803230302/1002/NEWS17

Other stories in the series, and click the video/gallery links -- there's a baptism in there (actually, a couple), and just some amazing stuff showing what a ministry in action looks like:

Women's ministries: http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080323/NEWS01/803230301/1002/NEWS17

Volunteers make an impact in the "Be A Friend" program: http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080323/NEWS01/803230311/1002/NEWS17

Storybook program: http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080322/NEWS01/803220303/1002/NEWS17

Prayer returning an inmate "home": http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080322/NEWS01/803220301/1002/NEWS17

A Better Life (the comments on this first installment stayed active all weekend): http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080321/NEWS01/803210302/1002/NEWS17

One inmate's story: http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080321/NEWS01/803210338/1002/NEWS17

One volunteer's story: http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080321/COMMUNITIES01/303210023/1002/NEWS17

Baptisms in the jail -- http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080320/VIDEO/80321002/1002/NEWS17 -- this baptistry is actually under the communion table/altar, and was bought by the LCJM in 1991, and getting that big old hunk of wood and polymer up there was an epic struggle! The chaplain fills it with a hose, and drains it by siphon.

Many other short videos are linked to each of these stories; check 'em out while they're still posted! Lives are transformed, and hope shines out. You'll be glad you spent the time on these.

The Vampire Lady nails it . . .
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/03/go_tell_it_on_the_mountain_aga.html
. . . but we knew she was a good writer already. Now, this!

For Easter weekend, here's someone worth getting to know --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulos_Faraj_Rahho
May his flock grieve his loss, remember his life, and keep his faith!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Notes From My Knapsack 3-23-08
Jeff Gill

A Bit of Life, Everlasting

Snow on Easter morning is by no means unusual in central Ohio.

It can make you feel like spring will never arrive, but the brevity and transience of it usually just makes a new season seem all the more certain.

Spring by the celestial calendar just took a bow, day and night being equal. The sun rises at the same spot it did last September and will, God willing, next September, these being autumn and vernal equinoxes.

Now the days start to stretch out, and the sun’s angle warms the earth deeper and longer, triggering all kinds of root action and sprouting, both your perennials and the perennial weeds. Bulbs shoot up first, their store of energy gathered up last year, just waiting for the subsoil temperatures to set off the green fuse.

Trees are starting to circulate their sweetest sap, drawn from moisture below the earth and cycling sugars born high above the forest floor in last year’s leaves. You can see taps and hooded buckets, the implements of syrup production, hanging from the trunks of maples all over Licking County, not the least of which are The Dawes Arboretum’s high tech pouch and tube collection system.

And the grass is thinking very seriously about growing.

For the celebration of Easter, so early on this year’s calendar, the tradition in Western Christendom is to follow the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which is to say, this weekend.

Judaism uses a truly lunar calendar, so Passover, one of the roots of the Passion narrative at the heart of Christian observances, is some weeks off. Eastern Orthodoxy chose centuries ago to stay with the echo of the Hebrew calendar, so your Orthodox friends just finished the second week of Lent (and a rigorous, no meat or dairy Lenten fast it is), and their Easter celebration is yet a ways off.

This season is still closely bound for everyone in reflections on new life, new hope, new birth. Lambing and planting and first fruits and mower maintenance are all wound around resurrection and renewal from mud and grit and decayed plants, turning swiftly into tender blossomings and wild revivals of life, often where you neither expect or want it.

But there it is.

Catholic Christians and other liturgical traditions have a history around ending Holy Saturday with an Easter Vigil, a series of readings that echo the lessons and carols of Christmas Eve, and erupting at midnight with a blaze of flame and light in the heart of darkness. Processions around the church with the new light are part of that vigil both East and West, Orthodox and Catholic, and even a riotous ringing of bells depending on your neighbors.

Protestant Christians, having only begun to reappropriate special services for Easter week in the last few decades (Lutherans and Anglicans having never left them), took the Easter Vigil and did a typically Protestant thing with it – they weren’t going to stay up late, but they would get up early.

So the sunrise service was born.

In our area, there are many more sunrise or “Son-rise Services” than Easter Vigils, though the students at Denison are renewing the tradition in their own way late on Saturday at Swasey Chapel, high above Raccoon Creek’s valley. Unsurprisingly, college students aren’t too fased by the idea of staying up late.

Many folks who don’t attend much or any worship of any sort are willing to stagger out into the Sunday pre-dawn dark and find their way to the Midland Theater for the Newark community sunrise service, as long as a good breakfast follows (donations for the Jail Ministry program).

If you are part of a sunrise service at Dawes or a vigil bonfire behind your church or just wait for the main service where you can show off a new outfit on your toddler, may your Easter usher in a season of new life and new hope . . . and may the old saw be broken that there’s three snows after the forsythia blooms!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about new life in your neck of the woods at knapsack77@gmail.com.

* * *

Faith Works 3-22-08
Jeff Gill

A Pastor’s Heart, A Shepherd’s Love

“Death Comes For the Archbishop” is a novel published in 1927 by Willa Cather. The cleric so named was Latour in the book, but he was based on the very real Jean Baptiste Lamy, founding pastor of St. Francis de Sales in Newark.

In pre-Civil War era Licking County, this Frenchman came as the result of a missionary call from his homeland, to serve a bishop based in Cincinnati who had put out a call for priests. So Father Lamy crossed the ocean, half a continent, and came to a still wild land, planting parishes in Danville, Mount Vernon, and right here in Newark.

He was effective enough in this challenging work that he was, to Lamy’s own surprise, named the first bishop of New Mexico in 1850, even before he had ever been there. Cather’s novel begins, sadly for us, with his journey starting in Cincinnati heading west, and ends, after building churches and chapels and a cathedral, with his death, and burial beneath the floor of the nave, where Archbishop Lamy rests today.

You might visit Santa Fe someday, founded 200 years before Licking County was founded (that’s right, as we have a bicentennial, they will observe a quadricentennial, the oldest capital city in the US, established as such in 1610, about two years after the settlement was founded). Near the central plaza is the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, finished in 1868. In front of the Romanesque church, with French details, is a statue of Archbishop Lamy.

Or you can drive out Granville Street from downtown Newark, and look up at the second floor window of the Lamy Center of St. Francis’ parish, and see a statue of him there.

“Death Comes For the Archbishop” was the headline in many papers a few weeks back, with the discovery of the body of the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Iraq.

Paulos Faraj Rahho lived in Mosul, near the site of Biblical “Ninevah” of Jonah’s story, for most of his 65 years. A priest, and part of the long-standing but now dwindling Christian community of Iraq, his eastern tradition of Catholicism is recognized by the Vatican, and his last trip out of Iraq was to attend Pope John Paul II’s funeral.

Archbishop, or “Mar” Paulos did not leave his people much or for long, though he was offered shelter and protection in the west as his life was threatened over and over again by radical Islamist groups. Moslem clerics in Mosul offered Mar Rahho their own bodyguards to aid him, such was the respect he held throughout the community as leader of his small but faithful Chaldean Christians (about 20,000 out of 2 million).

That respect was no doubt part of why he was targeted, and finally kidnapped last month, in a flurry of gunfire that killed his bodyguards, ending with the archbishop being thrown into a car trunk and taken away.

But this pastor was not done caring for his flock, even in imminent danger of death. He still had a cell phone in a pocket of his robe, and he called his office from the trunk, telling them urgently not to negotiate with terrorists and especially to refuse to pay any ransom for his safe return.

According to Asia News, his grieving staff said after Mar Paulos’ body was found in a shallow grave outside of the city, “He believed this money would not be paid for good works and would be used for killing and more evil actions.”

Just three months earlier, Mar Paulos said this: “We, Christians of Mesopotamia, are used to religious persecution and pressures by those in power. After Constantine, persecution ended only for Western Christians, whereas in the East threats continued. Even today we continue to be a Church of martyrs.”

On this Holy Saturday, as many of us anticipate the joy of Easter morning here in “the West,” remember in your prayers of celebration all those around the world who still must cautiously proclaim “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed.”

And be thankful that we can say it out loud, with a smile and a song, inside the church building, and walking down the street.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; sing your song of joy for him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 3-15-08
Jeff Gill

Don’t Skip the Middle Part

“Unseen heavenly storehouses laden with snow . . .”

That’s a line easily brought to mind these days, a piece of Chris Tomlin’s song “Indescribable.” The image is directly, like so much of contemporary Christian music, from the Bible, out of the Book of Job.

In the final climactic revelation of God from the whirlwind to Job himself, the string of questions with which God answers Job’s question about the meaning of human suffering includes “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?” (Job 38: 22, NIV)

Many of us have read the start and finish of Job’s tale, set among “the writings,” the “Ketuvim” right before Psalms and Proverbs. 42 chapters long, even those who say they know the story likely only have read chapters 1 and 2, and skipped to 38 through the concluding and very short close in chapter 42.

What about chapters 3 through 37?

Holy Week, which begins with Palm Sunday tomorrow, would be a good time to read those pages hidden in plain sight. Just as Christians can tend to want to jump from the high place of Jesus’ triumphal procession into Jerusalem, and kids waving greenie things in church, right to Easter and resurrection and kids hunting eggs, we skip from chapter 2 to 38, or even straight to 42.

The in-between, though, is where we live most of the time, and what holds Holy Week together in the Christian narrative. And the Book of Job wouldn’t have the lasting impact it does without the three friends, and the angry young man (yes, the original angry young man).

For an angry young man, we have Elihu, who steps in about chapter 32, having listened courteously to his elders, the three friends of Job named Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar (you can see why these names didn’t catch on like Benjamin, Levi, and Nathan did).

They each have tried to explain to Job why he must have deserved his suffering in some way, and dealt kindly with his response to each one, with Job growing more passionate in his confidence in God’s justice, but his equal certainty that the pain and misery he is in can have nothing to do with his actions or intentions.

Elihu’s tirade is interesting because he is specifically described as angry at Job for not accepting responsibility, and the older men for not being able to defend and maintain God’s innocence as to this injustice (which we know, from chapters 1 & 2, is actually very much in question – God does specifically allow this to happen, through no fault of Job’s).

When I read the discourses of Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar and Elihu, I hear things I’ve said myself, about social ills, civic problems, personal situations, even in response to pain and suffering. And when I hear in my mind’s amphitheater the words of Job, sitting on his dunghill, covered with boils, his tongue thick and dry, struggling to make clear his faith and confidence in an ultimate justice which he cannot account for, I hear words I’ve said myself, in private prayer, and occasionally in argument with others.

The “Why” of cruelty and senseless accidents does not go away in the light of eternity. Job affirms, in one of the best known passages plucked out of this little known stretch of Scripture, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” (19: 25-27 RSV)

This is seen by many as a powerful witness to Jesus Christ, a prophecy of what the human condition cries out for in the heart of life, and a description of what God promises to provide.

But you don’t, I maintain, get the full force of this statement of faith without immersing yourself in the debate that goes before, to which these words are a direct, connected response.

Just as you can’t really taste the joy of Easter if you skip from palm branches to chocolate eggs. Take the journey, step by step, and take Job along with you.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him the story of your journey at knapsack77@gmail.com.

[a poem by William Stafford, read today by Garrison Keillor on "Writer's Almanac" - jbg]

Home Town

Peace on my little town, a speck in the safe,
comforting, impersonal immensity of Kansas.
Benevolence like a gentle haze on its courthouse
(the model of Greek pillars to me)
on its quiet little bombshell of a library,
on its continuous, hidden, efficient sewer system.

Sharp, amazed, steadfast regard on its more upright citizenry,
my nosy, incredible, delicious neighbors.

Haunting invasion of a train whistle to my friends,
moon-gilding, regular breaths of the old memories to them-
the old whispers, old attempts, old beauties, ever new.

Peace on my little town, haze-blessed, sun-friended,
dreaming sleepy days under the world-champion sky.

Lawrence, Kansas
c. Fall 1941
out of "Another World Instead"

Notes From My Knapsack 3-16-08
Jeff Gill

Is Your Street a Fjord?

From the seat of a basket-laden old bike, the streets of my paper route looked like fjords this time of year.

The high walls of plowed snow started calving off bergs in the late afternoon onto the shiny blacktop of the street, almost looking like dark still water. March snows work against the higher sun angle, meaning that the roads would clear, but freeze quickly in a glare of ice as soon as the sun’s direct light dropped even before dark fell.

Growing up further north and off of Lake Michigan, the snow of Christmas tended to form a base which ebbed and grew, but never vanished until past St. Patrick’s Day. Shoveling took extra oomph to toss over the ever higher embankments.

What I loved about that time of year was flying my Ford Trimotor with Bernt Balchen towards the South Pole, where I’d meet Paul Siple, the Eagle Scout who won a contest to go with Admiral Byrd on an expedition.

Yes, just try to imagine that happening today – it would be an on-line competition and the winner would get a live uplink for their classroom, but to go with them? Ha.

No, I didn’t go myself, but in the 60’s and 70’s I got interested in all the Shackelton, Scott, Amundsen tales of polar adventure, right down to the story of the submarine Nautilus running right under the North Pole.

Where my imagination ran more amok than usual was in making my bike a plane, and the necessary landscape of street and sidewalks a geography of adventure, with each driveway the bumpy landing zone marked out for my craft, where there were no runways, and vivid since many driveways weren’t shoveled, either. That would be when the dads got back from their shift at the steel mill, after the sun went down.

Sometimes I was Noel Wien, flying a Misso Standard or even a Curtis Jenny through the Alaskan bush, looking for a starving camp of prospectors. Most often I was flying along with Balchen or Bennett over the poles in a Trimotor, the plane which I’d actually seen up close at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.

Books like “The Sledge Patrol” by David Howatch, set in Greeland’s fjords, or “Snow Treasure” by Marie McSwigan about the Norwegian kids who helped smuggle gold past the Nazis on their sleds to a waiting ship in a real, honest-to-Norway fjord: these were the context for my paper-delivering reveries. “Snow Treasure” didn’t have a plane in it, and there’s only a brief sighting overhead in “The Sledge Patrol,” but I had no trouble extending an aviation component to my internal versions.

I learned later that the events in “Snow Treasure” probably didn’t happen, but on the other hand I learned that Paul Siple, Eagle in the Antarctic, went on to get a Ph.D. and invented “wind chill” and the original scale for measuring it.

The point wasn’t the history as much as the immersion I could feel, gliding on my path between grey-blue walls of snow and ice, bumping to a skidding stop, and making a delivery. The Gary Post-Tribune wasn’t sulfa drugs or emergency rations, but it was my job to get it through the snow, and I took pride in keeping on my bike when other route carriers gave up and slogged on foot through the snow. (Purely pompous paperboy note: those other ones also went door to door direct, and I stayed on sidewalks. Which always helped at Christmas tip time, since many folks didn’t like you walking right past the front windows and squishing onto their porches. You saved time, but like I said, it paid off at Christmas, along with getting the screen door latched after delivery.)

Then you turned in the runway, got moving, gear up, and into the air – onto the street – and circled to find your point of entry through the mountain ranges to the next bush camp or science base or hidden military installation, and then swooping past the glacier’s face to a narrow landing zone, marked (in my mind’s eye) with smoke grenades laid by grateful troops down below.

Spring was almost a disappointment after a few months of that.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell your story about stories to him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

For a little more context, click the video at the head of my link blog, http://latentmaniacaltendencies.blogspot.com and read the note posted with it at YouTube . . . more to come.

Not to be confused with an endorsment, but what a nice and fully informed advocate for her mom . . . I can only imagine dinner table conversation as she grew up:

Chelsea Clinton, standing with a couple of happy Republicans -- the Little Guy said she was smart (true) and she did her best to defend the Democrat stance on federalism (didn't sell me, but a good effort)

Faith Works 2-8-08
Jeff Gill

Striding Across the Sky, Among the Stars

When the melted snow of daylight hours is freezing to a glaze below your feet, and a wind creaks the young oak in the front yard, it may not be a prayerful time to be outdoors.

A few nights back, I was caught looking up, not quite frozen, but feeling a still moment that brought a memory of warmth to the nighttime.

Directly overhead in the southern sky was Orion, the Hunter. One of the winter sky’s most recognizable constellations; three stars for a belt, a dangled scabbard of two more angled back, a jaunty red Betelgeuse as cap, arm outstretched towards the bull’s horns of Taurus, aiming for the heart made of the Pleiades, the seven star cluster hanging to the west.

I’ve looked at and pointed out this sight many times, on Scout campouts and collecting for my paper route and going from car to meeting and out again later to head home. When the winter evening is far gone, Orion is now chasing his prey past the height of the sky and down the far slope, Sirius chasing his master with all the enthusiasm of a dog on the hunt.

Those longer ago recollections of looking up and seeing this great figure striding across the sky, shrouded by my own breath misting up into the night, are now mingled with a very particular time of this ancient sight.

Fifteen years ago last week, I stood on the end of a dock at Kibbutz Nof Ginosaur, stretching into the Harp-shaped Sea, Har-Kinnereth, the Sea of Galilee. Thanks to the kindness of John and Marguerite Jones, may they rest in joyful peace, I was at the last night of ten spent in Israel, with a caravan of clergy that had landed at Tel Aviv and was now about to round the bend of Caesarea the next day and return to Lod airport where late the next night we would take flight back home.

We had been out on these waters the day before in a fisherman’s boat, reading just what you’d expect a bunch of Christians to read from the Gospels in a moment like that. The outlet into the Jordan River we had crossed, and rolled up through Tiberias to this guesthouse in an Israeli kibbutz.

Night fell, my roommate was watching (no, really) “Tango and Cash” dubbed into Hebrew on the TV, and I walked out to the dock, and to the end. It was warm, though the Israelis thought it a cool March night, so I was alone.

At the end of the dock, I saw Orion standing on his head in the still water, and then looked up to see this vast figure in his usual posture, walking out of myth into my awareness. Hebrew myth had him a giant, a fool, who challenged God and was bound to the heavens as punishment; Greek myth wavered between Orion and Adonis; the Babylonians saw a shepherd, while Norse mythology a goddess weaving, either Frigg or Freya.

Jesus saw this constellation, on a cool spring night. This I knew more certainly than I was sure of any other site or object that I had been shown the last ten days. Jesus looked up from his journey and saw just this, as had the boy I was knocking on doors years ago, as my loved ones were, a bit lower in the sky, right now – well, not right now, but would in about five or six hours, but these stars, this sky.

I looked at Orion, and saw Him. And I see Jesus still, not in the shape of the stars, but as one looking on them, perhaps now from the other side. To see the stars over Kinnereth’s lake, to see their reflection in those waters, is one of my more permanent memories.

Somehow Jerusalem became a bit more real in that moment, and the cross, and the empty tomb (or tombs, we saw a few). Not the items or objects, but the reality of the event, and the connection to my life, and all our lives.

How’s your Lent going? And don’t forget to spring your clocks forward, ready to rise . . .

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your star-strewn story at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 3-8-08
Jeff Gill

No Doubt Who Wrote This

Larry Fugate and I share at least this one quality – our writing is not likely to be confused for each others’ or much of anyone else’s.

For those of you who enjoy our commentary and columnizing, thanks for your patronage! In the newspaper business, from the days of “Benj. Franklin, printer” to the present internet-ified era, we’ve never been quite sure if you want the ads and put up with the content, or want a heaping helping of fresh, informative text and sift through the ads to find it.

A healthy balance is probably what we all benefit from, advertisers not the least.

I’ve written for publications in a wide variety of venues, and worked alongside quite a few journalists, freelance writers, and others who make part or all of their living in the salt mines of prose construction.

Some of us write better than others, a few write easily, while not a few are just prolific. Some of us write better on some days than others, others can handle deadlines while they leave many distraught -- but we all know that writing creatively when the Muse is not in residence can be worse than shoveling sand.

Writing columns is a uniquely rewarding task, but I’ve watched a number of folks over the years dive into the work with enthusiasm, and then suddenly hit a wall a few weeks or months in. They realize “I have no good ideas today, and not only do I need to come up with one, but I’ll have to next week, and the week after that, and . . .”

And they quit. No shame in that – like knitting or welding, it isn’t for everyone. Especially if it isn’t a required task for your job, though clergy know this sort of dilemma when it comes to preaching (plus, for many, a regular newsletter column). Clergy, and writers who have to keep writing columns or personal essays or what have you for their work, learn how to deal with “a season of dryness” and push through, or they find a new field of work.

When you’re writing columns for no pay, no job requirement, and no reason other than to see your name in print, you usually can just wait for lightning to strike. Which is what makes the tale of Tim Goeglein so odd.

Mr. Goeglein was personally hired by Karl Rove to work in the White House Office of Public Liason, co-ordinating Bush administration initiatives with faith-based and religious conservative groups. He’s from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and while he’s been in Washington, D.C. he’s semi-regularly sent “guest columns” on a variety of subjects back to his hometown paper. The frequency of them has increased the last few months, no doubt to prepare the way for a return home to run for elected office in Indiana.

This is where I feel both sad and angry. There’s a blog written by a former columnist in Fort Wayne, who now lives in Detroit, called www.nancynall.com, and I often comment there myself, having been referred to Nancy’s work by a friend years ago. Nancy and others of us were throwing comments around in the wake of William F. Buckley’s death last week, and I looked right away to see what Tim Goeglein had written, since – to be perfectly candid – his writing style was so odd as to make us all enjoy making fun of it.

Nancy looked further the next evening, and read, or felt a bit more oddness than usual, and did a simple Google-check of a phrase.

Between the end of that sentence and a week later is the revelation that the fellow had stolen vast swaths of other people’s writing, in (as of this writing) 20 of his last 38 columns, in some cases almost the whole length of the piece.

He even plagiarized the pope.

And you can imagine that, once this was all out and started to echo around the internet, Tim Goeglein was humiliated and finally turned in his quickly accepted resignation. I’m thinking running for governor is out, too.

Plagiarism is paradoxically easier to catch, and more common today, than perhaps at any point in history. Ask a teacher in high school or college, let alone an editor, how they feel about plagiarism. For that reason alone, as a chastening example, the job loss seems fair. Crooks on “Law & Order” don’t seem to understand that cops can pull cell phone records, and writers should know that Google goes both ways.

I’ve often come to the end of a column thinking “I wish I wrote that better.” Trust me when I say that worry has never caused me to then think “so, let’s see who else said it better, and print that as my words.” Why a White House official would do so may be the story that is yet to be told.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he doesn’t much like any form of theft, including plagiarism. Tell your original story to him at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Words fail me in describing what went on yesterday at Nancy Nall's blog -- http://nancynall.com/2008/02/29/copycat/#comments -- and i'm both proud and saddened to have played a small constructive role in the whole bizarre thing (see the last couple days before "Copycat" to see how this came about). The "resignation" is now front of the Nytimes.com and WashingtonPost.com, but will soon fade. The puzzle of why someone would do something so stupidly public and easily catchable will linger.

Anyhow, i'm sure we've all helped set a Nancy Nall record in the comment box: 278 when last i looked. This was truly a team effort led by a sharp journalist who happens to have a regular blog . . . or is that a regular blogger who happens to be a sharp journalist?

My dad's new toy down in Pharr, Texas; he calls him "a Danish sentry"

Faith Works 3-1-08
Jeff Gill

Marching Into a Sea of Numbers

Christians aren’t exactly known for their math skills.

Maybe “be fruitful and multiply” and “they divided his garments,” but generally the practice of adding one to one to one and getting not three, but one – well, that makes you an unlikely candidate for treasurer.

There is one math problem that gets frequent discussion around Christian circles, and that’s how to calculate ten percent (hint: divide by ten).

The Biblical tithe gets a fair amount of discussion and debate, with some arguing that the storehouse tithe spoken firmly of in Malachi is still binding on believers today, and others looking at tithing from one set of qualifications or another.

Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, hold to a firm tithe on the gross that is used for what the storehouse tithe was intended to do, which was feeding the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the sojourner. The “Bishop’s storehouse” is meant to provide for member needs, so that they can count on the faith community for support and not a governmental entity, but is often used for general relief as well.

Islamic folk have a smaller percentage that goes to the poor and needy, but the “zakat” is also for them a firm number, easily calculated. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll call it 2.5% of your gross income, beyond the amount of your income needed for basic subsistence.

What bothers me as a Christian pastor is that so many believers and couples don’t know what 100% is, which puts every other percentage into play.

What’s 100%, and why do I care?

Well, if you don’t know what you make a year, then you can’t honestly make plans for the year in giving or saving or anything else by percent or even in round numbers. So many people only know what they make an hour, or a week, maybe what they bring in per month.

If I were to suggest to such a person that the monthly figure could be put times twelve, there might be an angry “sure, I knew that” coming back at me. OK, fine.

But you need to know what your personal or household gross, or total income is before any other percentage has any meaning, from giving to savings to taxes.

A for instance – many households see their tax refund as “magic money,” a kind of bonus that shows up to brighten their springtime.

But the reality is that the refund is your money, withheld beyond what you owed in taxes, returned with no benefit from savings or investment. You earned it, pay period by pay period, but if you enjoy general ignorance of what you’re making, you won’t be bothered by what is or isn’t coming home.

This is why I’d say, before anyone gets out in the weeds of debating what constitutes a proper modern-day tithe, they need to know a) how much does this household bring, in total, from our paid efforts per year, and b) add up all the federal, state, local, property, and calculated sales taxes, and divide b) by a) and multiply times 100. That will tell you what percent of your gross income goes to care for today’s poor and needy, maintain education, and other functions once provided by religious bodies.

Some folks get all rhetorical and think “I pay half my income in taxes,” and others have no idea how big the number is, never having considered the question. I’ll tip y’all off that most of you will come up with a number somewhere between 18% and 40%, with a third most common.

Is doing that math a religious duty? Nope, but if you think your faith calls you to be responsible and accountable for your overall stewardship, I’d think that this is a necessary first step towards your religious duty.

So, if you’re entirely average, you’re now looking at a bit more than 75% of what you earn in total. What will you do with that? Set aside ten percent for the work of your faith community?

That’s fine, except if you think doing so means you can do whatever you want with the stuff that’s left over, I’ll hazard a guess that God would rather you kept your money, although the church treasurer would have different opinions in all likelihood.

The point of tithing, however defined, is to remind us that the money we receive is a gift, no matter how hard we worked for the paycheck. We give so that we learn how all our income is a blessing, which is from God, and all that we have will be God’s again, if not into a landfill. Our giving is where we come to understand what the true nature of what we “have” can be, and starts the process of looking at everything from a different, eternal point of view.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him how your church deals with stewardship and giving at knapsack77@gmail.com.

[soft, distant whisper . . .] "Baseball season, baseball season..." [fades slowly, repeating]
Cubs, 1969 –

A summer day, a pennant race — Fergie Jenkins pitching to Randy Hundley;
Joe Pepitone, Glenn Becker, Don Kessinger, Ron Santo;
Billy Williams, Jose Cardenal, Ernie “Let’s Play Two!” Banks; Leo Durocher in the dugout, Jack Brickhouse in the WGN booth. Park district bus tours to 1:10 pm weekday games, coming back with mini-bats ("kids, don’t swing those at each other!") and real cloth baseball caps in Cubbie blue. Vienna red hots, and Heilmann’s Old Style beer scent on our sneakers, even as we drove past the steel mills (still operating, still erupting smoke and flame) on the way home.

There is an angel with a flaming sword standing between me and that Wrigley Field scene.

Notes From My Knapsack 3-2-08
Jeff Gill

Ohio Gets National Attention, Not Bad News

Ohio has gotten some major national press in the last few months, over home foreclosure, declining property values, job loss (well, second in this one area to Michigan), college grad departure rates, and bankruptcy.

Yippee.

Tuesday will give us a little different coverage with the primary vote, since against all expectations back in Iowa and New Hampshire, the Democratic presidential race is open while the Republicans are busy laughing over Nader’s entry into the race as an Independent (no final word from Ron Paul yet on a third or, uh, fourth party run).

How do the tough economic circumstances impact the decision on who will run for the D’s in November? Some say the proposals of Clinton and Obama are barely distinguishable, and that leaves style – advantage Obama. Others say that the ability to deliver complicated policy maneuvers through Congress takes a skilled and experienced politician – advantage Hillary.

Others say we need a strong international presence which is willing to project force to defend the national interest against global terror blocs – advantage Republicans, already forming up behind McCain. And some say we should treat foreign entanglements like the flu and wash our hands of ‘em, while stripping back the feddle gov’mint as small as we can get it – there’s your Paul/Nader support.

So, which course will Ohioans follow? I wouldn’t betcha a nickel on any of ‘em, but a close vote in November is likely, while in the short run I think Hillary will turn out the most core supporters, whatever early March weather throws at us next Tuesday between 6:30 am and 7:30 pm. Clinton will win Licking County on the D-side, but Obama will make the state as a whole closer than Bill would like.

And on we go to Denver and the convention? Could be . . .

Local races will be all about name recognition, and the best known folk will beat the lesser known names. Levies and bond issues will be the focus of interest and discussion, mainly for schools but Fire/EMS and cemeteries and senior services are way up there this go ‘round.

Full disclosure: I have a part-time job that takes me in and out of the Licking County Court Annex, aka the old Children’s Home, quite often. If I wanted to stay quiet and comfortable, I’d want to stay put there, but in the debate over the Senior Levy a bunch of chatter has focused on that building and its likely demise.

Folks, if this were an historic church building, it would be doomed. If George Washington slept here (a neat trick, given that he died in 1799 and it was built in 1886), it would still be slated for demo. The problem is that to save the building you’d have to start by pulling the slate and cast-iron trusses off the top, and tear down the third floor. Then you’d have to rebuild either a new floor or just rebuild the roofline a story lower, at the cost right there of many millions – at which point you’d still have a rabbit warren of small rooms with heavy masonry walls between them, with little adaptability for any purpose other than offices, which can be provided more cheaply any number of places.

The basement would need to be entirely dug out around the exterior and resealed and properly drained, as mold and damp are endemic in the gloomy depths now. Heating and cooling are currently provided room by room mostly, at major electric cost, while the wiring and phone lines would need a long-overdue upgrade. We’re getting into $13.5 million territory right there. It just isn’t worth it, and it isn’t historic enough for anyone to help pay for it.

I hope people understand I love history and respect greatly the particular history in the walls of this structure, which Jon Emler has done much to keep in the public eye. But I’ve rambled from the bat-filled attic to the depth of the old laundry and kitchen in the basement, and this building can’t be saved.

Designing the new senior center to echo the outline of the Licking County Children’s Home of 1886, and reincorporating some ornamental stonework, is a wonderful and appropriate gesture by the county officials in charge. Add to that the fact that Licking County school districts are across the board spending less per pupil than almost any other neighboring or state-wide comparable districts, and I can say honestly I hope both the seniors’ and the school levies up this Tuesday all pass.

As for the state funding system for education, well, that’s another day.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’d love to hear your ideas about how to reform the state funding formula at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 2-23-08
Jeff Gill

Worse Yet, The Subject Is Money Next Week

If I told you that it might be worth your while to go check out the website of http://www.relevantchurch.com in Tampa, Florida, it might just be another congregation doing something interesting on the internet.

You might go, you might not, but no big deal either way.

If I told you this was the church which also has the website http://30daysexchallenge.com, would you move a bit faster to the computer?

Which is clearly a part of the strategy, maybe even an outreach agenda, of this church plant which is largely younger couples and singles, which meets in a rented hall.

To be perfectly candid, when I first heard about “The 30 Day Sex Challenge” on TV, I assumed it was a cheap play for coverage – which worked, since I’m hearing about it in Ohio – and was more flash than substance.

After going to the website, particularly the blog they’ve set up for participants (which I’m sure is moderated verrrry closely), and from reading the guides they offer for download for free (as .pdfs) at http://blog.relevantchurch.com, I have to repent of my initial skepticism.

What the pastors are offering in their congregation, and to others who wish to participate over the internet, is a season that is clearly embedded in Lent, while not mentioning those 40 days and Sundays since their target audience is a largely unchurched bunch for whom Lent is something under the bed.

As for what going on in the bed, well . . .

This 30 day challenge is to be defined by the individuals and couples involved, between Valentine’s Day and Easter, and will be accented by sermons and studies in and through the church. But the core idea is that divorce and alienation is rampant, as people “hook up” casually and over-commit to work and amusements to the detriment of their marriages.

So Relevant Church is actually swinging a double–edged sword, starting with asking singles to commit to 30 days of NOT having sex. Many of us who are life-long church goers and committed Christians are saying, “Um, guys? Your job is to tell them they shouldn’t be having sex in casual relationships at all, not for 30 days.”

I’ll admit that was part of my initial reaction to the “30 Day Sex Challenge.” Looking closely at what the church is saying and doing, though, I have no doubt that this is their consistent teaching. But they know who they’re trying to reach, and to unchurched borderline seekers, they’re saying “Hey, we know this sounds crazy, but single folks, what if you spent 30 days without sex as an excuse not to communicate, and looked at your current relationships and approach to relationships during that time?”

It seems to be striking a chord. Will Relevant encourage them to not stop with 30 days of self-control and restraint? I think so.

And then there’s the challenge to married folk. They have lots of young folk with small kids, and double career strivers. What they’re challenging them to do is make a major commitment to each other, and it’s not just about sex, though that is unapologetically the baseline they’re proposing. Focus on each other, and your relationship, and make time and space and privacy for intimacy, and leave the bars and the BlackBerries and buddies behind. Just the two of you, and a time commited to closeness.

The study guides are very simple, which means folks will do them (Rick Warren should get a royalty), but they are affecting and engaging in how they use the point of married intimacy as a potential blessing from God, and not an oxymoronic punchline of a TV sitcom.

They recommend Bible readings and suggest reflections, with the Song of Songs prominently featured (well, duh). There is a starting questionnaire that is licensed from Willard Harley of Marriagebuilders.com, whose materials I’ve used in pre-marital counseling for years. He’s an excellent Christian counselor with much wisdom around marriage, and doing this questionnaire alone could open up marriages in growing directions, with or without the 30 days.

Before anyone writes me to say “no, the Song of Songs isn’t about couples and sex, but about the relationship between Christ and his church,” yes, I know the citation. But what about this: might God intend the healthy intimacy of a married couple to interpret for us the relationship between Christ and his church?

Kudos to Relevant Church, and Amen!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him where he’s off-base at knapsack77@gmail.com.

* * *

Notes From My Knapsack 2-24-08
Jeff Gill

Make More, Take More, Now or Later

If you’re working the plan properly, we all should be well into figuring and filing our taxes for 2007.

For some of us, that includes estimating our income for 2008 and getting a legally mandated head-start on paying those taxes, too.

We who proudly number ourselves among the self-employed include a number of odd categories that the Tax Code includes (yes, they call it a “code” right up front, which is mighty honest of ‘em).

Clergy, for instance, are often considered “self-employed” for tax purposes even when you serve a specific congregation. Many other so-called “independent contractors” are considered self-employed, which can be a nice deal for their employers.

This means you pay both halves of your FICA, also known as your Social Security payments. Some churches and other contractors offer offsets for that difference, but many working folk don’t even know their employer pays half when they do.

What really makes this interesting is that the feds, the state, and for many of us the local government when there’s an income tax all require you to estimate your income for the coming year. Well, if I knew that, would I be a free-lancer? Anyhow, I have goals, I have dreams, and a whole lotta hope.

On the other hand, I have to pay quarterly estimated taxes, often (usually) before I’ve actually gotten paid for the contract writing or teaching or speaking that I’ve done – being an adjunct or supply or freelance contributor means I’m at the end of the line, payroll-wise, which is just how it is.

What makes this a truly intriguing system is that if I estimate too low what I think I’ll make, that I’ll have to pay taxes on before I receive, then I have to pay an extra penalty on top of my additional tax obligation, for having “paid too little” in estimating the money.

Checking with the Lovely Wife, aka The Brains of the Outfit, she confirms that we’re “Okey Dokey” if we pay (in advance, remember) at least 90% of our taxes that we’re estimating. So if I earn 11% more than my wildest dreams or most prudent imaginings can calculate, I owe both the additional taxes and a little bonus to each of the Federal Treasury, to Gov. “Keno” Strickland’s coffers, and to my beloved village of Granville.

All this in the same country that solemnly declared after the last Christmas season that consumer spending was “only” up 3.5%. That’s an economic crisis, but 11% improvement of my lot is penalized – what’s the deal with the narrow 7.5% window of permissable success?

Candidates like Mike Huckabee can make lots of hay while the sun doesn’t shine on shenanigans like this. His IRS eliminating, national sales tax establishing plan doesn’t make a lick of sense when you try to break it down, but there’s a good reason why people feel unreasonable about the Infernal Revenue Service.

Which is what I write every year on the envelope with the 1040 form. And it’s never been sent back to me “Addressee Unknown.” You know what Attorney Fred Gailey proved in “Miracle on 34th Street,” right?

Every year the Lovely Wife and I do one extra calculation not required by the forms, but ought to be for citizenship. We add up all our income, and all our taxes – federal quarterly and final, state income and sales taxes, local income and property taxes – then we do the division. This year looks to be about 34% of our income going to the common weal, not counting the extortionate penalty factor, admittedly small.

Having said that, we’ll likely be voting for pretty much all of the local levies for our schools and public services. You pay those taxes to support the value of the real estate they’re calculated on. I still think taxes in that form for those purposes make plenty of sense, though the monkeying around with rollbacks and formulas to help make things “fair” (i.e., take from some, keep most, give a little to poorer districts) does more harm than good.

That has nothing to do with my sense that the overall payroll and sales tax system is dangerously near broke, and no amount of “gaming” will fix it. Disincentives in the tax structure work even better than incentives, and they’ve gotta go. If someone doesn’t come up with a better alternative, sheer frustration is gonna get some Huckaplan shoved through Congress. Ideas, anyone?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is no tax accountant. Set him straight on the numbers through knapsack77@gmail.com.