Monday, February 16, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Faith Works 2-14-09
Jeff Gill
Faith and Finance Aren’t Cashing In, But Show a Profit
In theory, I should be talking today about Valentinus of Rome and love and the Roman Lupercalia, but a) I’ve done it before, b) others are doing it, and c) I can do it all from a new angle with a unique twist next year.
Right now, people are talking about money.
How much Washington will give Ohio to spend (Gov. Ted sez: Not Enough), how much our companies and businesses have (ditto), how much we have in the bank right now (savings rate for the US was negative before this all hit the fan, so do the math), and how much in taxes our kids will pay in twenty years (too much).
So I’m looking at some of my money, where it says “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” It’s a small inscription, right above the signature of the Treasurer of the United States, who puts “the full faith and credit of the United States Government” behind what that piece of paper represents.
Thinking back to the opening salvos of this devastating barrage of bad economic bombshells, I remembered Bernie Madoff, whose customers are still absorbing the news that not only their gains were illusory, but their original deposits are lost, possibly forever.
Year after year, people got statements, long detailed breakdowns of what stock was bought or sold when, how the profit was rolled over into additional purchases, and the shining, glittering news of how much more your “investment” was worth now than when you initially put it in.
It was, we now find, all lies. It was a “Ponzi scheme,” which is a label for a rolling scam where everyone is told they’re making out like bandits (yes, the victims must have at least a touch of avarice in their souls), but new depositors were being used to pay off withdrawn funds, which Madoff’s crew apparently worked overtime to keep from happening.
Once more is pulled out than you can bring in, or even modest requests for funds intersect with a vanishing demand, and the whole frilly illusion shreds and blows away in a moment.
Faith. “Full faith and credit.” The fact is, the economic system would not work without faith. Any economic system beyond village barter requires the use of symbols to make trades and move goods (“This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private”), and the growing size of a process that operates beyond the next range of hills, let alone across oceans, requires that a certain amount of buying and selling and investing be done in pure symbols . . . like those account statements Madoff’s customers got and smiled over every quarter for years and years.
When faith, any faith is betrayed, the very idea of trust and belief is called into question. Aside from challenges for giving and supporting and tithing for faith communities, there is a very real, practical challenge facing congregations in this financial crisis. We are going through a time when people are going to be very unwilling to take anything on faith, whether of a spiritual or a practical nature.
Before any hard core rationalists get all happy and pleased, here’s the problem – we have to get faith back. We will never achieve full transparency or complete assured confirmation for every economic transaction (unless we all go back to trading my hen’s eggs for your son the cobbler’s new shoes). Faith is, in fact, a vital and necessary part of everyday life.
As the Wall Street traders and Washington insiders seem bizarrely intent on teaching us, we really should require more specifics and more verification in public life (no, seriously, what do you get paid, and why is it mostly called a “bonus” if it’s your base pay?). Church leaders should expect, and even welcome the fact that people will want a bit more explanation than “that’s the way it’s always been,” or “I really don’t know why, it’s just what we’ve always believed.”
Folks are in a mood to say, “Tell me more.” There’s nothing wrong with that.
But we also have to recover a healthy sense of everyday faith, the trust and “credit” in a “giving credit” sense, which is the lubrication system if not the very fuel of our economy. In large part the movers and shakers of society and business need to earn some faith, while we out here figure out where we can bestow it without risking the last of our hope, if not our faith.
And through all of these shocks to our assumptions, the trials and tribulations of job hunting and budget making and priority arranging, one thing becomes abundantly clear: we never should have put our full faith and credit in stuff, in a lifestyle, in our jobs. They never can quite live up to those kind of deeper beliefs.
Which turns us to asking, where should we put our faith? Maybe not in a blind trust, and a mutual fund can’t manage our futures for us, let alone our eternal hopes.
Maybe faith in a God who is present and active among us looks like a pretty solid investment these days.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s heavily invested in Kingdom securities and credits to be redeemed by the bearer. Give him your investment counsel at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Faith and Finance Aren’t Cashing In, But Show a Profit
In theory, I should be talking today about Valentinus of Rome and love and the Roman Lupercalia, but a) I’ve done it before, b) others are doing it, and c) I can do it all from a new angle with a unique twist next year.
Right now, people are talking about money.
How much Washington will give Ohio to spend (Gov. Ted sez: Not Enough), how much our companies and businesses have (ditto), how much we have in the bank right now (savings rate for the US was negative before this all hit the fan, so do the math), and how much in taxes our kids will pay in twenty years (too much).
So I’m looking at some of my money, where it says “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” It’s a small inscription, right above the signature of the Treasurer of the United States, who puts “the full faith and credit of the United States Government” behind what that piece of paper represents.
Thinking back to the opening salvos of this devastating barrage of bad economic bombshells, I remembered Bernie Madoff, whose customers are still absorbing the news that not only their gains were illusory, but their original deposits are lost, possibly forever.
Year after year, people got statements, long detailed breakdowns of what stock was bought or sold when, how the profit was rolled over into additional purchases, and the shining, glittering news of how much more your “investment” was worth now than when you initially put it in.
It was, we now find, all lies. It was a “Ponzi scheme,” which is a label for a rolling scam where everyone is told they’re making out like bandits (yes, the victims must have at least a touch of avarice in their souls), but new depositors were being used to pay off withdrawn funds, which Madoff’s crew apparently worked overtime to keep from happening.
Once more is pulled out than you can bring in, or even modest requests for funds intersect with a vanishing demand, and the whole frilly illusion shreds and blows away in a moment.
Faith. “Full faith and credit.” The fact is, the economic system would not work without faith. Any economic system beyond village barter requires the use of symbols to make trades and move goods (“This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private”), and the growing size of a process that operates beyond the next range of hills, let alone across oceans, requires that a certain amount of buying and selling and investing be done in pure symbols . . . like those account statements Madoff’s customers got and smiled over every quarter for years and years.
When faith, any faith is betrayed, the very idea of trust and belief is called into question. Aside from challenges for giving and supporting and tithing for faith communities, there is a very real, practical challenge facing congregations in this financial crisis. We are going through a time when people are going to be very unwilling to take anything on faith, whether of a spiritual or a practical nature.
Before any hard core rationalists get all happy and pleased, here’s the problem – we have to get faith back. We will never achieve full transparency or complete assured confirmation for every economic transaction (unless we all go back to trading my hen’s eggs for your son the cobbler’s new shoes). Faith is, in fact, a vital and necessary part of everyday life.
As the Wall Street traders and Washington insiders seem bizarrely intent on teaching us, we really should require more specifics and more verification in public life (no, seriously, what do you get paid, and why is it mostly called a “bonus” if it’s your base pay?). Church leaders should expect, and even welcome the fact that people will want a bit more explanation than “that’s the way it’s always been,” or “I really don’t know why, it’s just what we’ve always believed.”
Folks are in a mood to say, “Tell me more.” There’s nothing wrong with that.
But we also have to recover a healthy sense of everyday faith, the trust and “credit” in a “giving credit” sense, which is the lubrication system if not the very fuel of our economy. In large part the movers and shakers of society and business need to earn some faith, while we out here figure out where we can bestow it without risking the last of our hope, if not our faith.
And through all of these shocks to our assumptions, the trials and tribulations of job hunting and budget making and priority arranging, one thing becomes abundantly clear: we never should have put our full faith and credit in stuff, in a lifestyle, in our jobs. They never can quite live up to those kind of deeper beliefs.
Which turns us to asking, where should we put our faith? Maybe not in a blind trust, and a mutual fund can’t manage our futures for us, let alone our eternal hopes.
Maybe faith in a God who is present and active among us looks like a pretty solid investment these days.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s heavily invested in Kingdom securities and credits to be redeemed by the bearer. Give him your investment counsel at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Notes From My Knapsack 2-12-09
Jeff Gill
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (sugg. Title)
Too little known about Charles Darwin’s seminal work, published 150 years ago this coming November, is that it is a fascinating and even enjoyable read.
“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” or later republished as simply “The Origin of Species,” was written in the 1840s and 50s, and is in many ways a High Victorian literary masterpiece.
But I’m uncomfortably aware that describing the book that way sends many of you running in the opposite direction, as if I’d said “Brussels sprouts” (which, if you roast them first, are actually quite tasty as well, but that’s a different column).
“David Copperfield” and “A Christmas Carol” were written by Charles Dickens just a few miles away at about the same time; the other literary Charles was finishing “A Tale of Two Cities” just as “On the Origin” was hitting the bookstalls in London. No one finds it too odd to hear that reading any of those Dickens novels is an enjoyable read for pleasure today, but if you said you were reading (or re-reading) Darwin’s “On the Origin” most would assume you had an assignment for school, and a pretty nasty one at that.
The truth is that Darwin’s book is fun to read, and offers discussions of scientific things in language anyone can follow, whether to agree or disagree – and the author clearly welcomes disagreement and debate, an approach that brings out fine writing and reasoning, I think, from those who engage him thoroughly.
A few weeks ago I recommended “Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent” by Lyanda Haupt for those trying to understand just what motivated and inspired Darwin as a young scholar, and I’m delighted by how many have e-mailed me to say what a pleasure and marvel this book has been. She delves deep into Darwin’s own letters and handwritten notebooks, and follows his growth in observational sensitivity, and passionate interest in the vital processes of creation.
Haupt touches lightly, but distinctly, on Darwin’s spiritual journey, a seminarian headed for ministry who becomes condemned as “a great infidel.” Her chapter “God and the Nightingales” is a great corrective to this misunderstanding.
“Annie’s Box” by Darwin’s great-great-grandson Randal Keynes (and father of the Narnia movie’s Edmund) tells the story of the life and death of Darwin’s ten year old daughter, and traces an outline of Darwin’s struggles with a faith community around him, more interested in social status than comforting the afflicted.
Yet reading Darwin’s own letters, which you can do for yourself at www.darwinproject.ac.uk, you find that while he tussles with official clergy (type “Ffinden” into the search box), he writes with warmth and welcome to invite evangelists like James Fegan to come use his property for a revival, greets Lady Hope with Bible quotations (if not a “deathbed conversion” as has been mythologized out of her later “reminiscences”), and reminds Asa Gray, Harvard geologist and committed Christian, that a theistic faith can be held close while digging deeply into natural selection and deep time.
Darwin avoided using the term “deist” in his letters, which intrigues me greatly. Deism was a very respectable stance, even within the Church of England, arguing that God created “in the beginning,” then stepped back, letting processes and plans wind out without any direct involvement. He argued strongly that his theory of evolution did not, itself, prove or disprove the existence of God, or a faith in Jesus Christ, nor did it intend to undermine or support such beliefs.
The question of what about faith could be explained or proven by scientific means intrigued Darwin, and he often talked about this; sometimes folks use these quotes to say that Darwin thought religion was purely a product of evolution.
To them I would say, read the man’s work for yourself, not selective quotations.
And I’d add the words of an Orthodox saint of the Fourth Century, Ephrem the Syrian, whose hymns are still sung in the Christian churches Eastern and Western, and whose thought inspired John Wesley – “In every place, if you look his symbol is there,” Ephrem sang,
“Nature and the Scriptures
together carry
the symbols of his humanity
and of his divinity.”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he promises to stop talking about Darwin and Lincoln for at least a while after Feb. 12! Tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or to “Knapsack” on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (sugg. Title)
Too little known about Charles Darwin’s seminal work, published 150 years ago this coming November, is that it is a fascinating and even enjoyable read.
“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” or later republished as simply “The Origin of Species,” was written in the 1840s and 50s, and is in many ways a High Victorian literary masterpiece.
But I’m uncomfortably aware that describing the book that way sends many of you running in the opposite direction, as if I’d said “Brussels sprouts” (which, if you roast them first, are actually quite tasty as well, but that’s a different column).
“David Copperfield” and “A Christmas Carol” were written by Charles Dickens just a few miles away at about the same time; the other literary Charles was finishing “A Tale of Two Cities” just as “On the Origin” was hitting the bookstalls in London. No one finds it too odd to hear that reading any of those Dickens novels is an enjoyable read for pleasure today, but if you said you were reading (or re-reading) Darwin’s “On the Origin” most would assume you had an assignment for school, and a pretty nasty one at that.
The truth is that Darwin’s book is fun to read, and offers discussions of scientific things in language anyone can follow, whether to agree or disagree – and the author clearly welcomes disagreement and debate, an approach that brings out fine writing and reasoning, I think, from those who engage him thoroughly.
A few weeks ago I recommended “Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent” by Lyanda Haupt for those trying to understand just what motivated and inspired Darwin as a young scholar, and I’m delighted by how many have e-mailed me to say what a pleasure and marvel this book has been. She delves deep into Darwin’s own letters and handwritten notebooks, and follows his growth in observational sensitivity, and passionate interest in the vital processes of creation.
Haupt touches lightly, but distinctly, on Darwin’s spiritual journey, a seminarian headed for ministry who becomes condemned as “a great infidel.” Her chapter “God and the Nightingales” is a great corrective to this misunderstanding.
“Annie’s Box” by Darwin’s great-great-grandson Randal Keynes (and father of the Narnia movie’s Edmund) tells the story of the life and death of Darwin’s ten year old daughter, and traces an outline of Darwin’s struggles with a faith community around him, more interested in social status than comforting the afflicted.
Yet reading Darwin’s own letters, which you can do for yourself at www.darwinproject.ac.uk, you find that while he tussles with official clergy (type “Ffinden” into the search box), he writes with warmth and welcome to invite evangelists like James Fegan to come use his property for a revival, greets Lady Hope with Bible quotations (if not a “deathbed conversion” as has been mythologized out of her later “reminiscences”), and reminds Asa Gray, Harvard geologist and committed Christian, that a theistic faith can be held close while digging deeply into natural selection and deep time.
Darwin avoided using the term “deist” in his letters, which intrigues me greatly. Deism was a very respectable stance, even within the Church of England, arguing that God created “in the beginning,” then stepped back, letting processes and plans wind out without any direct involvement. He argued strongly that his theory of evolution did not, itself, prove or disprove the existence of God, or a faith in Jesus Christ, nor did it intend to undermine or support such beliefs.
The question of what about faith could be explained or proven by scientific means intrigued Darwin, and he often talked about this; sometimes folks use these quotes to say that Darwin thought religion was purely a product of evolution.
To them I would say, read the man’s work for yourself, not selective quotations.
And I’d add the words of an Orthodox saint of the Fourth Century, Ephrem the Syrian, whose hymns are still sung in the Christian churches Eastern and Western, and whose thought inspired John Wesley – “In every place, if you look his symbol is there,” Ephrem sang,
“Nature and the Scriptures
together carry
the symbols of his humanity
and of his divinity.”
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he promises to stop talking about Darwin and Lincoln for at least a while after Feb. 12! Tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or to “Knapsack” on Twitter.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Faith Works 2-7-09
Jeff Gill
Death, Life, Creation, and the Cosmos
To be perfectly candid, if I were to design a world, it seems to me that it wouldn’t have 50 year old fathers die, leaving behind a couple of small children and a grieving wife. Earlier this week, just that happened among my wider circle of internet acquaintance, but was no less awful to hear for not having met them in person. It’s the kind of thing you think (especially at 47) “that just shouldn’t happen.”
Which most wouldn’t disagree with, until you started actually thinking it through: so who would die? If not this one, that one?
So then you say “ok, I wouldn’t design in death at all.” Which means that all organisms go on and on, or just humans? Yeah, I hear you in the back, “dogs, too!” To which I reply “well, and cats.”
Parakeets?
Anyhow, it’s one thing to say that it seems as if “even in the midst of life, we are in death,” and call that a flaw, a brokenness, even a “sin” running through the heart of creation. It’s quite another to say “so why not take out this sorrow, or this tragedy?” When you start to tinker with the cosmos, let alone (say) global climate change, everything seems to be linked to everything, and you can’t take out the bad without hopelessly compromising the good.
If you stand back from life and say “then it may be just as well that we never lived at all rather than die, or experience the death of others,” you’ve captured the nihilism that is the empty heart of much modern philosophy. I’d recommend you go watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” and not try to argue with you, since it would just depress us both.
The harder challenge is finding what to say to someone who sees death and tragedy as a clear and distinct argument that there is no cause, no God, no design at all, no ultimate meaning hidden in eternity or revealed in glimpses through the narrow door of Scripture.
My own answer as a Christian starts with Jesus Christ himself, “and him crucified.” The One on the cross is a sign and a revelation that God is aware of this brokenness at the heart of life, and rather than erasing the board and starting over, has entered history to show the way.
So I grieve with my friend who lost her husband, a woman I’ve never met and many hundreds of miles away, and trust in her faith (and his) that the cross has bridged the gap for him already, and we to him in the fullness of time.
And I think it right that I grieve for a father who lost a ten year old daughter, albeit in 1851; or one who lost sons at four and eleven, in 1850 and 1862. Those fathers were told to find comfort that their children died because “it was their time,” “they were called home,” that “God needed them in heaven.”
I wish there had been more who had said to those fathers that Jesus Christ came to heal the brokenness of all of creation (for God so loved the “cosmos” is what John 3:16 says in Greek, “all of creation”). I wish there had been pastoral voices to tell them that God wept with them, and shared their sorrow. Instead, they were condemned in their day for questioning the Divine Order of every death, every species, and even the necessity of slavery. To question the social order was questioning the authority of the Church and the Bible, and so Darwin and Lincoln
A Biblical worldview can and must understand that the world has a crack in it, and yet it is through that crack that Jesus entered. God could make the world so that nothing bad ever happened and no evil was in it, but that would put most of us down the memory hole.
I can’t call Charles Darwin or Abraham Lincoln Christians, any more than a fair reading of their own writings could call either an atheist. Did God’s mercy extend to them, on their passing to join their lost children? That would be up to God, but what is up to us is to learn from their experience as we try to comfort the grieving today.
Death is part of creation, but not an ultimate part of it; the passing of death is the final victory promised to the community of faith. We can and must grieve with each other, not forcing sense out of senselessness, but from a promised hope that sense and meaning and God will prevail in the end.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he promises to stop talking about Darwin and Lincoln for at least a while after Feb. 12! Tell him your ideas of something else to talk about at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Death, Life, Creation, and the Cosmos
To be perfectly candid, if I were to design a world, it seems to me that it wouldn’t have 50 year old fathers die, leaving behind a couple of small children and a grieving wife. Earlier this week, just that happened among my wider circle of internet acquaintance, but was no less awful to hear for not having met them in person. It’s the kind of thing you think (especially at 47) “that just shouldn’t happen.”
Which most wouldn’t disagree with, until you started actually thinking it through: so who would die? If not this one, that one?
So then you say “ok, I wouldn’t design in death at all.” Which means that all organisms go on and on, or just humans? Yeah, I hear you in the back, “dogs, too!” To which I reply “well, and cats.”
Parakeets?
Anyhow, it’s one thing to say that it seems as if “even in the midst of life, we are in death,” and call that a flaw, a brokenness, even a “sin” running through the heart of creation. It’s quite another to say “so why not take out this sorrow, or this tragedy?” When you start to tinker with the cosmos, let alone (say) global climate change, everything seems to be linked to everything, and you can’t take out the bad without hopelessly compromising the good.
If you stand back from life and say “then it may be just as well that we never lived at all rather than die, or experience the death of others,” you’ve captured the nihilism that is the empty heart of much modern philosophy. I’d recommend you go watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” and not try to argue with you, since it would just depress us both.
The harder challenge is finding what to say to someone who sees death and tragedy as a clear and distinct argument that there is no cause, no God, no design at all, no ultimate meaning hidden in eternity or revealed in glimpses through the narrow door of Scripture.
My own answer as a Christian starts with Jesus Christ himself, “and him crucified.” The One on the cross is a sign and a revelation that God is aware of this brokenness at the heart of life, and rather than erasing the board and starting over, has entered history to show the way.
So I grieve with my friend who lost her husband, a woman I’ve never met and many hundreds of miles away, and trust in her faith (and his) that the cross has bridged the gap for him already, and we to him in the fullness of time.
And I think it right that I grieve for a father who lost a ten year old daughter, albeit in 1851; or one who lost sons at four and eleven, in 1850 and 1862. Those fathers were told to find comfort that their children died because “it was their time,” “they were called home,” that “God needed them in heaven.”
I wish there had been more who had said to those fathers that Jesus Christ came to heal the brokenness of all of creation (for God so loved the “cosmos” is what John 3:16 says in Greek, “all of creation”). I wish there had been pastoral voices to tell them that God wept with them, and shared their sorrow. Instead, they were condemned in their day for questioning the Divine Order of every death, every species, and even the necessity of slavery. To question the social order was questioning the authority of the Church and the Bible, and so Darwin and Lincoln
A Biblical worldview can and must understand that the world has a crack in it, and yet it is through that crack that Jesus entered. God could make the world so that nothing bad ever happened and no evil was in it, but that would put most of us down the memory hole.
I can’t call Charles Darwin or Abraham Lincoln Christians, any more than a fair reading of their own writings could call either an atheist. Did God’s mercy extend to them, on their passing to join their lost children? That would be up to God, but what is up to us is to learn from their experience as we try to comfort the grieving today.
Death is part of creation, but not an ultimate part of it; the passing of death is the final victory promised to the community of faith. We can and must grieve with each other, not forcing sense out of senselessness, but from a promised hope that sense and meaning and God will prevail in the end.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he promises to stop talking about Darwin and Lincoln for at least a while after Feb. 12! Tell him your ideas of something else to talk about at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Faith Works 1-31-09
Jeff Gill
From Soup to Nuts (and I’m the one that’s nuts)
So much going on in the world that impacts and influences the life of faith – where to start?
Most folks are ending this weekend with the Super Bowl, and the youth groups of many area churches are taking this chance to lift up the “Souper Bowl of Caring” with a special offering for local food pantries.
When you’re picking up your game day munchies, buy a can of soup for every snack package, and take those cans to church Sunday morning; some congregations also take up a monetary offering for food pantry efforts as well.
Presbyterians in the south got this tradition going, but you can read about the nownational and ecumenical reach of their work at www.souperbowl.org.
If you haven’t read about the marvelous personal story of Kurt and Brenda Warner, you can check the blog page at www.newarkadvocate.com (look for me under Knapsack), or Google their names. I’m a Steelers fan from youth, and admire the Rooney family, but the Warners can make me cheer a bit for the Cardinals.
(Still, is the curse of the Pottsville Maroons still reaching down from 1925, through their Pennsylvania brethren, to blight the storied Cardinals in 2009? More to the point, should a religious person believe in sports curses in the first place?)
Tuesday is the anniversary of the heroic sacrifice of the Four Chaplains aboard the USAT Dorchester, in 1943. Jewish rabbi, Catholic priest, two Protestant clergymen, all standing together in prayer as the torpedoed ship sank into the North Atlantic night, having handed out all the lifebelts including the ones they wore – Alexander Goode, the rabbi, gave a soldier his gloves as the young man clambered onto a lifeboat.
There were not enough lifeboats, rafts, or flotation devices to go around, and just over 200 of the 900 aboard survived, but all remembered the calm and collective effort of the Four in the twenty-five minutes they had from midnight shock to the final plunge. Together, forever.
And I don’t have Jim Whitaker to call me every year to remind me anymore, but I won’t forget.
Three of the Four Chaplains were Scout leaders, and Feb. 8 begins a momentous year for the Boy Scouts of America – it was on Feb. 8, 1910 that Scouting crossed the pond, after two and a half years of growth under founder Robert Baden-Powell in England. So Dorchester Day often comes right up against Scout Sunday or Sabbath, when Scouting units often attend worship in a group, especially if their “chartering organization” is a church.
For some churches, holding the charter just means they provide a meeting space, and among others, being a chartering organization means that their Cub Scout, Boy Scout, and Venturing crew units are a key part of their own youth programming. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as Mormons, have adopted Scouting nationally as their young men’s youth group structure. Many other churches acknowledge a tie to “their” Scout troop while having a separate youth group.
Finally, I’ve gotten a number of questions about Ted Haggard, all around “what do you think?” All I can think of to say is that Ted Haggard and Rod Blagojevich both need to ask themselves “what purposes do your strenuous efforts to stay in the public eye serve?” (If you feel the need to add Bill Clinton to that list, be my guest.)
And to close this particularly bloggy column out, for a counter-example to Haggard and Blagojevich, click on Wikipedia and enter “John Profumo.” There’s a different way, but as Someone once said, it is often a harder way, a narrower way, a way that leads away from the bright lights, but can take you towards a brighter dawn.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or to “Knapsack” on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
From Soup to Nuts (and I’m the one that’s nuts)
So much going on in the world that impacts and influences the life of faith – where to start?
Most folks are ending this weekend with the Super Bowl, and the youth groups of many area churches are taking this chance to lift up the “Souper Bowl of Caring” with a special offering for local food pantries.
When you’re picking up your game day munchies, buy a can of soup for every snack package, and take those cans to church Sunday morning; some congregations also take up a monetary offering for food pantry efforts as well.
Presbyterians in the south got this tradition going, but you can read about the nownational and ecumenical reach of their work at www.souperbowl.org.
If you haven’t read about the marvelous personal story of Kurt and Brenda Warner, you can check the blog page at www.newarkadvocate.com (look for me under Knapsack), or Google their names. I’m a Steelers fan from youth, and admire the Rooney family, but the Warners can make me cheer a bit for the Cardinals.
(Still, is the curse of the Pottsville Maroons still reaching down from 1925, through their Pennsylvania brethren, to blight the storied Cardinals in 2009? More to the point, should a religious person believe in sports curses in the first place?)
Tuesday is the anniversary of the heroic sacrifice of the Four Chaplains aboard the USAT Dorchester, in 1943. Jewish rabbi, Catholic priest, two Protestant clergymen, all standing together in prayer as the torpedoed ship sank into the North Atlantic night, having handed out all the lifebelts including the ones they wore – Alexander Goode, the rabbi, gave a soldier his gloves as the young man clambered onto a lifeboat.
There were not enough lifeboats, rafts, or flotation devices to go around, and just over 200 of the 900 aboard survived, but all remembered the calm and collective effort of the Four in the twenty-five minutes they had from midnight shock to the final plunge. Together, forever.
And I don’t have Jim Whitaker to call me every year to remind me anymore, but I won’t forget.
Three of the Four Chaplains were Scout leaders, and Feb. 8 begins a momentous year for the Boy Scouts of America – it was on Feb. 8, 1910 that Scouting crossed the pond, after two and a half years of growth under founder Robert Baden-Powell in England. So Dorchester Day often comes right up against Scout Sunday or Sabbath, when Scouting units often attend worship in a group, especially if their “chartering organization” is a church.
For some churches, holding the charter just means they provide a meeting space, and among others, being a chartering organization means that their Cub Scout, Boy Scout, and Venturing crew units are a key part of their own youth programming. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as Mormons, have adopted Scouting nationally as their young men’s youth group structure. Many other churches acknowledge a tie to “their” Scout troop while having a separate youth group.
Finally, I’ve gotten a number of questions about Ted Haggard, all around “what do you think?” All I can think of to say is that Ted Haggard and Rod Blagojevich both need to ask themselves “what purposes do your strenuous efforts to stay in the public eye serve?” (If you feel the need to add Bill Clinton to that list, be my guest.)
And to close this particularly bloggy column out, for a counter-example to Haggard and Blagojevich, click on Wikipedia and enter “John Profumo.” There’s a different way, but as Someone once said, it is often a harder way, a narrower way, a way that leads away from the bright lights, but can take you towards a brighter dawn.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or to “Knapsack” on Twitter.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Forty years, two cars, one trophy -- for more photos, see Jeff's Facebook or the Pack blog at http://granvillepack3.blogspot.com
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Notes From My Knapsack 1-29-09
Jeff Gill
Threads and Holes and Wholenesses, Always Needing Darning
We haven’t had a “real winter” for some time, in my opinion. A real winter is one where the snow stays atop the lawn if not the rooftops for more than a day or two at a time, when you actually put your coat on before going into the garage, let alone outdoors.
A real winter is one where you actually wax your shovel because it’s getting enough use to get the maintenance it deserves – even a sharpening pass over the leading edge with a file.
I have three pairs of gloves, lucky fellow that I am. A nice pair for wearing at official events (funerals, mainly), a set with leather palms double layered where you grab the rope tow, woefully underused in recent years, and a couple of wool, fingerless glove-ish things.
Every year I buy a new pair of jersey glove liners that go inside, about $1.98, but I don’t remember what I paid for the wool outers because they’re something like 25 years old. They’re what I wear most of the time, in the car or out shoveling snow.
Starting last year, the palm of one woolie began to show a hole. This winter, that hole has steadily grown. It’s with the arrival of the hole that you start to look clearly at the warp and woof, the horizontal and vertical weave of the fabric, and you realize that this glove is in trouble.
In a not so long ago world, I’d know someone who would darn together the broken strands of yarn and repair the fabric of my glove – as it is, I’m thinking “where can I find a new pair of woolen fingerless gloves?” But not yet. Meanwhile, I keep looking at those broken, unraveling ends around the gap in my left hand palm when I pull on these gloves.
There’s not so much a subtext as a supertext to these gloves for me as I think about the double bicentennial coming up on Feb. 12, 2009. 200 years earlier, both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on that very date.
Lincoln is likely to get his due in the general media. One of the reasons the Illinois legislature found their gumption in getting Blagojevich impeached as Governor was learning that, if he’s still in office Feb. 12, there’s a whole bunch of plaques and new memorials for Lincoln that would have Capt. Clueless’ name on them if they don’t get him officially out of the job. Lincoln will be big news next month.
But Charles Darwin is, well, controversial, and I think that’s too bad, for a number of reasons. His biggest detractors are among my friends and most frequent co-workers in the traditional faith community, and there’s an assumption that Darwin’s whole life and career was about undermining and disputing the central beliefs of religion.
In fact, Darwin very much wanted to hold onto his childhood faith, and his life was an ongoing struggle to find ground on which he could stand to believe in God, a sense of eternity, and the place of those he loved in that enduring reality. Some of the threads of his childhood belief had snapped during his voyage on the HMS Beagle, traveling to the Galapagos and beyond, and throwing those beliefs out onto the scrap heap was the last thing on his mind.
He was, to put not to fine a point on it, not well served by his parish clergy and the religious leadership of his day. Darwin saw class and status concerns more than Biblical beliefs driving the positions held by the church of his day.
To do even a little research into the religious views of Charles Darwin is to realize that his supporters, let alone detractors, tend to promote a caricature, a stick figure propped up by polemic and disputed claims.
In brief, Darwin’s struggle to find and hold onto a faith beyond his immediate circumstances has inspired me as a pastor; and when you look at Lincoln’s personal history, you see much the same. Two men, both asked to forget their ethics and scruples, and to adopt certain beliefs more for social than theological purposes. Bravely, each chose to stand apart from the church of their day and place; personally, neither denied God’s place or plan, just their ability to know it with certainty.
They were agnostics, not atheists (though Lincoln didn’t live to see that word, created by Thomas Huxley in the late 1860’s). They did not know, by the standards of their day, but what they believed and expressed went far beyond the flabby and unthoughtful beliefs of many who call themselves believers today.
If they came to your church, how would you invite them into further dialogue and understanding? Because there are Darwins and Lincolns walking through our doors every day . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story to share at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Threads and Holes and Wholenesses, Always Needing Darning
We haven’t had a “real winter” for some time, in my opinion. A real winter is one where the snow stays atop the lawn if not the rooftops for more than a day or two at a time, when you actually put your coat on before going into the garage, let alone outdoors.
A real winter is one where you actually wax your shovel because it’s getting enough use to get the maintenance it deserves – even a sharpening pass over the leading edge with a file.
I have three pairs of gloves, lucky fellow that I am. A nice pair for wearing at official events (funerals, mainly), a set with leather palms double layered where you grab the rope tow, woefully underused in recent years, and a couple of wool, fingerless glove-ish things.
Every year I buy a new pair of jersey glove liners that go inside, about $1.98, but I don’t remember what I paid for the wool outers because they’re something like 25 years old. They’re what I wear most of the time, in the car or out shoveling snow.
Starting last year, the palm of one woolie began to show a hole. This winter, that hole has steadily grown. It’s with the arrival of the hole that you start to look clearly at the warp and woof, the horizontal and vertical weave of the fabric, and you realize that this glove is in trouble.
In a not so long ago world, I’d know someone who would darn together the broken strands of yarn and repair the fabric of my glove – as it is, I’m thinking “where can I find a new pair of woolen fingerless gloves?” But not yet. Meanwhile, I keep looking at those broken, unraveling ends around the gap in my left hand palm when I pull on these gloves.
There’s not so much a subtext as a supertext to these gloves for me as I think about the double bicentennial coming up on Feb. 12, 2009. 200 years earlier, both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on that very date.
Lincoln is likely to get his due in the general media. One of the reasons the Illinois legislature found their gumption in getting Blagojevich impeached as Governor was learning that, if he’s still in office Feb. 12, there’s a whole bunch of plaques and new memorials for Lincoln that would have Capt. Clueless’ name on them if they don’t get him officially out of the job. Lincoln will be big news next month.
But Charles Darwin is, well, controversial, and I think that’s too bad, for a number of reasons. His biggest detractors are among my friends and most frequent co-workers in the traditional faith community, and there’s an assumption that Darwin’s whole life and career was about undermining and disputing the central beliefs of religion.
In fact, Darwin very much wanted to hold onto his childhood faith, and his life was an ongoing struggle to find ground on which he could stand to believe in God, a sense of eternity, and the place of those he loved in that enduring reality. Some of the threads of his childhood belief had snapped during his voyage on the HMS Beagle, traveling to the Galapagos and beyond, and throwing those beliefs out onto the scrap heap was the last thing on his mind.
He was, to put not to fine a point on it, not well served by his parish clergy and the religious leadership of his day. Darwin saw class and status concerns more than Biblical beliefs driving the positions held by the church of his day.
To do even a little research into the religious views of Charles Darwin is to realize that his supporters, let alone detractors, tend to promote a caricature, a stick figure propped up by polemic and disputed claims.
In brief, Darwin’s struggle to find and hold onto a faith beyond his immediate circumstances has inspired me as a pastor; and when you look at Lincoln’s personal history, you see much the same. Two men, both asked to forget their ethics and scruples, and to adopt certain beliefs more for social than theological purposes. Bravely, each chose to stand apart from the church of their day and place; personally, neither denied God’s place or plan, just their ability to know it with certainty.
They were agnostics, not atheists (though Lincoln didn’t live to see that word, created by Thomas Huxley in the late 1860’s). They did not know, by the standards of their day, but what they believed and expressed went far beyond the flabby and unthoughtful beliefs of many who call themselves believers today.
If they came to your church, how would you invite them into further dialogue and understanding? Because there are Darwins and Lincolns walking through our doors every day . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story to share at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Faith Works 1-24-09
Jeff Gill
Two Visitors At the Church Door
If you’re looking forward to Feb. 12, 2009, just because I’ll quit talking about it on the 13th, I guess that’s fair.
The combined 200th anniversary of the birth of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin is worth some extra reflection and contemplation for myriad reasons, first and foremost because they are people whom any educated person ought to know about.
As with the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1826, both on July 4th (and precisely on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence they both brought into being), some coincidences make us marvel, and wonder, and consider . . .
People of faith particularly note with a smile the usual ironic comment that as John Adams was dying, his last words were “incorrect,” saying on his deathbed “Thomas Jefferson still lives,” when hundreds of miles away at Monticello his friend had passed on some hours earlier.
Or was Adams ironically wrong? Did the dying man somehow see, or know, that the questioning, seeking, challenging Jefferson was, in fact, at that moment “alive”?
Granted, Thomas Jefferson is no evangelical’s idea of an ideal founding father, clipping Bibles during late nights in the White House, pasting together an “improved” version without the miracles and commentary. He loved Jesus, but on his own terms . . . well, that’s a common problem many of us have.
But then we have Abe and Chuck, born on the same day in two different hemispheres, going on to change the world in ways that are still debated to this day. Now, I’m acutely aware that I may yet manage to annoy or upset every friend I still have who reads this column through, but make no mistake about it – I think Charles Darwin is one of the most fascinating, idealistic, and faith-full people I’ve ever read umpteen biographies about.
Oddly, to say you admire Lincoln won’t get many rocks thrown at you by the most conservative of Christian believers, but a compliment for Darwin and his work are likely to get you peculiar stares even on a good day – for some, “them’s fighting words.”
What they both have in common, though, was a sincere desire to find their place in the faith communities of their day, and a reaction to being told “fit in THIS way and you’ll be fine.”
Quite frankly, their scruples and hesitations are very, well, modern – this is the worst of historic heresies, but they’re recent enough that I think this comment is fair.
Lincoln watched his father and step-mother get caught in the frontier warfare not between settlers and Native Americans, but between denominations competing for adherents. The “heresy” trials of southern Indiana and Illinois of their day had less to do with Calvinism and Arminianism (note for future column!) and more to do with earthly competitiveness between pastors and organizations.
Lincoln actively supported the organization and building of churches in Springfield for the Catholic faith, for the Campbellite heresy that his parents were accused and acquitted of, and the Presbyterians – everyone but the Methodists, whose leader, Peter Cartwright, ran against him for Congress and hence would have nothing to do with him, nor would he let him aid fellow Arminians.
Which is too bad, because Lincoln’s writing showed him to be much more Arminian than Calvinist in his understanding of God’s will and the human capacity to respond. But those doors were closed to Lincoln for social more than theological reasons.
So Lincoln died never having been a member of any church, though his wife was a staunch Presbyterian. Sound familiar to anyone today?
Likewise Darwin had a very religious wife, who raised their children in the church that anchored their small village south of London. A member of the vestry, or church board, Darwin wrestled with his doubts and questions more openly than most, and had a parish pastor who was sympathetic while affirming the creeds and teaching of the historic Christian confessions.
Then a new pastor came in who was upset that Darwin’s wife led a program, funded by Charles’ inherited income, that did what we would call “adult education” and a sort of “GED” program in the church hall. This fellow, whose name I use as an expletive (Ffinden, if you need something to shout when you hit your thumb with a cleaver), worked hard to get all of the poor relief and underprivileged education programming out of church buildings altogether, and Darwin ultimately removed himself from any connection with the church after losing that conflict with the parson.
What would have happened if Rev. Innes had stayed, or if Ffinden had a clue about what faithfulness to the Gospel really meant? We’ll never know, but the state of Darwin’s heart and soul may not be quite what you think.
And yes, I’ll return to this subject for one more week! Next Saturday, the faith of Charles Darwin. It might surprise you. At any rate, do you start to see in Lincoln and Darwin the kind of challenge that the churches of today still struggle with? Men who want to know if it’s alright to ask questions, who are weary of denominational politics and competition . . . what would your church say to Abe or Chuck if they were married to women active in your congregation?
Because they very well might be.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Two Visitors At the Church Door
If you’re looking forward to Feb. 12, 2009, just because I’ll quit talking about it on the 13th, I guess that’s fair.
The combined 200th anniversary of the birth of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin is worth some extra reflection and contemplation for myriad reasons, first and foremost because they are people whom any educated person ought to know about.
As with the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1826, both on July 4th (and precisely on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence they both brought into being), some coincidences make us marvel, and wonder, and consider . . .
People of faith particularly note with a smile the usual ironic comment that as John Adams was dying, his last words were “incorrect,” saying on his deathbed “Thomas Jefferson still lives,” when hundreds of miles away at Monticello his friend had passed on some hours earlier.
Or was Adams ironically wrong? Did the dying man somehow see, or know, that the questioning, seeking, challenging Jefferson was, in fact, at that moment “alive”?
Granted, Thomas Jefferson is no evangelical’s idea of an ideal founding father, clipping Bibles during late nights in the White House, pasting together an “improved” version without the miracles and commentary. He loved Jesus, but on his own terms . . . well, that’s a common problem many of us have.
But then we have Abe and Chuck, born on the same day in two different hemispheres, going on to change the world in ways that are still debated to this day. Now, I’m acutely aware that I may yet manage to annoy or upset every friend I still have who reads this column through, but make no mistake about it – I think Charles Darwin is one of the most fascinating, idealistic, and faith-full people I’ve ever read umpteen biographies about.
Oddly, to say you admire Lincoln won’t get many rocks thrown at you by the most conservative of Christian believers, but a compliment for Darwin and his work are likely to get you peculiar stares even on a good day – for some, “them’s fighting words.”
What they both have in common, though, was a sincere desire to find their place in the faith communities of their day, and a reaction to being told “fit in THIS way and you’ll be fine.”
Quite frankly, their scruples and hesitations are very, well, modern – this is the worst of historic heresies, but they’re recent enough that I think this comment is fair.
Lincoln watched his father and step-mother get caught in the frontier warfare not between settlers and Native Americans, but between denominations competing for adherents. The “heresy” trials of southern Indiana and Illinois of their day had less to do with Calvinism and Arminianism (note for future column!) and more to do with earthly competitiveness between pastors and organizations.
Lincoln actively supported the organization and building of churches in Springfield for the Catholic faith, for the Campbellite heresy that his parents were accused and acquitted of, and the Presbyterians – everyone but the Methodists, whose leader, Peter Cartwright, ran against him for Congress and hence would have nothing to do with him, nor would he let him aid fellow Arminians.
Which is too bad, because Lincoln’s writing showed him to be much more Arminian than Calvinist in his understanding of God’s will and the human capacity to respond. But those doors were closed to Lincoln for social more than theological reasons.
So Lincoln died never having been a member of any church, though his wife was a staunch Presbyterian. Sound familiar to anyone today?
Likewise Darwin had a very religious wife, who raised their children in the church that anchored their small village south of London. A member of the vestry, or church board, Darwin wrestled with his doubts and questions more openly than most, and had a parish pastor who was sympathetic while affirming the creeds and teaching of the historic Christian confessions.
Then a new pastor came in who was upset that Darwin’s wife led a program, funded by Charles’ inherited income, that did what we would call “adult education” and a sort of “GED” program in the church hall. This fellow, whose name I use as an expletive (Ffinden, if you need something to shout when you hit your thumb with a cleaver), worked hard to get all of the poor relief and underprivileged education programming out of church buildings altogether, and Darwin ultimately removed himself from any connection with the church after losing that conflict with the parson.
What would have happened if Rev. Innes had stayed, or if Ffinden had a clue about what faithfulness to the Gospel really meant? We’ll never know, but the state of Darwin’s heart and soul may not be quite what you think.
And yes, I’ll return to this subject for one more week! Next Saturday, the faith of Charles Darwin. It might surprise you. At any rate, do you start to see in Lincoln and Darwin the kind of challenge that the churches of today still struggle with? Men who want to know if it’s alright to ask questions, who are weary of denominational politics and competition . . . what would your church say to Abe or Chuck if they were married to women active in your congregation?
Because they very well might be.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Faith Works 1-17-09
Jeff Gill
Naturally Religious or Theologically Un-natural
So, apparently, US Airways just ruthlessly killed two innocent Canada Geese.
That would be one way of putting things, anyhow.
Most of you probably heard that an amazing pilot and a well trained crew saved all 155 lives in New York’s Hudson River by putting their jet airliner down ever so gently on the water, and meeting just about every ferryboat and tour ship in Manhattan.
As advanced as our flight technology becomes, and on the ground, where cars continue to become more reliable, more safe, and more sophisticated, the fact is that when your car calls 911 for you, it’s likely to be because you ran into an animal.
It’s like the world is full of animals, or something.
Paving and building and landscaping may extend our sense of control pretty far out into nature, but the fact is that we humans still live in ecosystems and as part of nature ourselves. We work to create some of this distance, indoor couch potato-y folk that we can be, but even those seeking to protect nature can be part of the problem.
When we talk about the harm people do to the environment, when the debates focus on how humanity is a burden threatening to break global climate systems, there are often subtle, persistent cues to make people think that this all means there is “Nature” and there is “Us.”
Such as the “Voluntary Human Extinction Movement,” whose interesting proposition can be seen in detail at www.vhemt.org. I read carefully to see if anyone was making reference to Jonathan Swift, but apparently this group has a serious irony deficiency.
This is the kind of thing I mean; they seem sincere if humorless, wanting to speak up for nature and the living world. But their position reaffirms the false idea that humans are something separate from or different from their environment. The fact is, when we dump toxic chemicals into a waterway, we are impacting the environment, we are participating in it – and we, as living creatures will be impacted ourselves by what we did.
For people of faith, the question of how our beliefs relate to the natural world is a tricky one. For much of early Judeo-Christian theology, discussion of “the land” and “the people” was common, but so closely connected to a particular piece of land and place that today we read most of those passages politically.
Many of those scriptural statements can be productively re-read from an environmental perspective, but the real complication comes from the question of what it means, Biblically, to be human. The Psalm says we are created “a little lower than the angels,” and goes on to talk in Proverbs about how we don’t want “to be like the dumb beasts,” but from that hierarchy (angels, men, animals) a sort of sloppy biology came out that said we are “the Crown of Creation.”
Then came Charles Darwin. “On the Origin of Species” was published in 1859, hinting that we puny humans might not only be a little lower than the angels, but we might rub shoulders with our cousins the ape and gorilla. Is this a problem? For the established church of his day, it was, and once belief in human separateness from the animal kingdom was made a part of official faith, that reaction spurred Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s chief advocate of the late 19th century, to also create a new word – “agnostic.”
In a few weeks, both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln celebrate the 200th anniversary of their birth, on February 12, 1809. I think both men’s stories have much to say to people of faith, and you’ll be reading more about them over the next few weeks here. I hope the discussion will be supportive of faith, and also open to looking at what belief guides us to see about our place in creation.
Could I also add this reading suggestion for anyone interested in advance of Feb. 12 about Darwin and what he was and wasn’t trying to do? There are some recent, magisterial biographies that are very illuminative about the faith that moved and motivated Darwin right through to the end of his earthly days, but there is also an amazing book, that is not in print but easy to find on-line used, that pulls together science, beliefs, culture, and the man.
“Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent” by Lyanda Lynn Haupt – if you can find a copy, grab it, because I think it’s one of the best books of any sort I’ve read in the last ten years.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Naturally Religious or Theologically Un-natural
So, apparently, US Airways just ruthlessly killed two innocent Canada Geese.
That would be one way of putting things, anyhow.
Most of you probably heard that an amazing pilot and a well trained crew saved all 155 lives in New York’s Hudson River by putting their jet airliner down ever so gently on the water, and meeting just about every ferryboat and tour ship in Manhattan.
As advanced as our flight technology becomes, and on the ground, where cars continue to become more reliable, more safe, and more sophisticated, the fact is that when your car calls 911 for you, it’s likely to be because you ran into an animal.
It’s like the world is full of animals, or something.
Paving and building and landscaping may extend our sense of control pretty far out into nature, but the fact is that we humans still live in ecosystems and as part of nature ourselves. We work to create some of this distance, indoor couch potato-y folk that we can be, but even those seeking to protect nature can be part of the problem.
When we talk about the harm people do to the environment, when the debates focus on how humanity is a burden threatening to break global climate systems, there are often subtle, persistent cues to make people think that this all means there is “Nature” and there is “Us.”
Such as the “Voluntary Human Extinction Movement,” whose interesting proposition can be seen in detail at www.vhemt.org. I read carefully to see if anyone was making reference to Jonathan Swift, but apparently this group has a serious irony deficiency.
This is the kind of thing I mean; they seem sincere if humorless, wanting to speak up for nature and the living world. But their position reaffirms the false idea that humans are something separate from or different from their environment. The fact is, when we dump toxic chemicals into a waterway, we are impacting the environment, we are participating in it – and we, as living creatures will be impacted ourselves by what we did.
For people of faith, the question of how our beliefs relate to the natural world is a tricky one. For much of early Judeo-Christian theology, discussion of “the land” and “the people” was common, but so closely connected to a particular piece of land and place that today we read most of those passages politically.
Many of those scriptural statements can be productively re-read from an environmental perspective, but the real complication comes from the question of what it means, Biblically, to be human. The Psalm says we are created “a little lower than the angels,” and goes on to talk in Proverbs about how we don’t want “to be like the dumb beasts,” but from that hierarchy (angels, men, animals) a sort of sloppy biology came out that said we are “the Crown of Creation.”
Then came Charles Darwin. “On the Origin of Species” was published in 1859, hinting that we puny humans might not only be a little lower than the angels, but we might rub shoulders with our cousins the ape and gorilla. Is this a problem? For the established church of his day, it was, and once belief in human separateness from the animal kingdom was made a part of official faith, that reaction spurred Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s chief advocate of the late 19th century, to also create a new word – “agnostic.”
In a few weeks, both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln celebrate the 200th anniversary of their birth, on February 12, 1809. I think both men’s stories have much to say to people of faith, and you’ll be reading more about them over the next few weeks here. I hope the discussion will be supportive of faith, and also open to looking at what belief guides us to see about our place in creation.
Could I also add this reading suggestion for anyone interested in advance of Feb. 12 about Darwin and what he was and wasn’t trying to do? There are some recent, magisterial biographies that are very illuminative about the faith that moved and motivated Darwin right through to the end of his earthly days, but there is also an amazing book, that is not in print but easy to find on-line used, that pulls together science, beliefs, culture, and the man.
“Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent” by Lyanda Lynn Haupt – if you can find a copy, grab it, because I think it’s one of the best books of any sort I’ve read in the last ten years.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Notes From My Knapsack 1-15-09 Granville Sentinel
Jeff Gill
Twin Sons of Different Mothers
Less than a month from now a significant event in world history reaches its 200th anniversary.
This singular event has two particular people tied to the same birthdate, Feb. 12, 1809. On that day, Charles Darwin was born in England, and Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky.
Arguably these two men stood at the intersection of dramatic times, but in two different places, never meeting. Even so they both shaped the world we live in today, and their roles continue to inspire and provoke passionate debate.
And, they generate books by the truckload (and articles, and dissertations, and essays, and, um, columns).
If you’re wanting to be up to speed on these two epoch-makers by their joint bicentennial, what should you read? First, read some of their own words. Books about them are piled high, but each is a prose stylist with much to commend about their writing, even though they are as different a pair of authors as the circumstances of their births.
The Library of America series is always stellar in quality of binding and organization, and their two volume “Lincoln: Speeches & Writings” is divided between 1832-1858 and 1859-1865. They can be a bit pricey, and if you need to just get one, you’ll go for volume two.
The presidential proclamations, the speeches you’ve never heard of, and the “fragments,” particularly “Meditation on the Divine Will,” are something you’d want to have on your shelves.
The Second Inaugural Address is almost the paragon of brevity and eloquence that the Gettysburg Address is known for, and along with the letters and drafts leading up to both that the Library of America volume provides, I’d recommend Ronald White’s “Lincoln’s Greatest Speech,” available in paperback. Gettysburg has overshadowed the Second Inaugural, but I hope someone has slid a copy of that majestic speech onto President-elect Obama’s desk before Jan. 20. Garry Wills’ “Lincoln at Gettysburg” takes the story back to the Revolution and down to the present day, but White’s book immerses you in the perilous days of 1865 that led to Lincoln’s last and I think greatest speech.
Not to break the hearts of my good bookseller friends, but for the massive and extensive writings of Charles Darwin, your best source is http://darwin-online.org.uk, where literally every printed word of Darwin’s can be read for free, and much of it is also available as audiobook downloads that you can simply listen two.
I will admit that the Victorianism of Darwin’s prose is an acquired taste, but my favorite of all his books (well, behind his notebookss on the voyage of the Beagle) is also the most accessible: “The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms.” The quiet scientist of Downe Cottage had endless patience and curiosity for all of life, and his last book looked at the absolutely crucial role of the lowly earthworm. Gardeners, you will love this one.
The revolutionary work, whether Darwin intended it or not, of “On the origin of species by means of natural selection,” which is usually just called “On the Origin of Species,” is found here in all six editions, the ones that Darwin painstakingly refined and rewrote himself.
But for the non-scholarly reader, may I recommend a book I will speak of more later – “Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent” by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. This is, quite candidly, one of the best books of any sort, for any reason, that I’ve read in the last ten years. It came out in 2006, and not enough readers have found it yet.
Love Darwin or hate him, but read this book and you will understand him ever so much better, and what it was he was trying to do. You may even find you come to a greater appreciation for the work that is left to us to keep pursuing on our pilgrim way, 200 years later.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Twin Sons of Different Mothers
Less than a month from now a significant event in world history reaches its 200th anniversary.
This singular event has two particular people tied to the same birthdate, Feb. 12, 1809. On that day, Charles Darwin was born in England, and Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky.
Arguably these two men stood at the intersection of dramatic times, but in two different places, never meeting. Even so they both shaped the world we live in today, and their roles continue to inspire and provoke passionate debate.
And, they generate books by the truckload (and articles, and dissertations, and essays, and, um, columns).
If you’re wanting to be up to speed on these two epoch-makers by their joint bicentennial, what should you read? First, read some of their own words. Books about them are piled high, but each is a prose stylist with much to commend about their writing, even though they are as different a pair of authors as the circumstances of their births.
The Library of America series is always stellar in quality of binding and organization, and their two volume “Lincoln: Speeches & Writings” is divided between 1832-1858 and 1859-1865. They can be a bit pricey, and if you need to just get one, you’ll go for volume two.
The presidential proclamations, the speeches you’ve never heard of, and the “fragments,” particularly “Meditation on the Divine Will,” are something you’d want to have on your shelves.
The Second Inaugural Address is almost the paragon of brevity and eloquence that the Gettysburg Address is known for, and along with the letters and drafts leading up to both that the Library of America volume provides, I’d recommend Ronald White’s “Lincoln’s Greatest Speech,” available in paperback. Gettysburg has overshadowed the Second Inaugural, but I hope someone has slid a copy of that majestic speech onto President-elect Obama’s desk before Jan. 20. Garry Wills’ “Lincoln at Gettysburg” takes the story back to the Revolution and down to the present day, but White’s book immerses you in the perilous days of 1865 that led to Lincoln’s last and I think greatest speech.
Not to break the hearts of my good bookseller friends, but for the massive and extensive writings of Charles Darwin, your best source is http://darwin-online.org.uk, where literally every printed word of Darwin’s can be read for free, and much of it is also available as audiobook downloads that you can simply listen two.
I will admit that the Victorianism of Darwin’s prose is an acquired taste, but my favorite of all his books (well, behind his notebookss on the voyage of the Beagle) is also the most accessible: “The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms.” The quiet scientist of Downe Cottage had endless patience and curiosity for all of life, and his last book looked at the absolutely crucial role of the lowly earthworm. Gardeners, you will love this one.
The revolutionary work, whether Darwin intended it or not, of “On the origin of species by means of natural selection,” which is usually just called “On the Origin of Species,” is found here in all six editions, the ones that Darwin painstakingly refined and rewrote himself.
But for the non-scholarly reader, may I recommend a book I will speak of more later – “Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent” by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. This is, quite candidly, one of the best books of any sort, for any reason, that I’ve read in the last ten years. It came out in 2006, and not enough readers have found it yet.
Love Darwin or hate him, but read this book and you will understand him ever so much better, and what it was he was trying to do. You may even find you come to a greater appreciation for the work that is left to us to keep pursuing on our pilgrim way, 200 years later.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Faith Works 1-10-09
Jeff Gill
A Preacher By Any Other Name
Garrison Keillor is coming to Newark in a week and a half, appearing at the Midland Theatre on Wednesday, Jan. 21. You may not have heard his name in the same way that Ben Vereen or Kathy Mattea are well known, but if you’ve not heard of “Prairie Home Companion,” then you may not know about Garrison and his distinctive style on public radio.
He’s written quite a few books and even starred in a movie loosely based on his long running Saturday night radio program, but it’s “PHC” that’s been around some 30 years and created a new style by reaching back to old ways of doing “a show.”
Call it an urbane, upscale “Hee Haw” and I suspect he wouldn’t be offended; if you’re old enough to remember radio shows like “National Barn Dance” on Chicago’s WLS or their heirs at the “Grand Ole Opry” on Nashville’s WSM, you have a better sense of where “PHC” is coming from, with organic bran muffins instead of the cornpone.
I’ve been suggesting for years at my old seminary that they should give an honorary degree to Garrison Keillor, because I suspect there are few people who have had a stronger influence on mainline/oldline Protestant preaching than what so many pastors in those churches listen to Saturday night as they (koff) polish their sermons (koff).
You see, one of the things Garrison does each week, in a show with a format that borders perilously on the liturgical in its regularity and structure, is at the point where a church service might have a sermon, he does The Monologue.
Now, even if you think you’ve never heard of Garrison Keillor, I guarantee you know something of The Monologue, which always starts out with the opening invocation “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown.” Lake Wobegon is a fictional town in an imaginary county in Minnesota, somewhere north of Minneapolis-St. Paul (where the show usually broadcasts from, in the Fitzgerald Theatre). Garrison will tell us about the events and the doings of the population there, and sometimes going abroad to follow her citizens in their travels or the always somewhat wistful exiles who grew up there and left. Church life is as central as the fortunes of the local baseball team, the Lake Wobegon Whippets. Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Catholic Church, or Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church, led by Father Emil and Pastor Ingqvist, are often at the heart of what’s going on, even as we venture into the Sidetrack Tap, the Chatterbox Café, or over to Bunsen Motors.
What I’m sure you’ve heard is the closing, which you don’t always see coming, and can sneak up on you (and no doubt the engineer up in the booth working the broadcast), but is clearly marked by the words “That’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”
The thing about the monologue for a preacher is that you can tell – you just can tell, if you get up in front of big groups of people and talk for a living – that he’s put effort into thinking through and planning the rough outline of what he’s going to say, but then he’s laid it aside and is just talking to you, the listener. Which means sometimes the narrative goes in a direction that your spoken reflections and the subtle cues you pick up from your audience steers far out of sight of the security of your prepared text.
There are not infrequently a kind of highwire act moment, when you can just tell that Keillor, struck by what he’s just heard himself describe, and catching a glimpse of where this tale might go next, will windmill a bit into the microphone: “And then . . . and then . . . and then . . . (and the audience in the theatre starts to laugh a bit) . . . and then they saw this bird, with a long, curling tail, fly off into the trees!” There’s just a hint of triumph in his voice, and satisfaction among the audience that they saw him swing and sway a little out over the crowd, but he found his footing, and then the story hurtles forward.
My suspicion is that aside from vocal style, which is unique to the man, Garrison Keillor has emboldened many a pastor to lay aside their manuscript pages, and take a chance that they may actually grope for a word in public, and the congregation won’t mind at all. You may even go in a totally unexpected direction, feeling the gentle nudge of . . . a glance from the choir? A nodding head in the back? A brush of angel’s wings? But you go there, and the listeners go with you.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he waited too long to figure out if he could go to the now sold-out Keillor show, so tell him what you thought about it at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Listen to a Keillor narration with National Geographic photos of places that could/may be Lake Wobegon at the following link (text is there, click sidebar for narrated slideshow):
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0012/feature5/index.html
Jeff Gill
A Preacher By Any Other Name
Garrison Keillor is coming to Newark in a week and a half, appearing at the Midland Theatre on Wednesday, Jan. 21. You may not have heard his name in the same way that Ben Vereen or Kathy Mattea are well known, but if you’ve not heard of “Prairie Home Companion,” then you may not know about Garrison and his distinctive style on public radio.
He’s written quite a few books and even starred in a movie loosely based on his long running Saturday night radio program, but it’s “PHC” that’s been around some 30 years and created a new style by reaching back to old ways of doing “a show.”
Call it an urbane, upscale “Hee Haw” and I suspect he wouldn’t be offended; if you’re old enough to remember radio shows like “National Barn Dance” on Chicago’s WLS or their heirs at the “Grand Ole Opry” on Nashville’s WSM, you have a better sense of where “PHC” is coming from, with organic bran muffins instead of the cornpone.
I’ve been suggesting for years at my old seminary that they should give an honorary degree to Garrison Keillor, because I suspect there are few people who have had a stronger influence on mainline/oldline Protestant preaching than what so many pastors in those churches listen to Saturday night as they (koff) polish their sermons (koff).
You see, one of the things Garrison does each week, in a show with a format that borders perilously on the liturgical in its regularity and structure, is at the point where a church service might have a sermon, he does The Monologue.
Now, even if you think you’ve never heard of Garrison Keillor, I guarantee you know something of The Monologue, which always starts out with the opening invocation “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown.” Lake Wobegon is a fictional town in an imaginary county in Minnesota, somewhere north of Minneapolis-St. Paul (where the show usually broadcasts from, in the Fitzgerald Theatre). Garrison will tell us about the events and the doings of the population there, and sometimes going abroad to follow her citizens in their travels or the always somewhat wistful exiles who grew up there and left. Church life is as central as the fortunes of the local baseball team, the Lake Wobegon Whippets. Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Catholic Church, or Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church, led by Father Emil and Pastor Ingqvist, are often at the heart of what’s going on, even as we venture into the Sidetrack Tap, the Chatterbox Café, or over to Bunsen Motors.
What I’m sure you’ve heard is the closing, which you don’t always see coming, and can sneak up on you (and no doubt the engineer up in the booth working the broadcast), but is clearly marked by the words “That’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”
The thing about the monologue for a preacher is that you can tell – you just can tell, if you get up in front of big groups of people and talk for a living – that he’s put effort into thinking through and planning the rough outline of what he’s going to say, but then he’s laid it aside and is just talking to you, the listener. Which means sometimes the narrative goes in a direction that your spoken reflections and the subtle cues you pick up from your audience steers far out of sight of the security of your prepared text.
There are not infrequently a kind of highwire act moment, when you can just tell that Keillor, struck by what he’s just heard himself describe, and catching a glimpse of where this tale might go next, will windmill a bit into the microphone: “And then . . . and then . . . and then . . . (and the audience in the theatre starts to laugh a bit) . . . and then they saw this bird, with a long, curling tail, fly off into the trees!” There’s just a hint of triumph in his voice, and satisfaction among the audience that they saw him swing and sway a little out over the crowd, but he found his footing, and then the story hurtles forward.
My suspicion is that aside from vocal style, which is unique to the man, Garrison Keillor has emboldened many a pastor to lay aside their manuscript pages, and take a chance that they may actually grope for a word in public, and the congregation won’t mind at all. You may even go in a totally unexpected direction, feeling the gentle nudge of . . . a glance from the choir? A nodding head in the back? A brush of angel’s wings? But you go there, and the listeners go with you.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he waited too long to figure out if he could go to the now sold-out Keillor show, so tell him what you thought about it at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Listen to a Keillor narration with National Geographic photos of places that could/may be Lake Wobegon at the following link (text is there, click sidebar for narrated slideshow):
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0012/feature5/index.html
One of the most interesting interviews i've ever done -- http://www.denison.edu/offices/publicaffairs/mlk_2009_bernice_johnson_reagon.html
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Who was Cap Streeter?
Try the wikipedia entry -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Streeter
-- and make sure to click the word "Reutan" for a great website on the story behind Maria and George "Cap" Streeter.
Monday, January 05, 2009
My Kind Of Town, Chicago Is!
If you go across the street from the Tribune Tower, towards the Wrigley Building just a block north of the Chicago River on Michigan Avenue, and . . . descend. Below street level, down to the edge of Lower Wacker Drive, and then through a bright red door shining out of the murk, onto another flight of steps. You drop into a warm place where a man in a greasy apron waving a spatula at you starts to shout, and then tells the man with his back to you at the grill, no matter what you just said, "Cheezborger, double."
You've reached the Billy Goat Tavern, the heart of more Chicago lore than the Historical Society could hold, and twice as tasty. (Yes, we went some other places if you scroll on down.)
We took a look at the Walnut Room and the Great Tree in what i still call Marshall Field's on State Street, but the new Macy's overlords saw fit to put Uncle Mistletoe and Aunt Holly in a glass case off to one side, and not atop the tree itself.
Hmmmpphhh.
Anyhow, up in Streeterville, you can see the view from our room down a side street towards Michigan Avenue, with the Hancock Center astride the center of our window.
The Lovely Wife was a bit disconcerted by the echoing wail of sirens on and off through the night, and the sporadic, ominous, resounding booms that may have been dumpster lids swinging shut, or could have been giant footsteps pounding slowly down the alleys. I slept like an innocent babe through the long-forgotten, still familiar sounds, but to be fair, it does all seem a bit peculiar from certain vantage points.
As you can see above.
Ah, i did love it all. A wonderful weekend, and i think everyone got some pleasure if not relaxation out of it. And i got to tell a story in the wedding homily about Maria & George Wellington Streeter, twelve stories above the spot where the Reutan ran aground in 1882. What joy!
"My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of people too
People who, smile at you
And each time I roam, Chicago is
Calling me home, Chicago is
One town that won't let you down
It's my kind of town"
("My Kind of Town" Cahn/VanHeusen, 1964)
This picture is of George & Maria's second houseboat/grounded steamer; they refloated the Reutan to ferry passengers to the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and lived in this one for the next few years, right where the Ritz-Carlton Four Seasons hotel sits today atop Water Tower Place.
If you go across the street from the Tribune Tower, towards the Wrigley Building just a block north of the Chicago River on Michigan Avenue, and . . . descend. Below street level, down to the edge of Lower Wacker Drive, and then through a bright red door shining out of the murk, onto another flight of steps. You drop into a warm place where a man in a greasy apron waving a spatula at you starts to shout, and then tells the man with his back to you at the grill, no matter what you just said, "Cheezborger, double."
You've reached the Billy Goat Tavern, the heart of more Chicago lore than the Historical Society could hold, and twice as tasty. (Yes, we went some other places if you scroll on down.)
We took a look at the Walnut Room and the Great Tree in what i still call Marshall Field's on State Street, but the new Macy's overlords saw fit to put Uncle Mistletoe and Aunt Holly in a glass case off to one side, and not atop the tree itself.
Hmmmpphhh.
Anyhow, up in Streeterville, you can see the view from our room down a side street towards Michigan Avenue, with the Hancock Center astride the center of our window.
The Lovely Wife was a bit disconcerted by the echoing wail of sirens on and off through the night, and the sporadic, ominous, resounding booms that may have been dumpster lids swinging shut, or could have been giant footsteps pounding slowly down the alleys. I slept like an innocent babe through the long-forgotten, still familiar sounds, but to be fair, it does all seem a bit peculiar from certain vantage points.
As you can see above.
Ah, i did love it all. A wonderful weekend, and i think everyone got some pleasure if not relaxation out of it. And i got to tell a story in the wedding homily about Maria & George Wellington Streeter, twelve stories above the spot where the Reutan ran aground in 1882. What joy!
"My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of people too
People who, smile at you
And each time I roam, Chicago is
Calling me home, Chicago is
One town that won't let you down
It's my kind of town"
("My Kind of Town" Cahn/VanHeusen, 1964)
This picture is of George & Maria's second houseboat/grounded steamer; they refloated the Reutan to ferry passengers to the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and lived in this one for the next few years, right where the Ritz-Carlton Four Seasons hotel sits today atop Water Tower Place.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Swiped with credit to David Head, a Baptist pastor in Lexington KY who blogs at http://ponderanew.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/some-questions-for-the-new-year/
Look Back
+ Write your 2008 story in six sentences –one for every other month or so.
+ Summarize all of that in six words. Turn the six words into a prayer.
+ What was your greatest mess, failure or disappointment this year? What lesson did you learn from that that you will take with you?
+ What was your greatest joy, success or accomplishment this year? What lesson did you learn from that you will take with you?
+ With whom did you develop a significant relationship this year? Why do you think the Lord has brought you together with this person?
+ When do you recall laughing the hardest this year? Crying? Enjoying some artistic or musical moment? Having your mind stimulated by a conversation, something you saw or read in a book?
+ How is your faith different than at the turn of last year?
+ What did your life this year show you about Jesus that makes him more beautiful, wise, strong, loving and faithful than you ever dreamed?
Taking Stock Now
Describe – as honestly as possible—where you stand today in the following life areas:
- worship (to what degree are all things for the glory of God?)
- intellectual depth, breadth & growth
- emotional maturity in dealing with anger, grief, frustration, etc.
- deep affections for God
- family relationships (spouse, children, parents, siblings)
- vocation ( work or school)
- integrity of life, words, actions
- Kingdom influence through my life (being salt and light)
- holiness (like God)
- Christ-like character
- Biblical knowledge and application
- forgiveness and reconciliation for broken relationships
- bearing witness to spiritually lost people
- involvement with the hurting & broken people you encounter
- stewardship of your life, talents, money & other resources
- concern for the nations, especially unreached people groups
+ all of this could be summed up in the consideration of one large question: To what degree does my life center on Jesus, enjoy the fullness of His gospel, and invite others to join me in that life?
Looking Forward
+ Ps. 90:12 says “teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Write a six-word prayer summarizing your God-ward impulses for 2009.
+ How will you pursue intimacy with God more passionately? Be specific.
+ What aspect of your inner world do you want to cultivate this year?
+ With what Christian brother or sister do you want to deepen or repair a relationship this year?
+ With what pre-Christians will you commit to develop a genuine friendship and have gospel-centered conversations?
+ How do you want to see your marriage grow this year? Your children develop?
+ How will you pursue beauty? Laughter? Curiosity? Knowledge? Wisdom? Generosity? Compassion?
+ How will there be a stronger gospel influence through you at work or school this year?
+ Is there a sense of calling or a prompting of the Spirit in a certain direction to which you need to give attention?
+ How can the gospel of Jesus – with its love, grace, power and hope–become larger and more real to you with every day that passes this year?
Happy New Year!!
Look Back
+ Write your 2008 story in six sentences –one for every other month or so.
+ Summarize all of that in six words. Turn the six words into a prayer.
+ What was your greatest mess, failure or disappointment this year? What lesson did you learn from that that you will take with you?
+ What was your greatest joy, success or accomplishment this year? What lesson did you learn from that you will take with you?
+ With whom did you develop a significant relationship this year? Why do you think the Lord has brought you together with this person?
+ When do you recall laughing the hardest this year? Crying? Enjoying some artistic or musical moment? Having your mind stimulated by a conversation, something you saw or read in a book?
+ How is your faith different than at the turn of last year?
+ What did your life this year show you about Jesus that makes him more beautiful, wise, strong, loving and faithful than you ever dreamed?
Taking Stock Now
Describe – as honestly as possible—where you stand today in the following life areas:
- worship (to what degree are all things for the glory of God?)
- intellectual depth, breadth & growth
- emotional maturity in dealing with anger, grief, frustration, etc.
- deep affections for God
- family relationships (spouse, children, parents, siblings)
- vocation ( work or school)
- integrity of life, words, actions
- Kingdom influence through my life (being salt and light)
- holiness (like God)
- Christ-like character
- Biblical knowledge and application
- forgiveness and reconciliation for broken relationships
- bearing witness to spiritually lost people
- involvement with the hurting & broken people you encounter
- stewardship of your life, talents, money & other resources
- concern for the nations, especially unreached people groups
+ all of this could be summed up in the consideration of one large question: To what degree does my life center on Jesus, enjoy the fullness of His gospel, and invite others to join me in that life?
Looking Forward
+ Ps. 90:12 says “teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Write a six-word prayer summarizing your God-ward impulses for 2009.
+ How will you pursue intimacy with God more passionately? Be specific.
+ What aspect of your inner world do you want to cultivate this year?
+ With what Christian brother or sister do you want to deepen or repair a relationship this year?
+ With what pre-Christians will you commit to develop a genuine friendship and have gospel-centered conversations?
+ How do you want to see your marriage grow this year? Your children develop?
+ How will you pursue beauty? Laughter? Curiosity? Knowledge? Wisdom? Generosity? Compassion?
+ How will there be a stronger gospel influence through you at work or school this year?
+ Is there a sense of calling or a prompting of the Spirit in a certain direction to which you need to give attention?
+ How can the gospel of Jesus – with its love, grace, power and hope–become larger and more real to you with every day that passes this year?
Happy New Year!!
Faith Works 1-3-09
Jeff Gill
Ten Stories In the News With a Faith Angle
As the new year rolls in, the Religion Newswriters Association looked back at 2008, and asked its members to vote on the “Top 10 Religion News Stories.”
These scribes and columnists put the election of Barack Obama in the first place (big shock, that!), noting the role of candidate pastors and/or church memberships for both the winner and for John McCain, along with his running mate Sarah Palin. Their affiliations and relationship with church leaders has been under public scrutiny right on through Obama’s plans for his inauguration later this month (more on that later!).
Number Two was the Democratic Party outreach effort to religiously motivated voters, particularly conservative Christians. Obama appeared at a candidate forum moderated by Rick Warren at Saddleback Church in California, the kind of event Democrats used to skip and let the Republicans speak at all on their lonesome.
Third was Sarah Palin’s arrival on the national stage, with her message of support for unborn and disabled children rooted in an evangelical and somewhat Pentecostal viewpoint. Religious conservatives found a new measure of interest in the presidential election, but not quite as much as Obama generated among younger and more liberal voters.
Fourth place, said newswriters on religion, was the somewhat startling public reaction against gay marriage in California, Arizona, and Florida; the exact measure of what voting blocs turned out for what reason is still in the works, but much early anger from the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community was aimed at the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and Catholic Church.
Coming in fifth was the first American visit of Pope Benedict XVI, greeted by large crowds in Washington and New York, and by small groups who were invited to meet him representing victims of the sexual abuse scandals that have afflicted his communion. The Pope addressed the problem specifically, and the need for churches to face such occurrences clearly and honestly, directly from the pulpit.
In sixth place was the series of events leading to a request from conservative Episcopalians for a separate Anglican structure, or “province” for North America. Since the election and consecration of a noncelibate gay priest as bishop of New Hampshire five years ago, tensions and defections have slowly, but steadily opened up divisions in The Episcopal Church, most dramatically in the Diocese of Pittsburgh just to our east.
Seventh was listed as the terrorist violence in India inflicted by Islamic radicals on Jewish and secular targets in Mumbai (Bombay) just a few weeks ago, but an increase throughout the year of violence against Christians in smaller but no less deadly attacks in the eastern state of Orissa.
China made eighth place by cracking down harshly on Buddhists who sought to raise the issue of Tibetan independence during the Olympic torch run, and even more ruthlessly during the Games themselves. Their approach to chaplaincy in the Athlete’s Village during the Olympics I’d nominate for the most under-covered story of the year.
Ninth place strikes perhaps closest to Licking County, as the economic crisis that ended the year has pushed many churches and faith communities to and even over the edge, including building closures and foreclosures, staff layoffs and cutbacks, and the reduction of many charitable programs just at a time when they are most needed.
Tenth place was given to the situation in Iraq, particularly the hazards faced by the small but ancient Christian community there, beginning the year with the assassination of the Chaldean Christian archbishop, but ending somewhat hopefully with the return of some who had left Iraq earlier in the year as the security situation stabilized.
What news stories would you have put on a list of news stories with a faith angle? How would you rank them for order of importance or impact? And can you find a way to feel a connection to each of them?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him how you see the new year shaping up at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Ten Stories In the News With a Faith Angle
As the new year rolls in, the Religion Newswriters Association looked back at 2008, and asked its members to vote on the “Top 10 Religion News Stories.”
These scribes and columnists put the election of Barack Obama in the first place (big shock, that!), noting the role of candidate pastors and/or church memberships for both the winner and for John McCain, along with his running mate Sarah Palin. Their affiliations and relationship with church leaders has been under public scrutiny right on through Obama’s plans for his inauguration later this month (more on that later!).
Number Two was the Democratic Party outreach effort to religiously motivated voters, particularly conservative Christians. Obama appeared at a candidate forum moderated by Rick Warren at Saddleback Church in California, the kind of event Democrats used to skip and let the Republicans speak at all on their lonesome.
Third was Sarah Palin’s arrival on the national stage, with her message of support for unborn and disabled children rooted in an evangelical and somewhat Pentecostal viewpoint. Religious conservatives found a new measure of interest in the presidential election, but not quite as much as Obama generated among younger and more liberal voters.
Fourth place, said newswriters on religion, was the somewhat startling public reaction against gay marriage in California, Arizona, and Florida; the exact measure of what voting blocs turned out for what reason is still in the works, but much early anger from the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community was aimed at the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and Catholic Church.
Coming in fifth was the first American visit of Pope Benedict XVI, greeted by large crowds in Washington and New York, and by small groups who were invited to meet him representing victims of the sexual abuse scandals that have afflicted his communion. The Pope addressed the problem specifically, and the need for churches to face such occurrences clearly and honestly, directly from the pulpit.
In sixth place was the series of events leading to a request from conservative Episcopalians for a separate Anglican structure, or “province” for North America. Since the election and consecration of a noncelibate gay priest as bishop of New Hampshire five years ago, tensions and defections have slowly, but steadily opened up divisions in The Episcopal Church, most dramatically in the Diocese of Pittsburgh just to our east.
Seventh was listed as the terrorist violence in India inflicted by Islamic radicals on Jewish and secular targets in Mumbai (Bombay) just a few weeks ago, but an increase throughout the year of violence against Christians in smaller but no less deadly attacks in the eastern state of Orissa.
China made eighth place by cracking down harshly on Buddhists who sought to raise the issue of Tibetan independence during the Olympic torch run, and even more ruthlessly during the Games themselves. Their approach to chaplaincy in the Athlete’s Village during the Olympics I’d nominate for the most under-covered story of the year.
Ninth place strikes perhaps closest to Licking County, as the economic crisis that ended the year has pushed many churches and faith communities to and even over the edge, including building closures and foreclosures, staff layoffs and cutbacks, and the reduction of many charitable programs just at a time when they are most needed.
Tenth place was given to the situation in Iraq, particularly the hazards faced by the small but ancient Christian community there, beginning the year with the assassination of the Chaldean Christian archbishop, but ending somewhat hopefully with the return of some who had left Iraq earlier in the year as the security situation stabilized.
What news stories would you have put on a list of news stories with a faith angle? How would you rank them for order of importance or impact? And can you find a way to feel a connection to each of them?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him how you see the new year shaping up at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Arctic Circle Press news release
Dec. 26, North Pole
Santa Claus Enterprises, LLC, has formally approached the incoming Obama administration team for a share of the bailout dollars, or TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) Fund, saying that "Christmas toys for girls and boys" may be endangered next year if access to capital and debt relief is not provided.
Kris Kringle, president and CEO, says "our operation has been a successful model for business success over generations, but when people are cutting back the way they have, we may not be there when the economy recovers without a boost to tide us over."
Mr. Kringle pointed out that they are, in fact, already needing to purchase supplies and materials for the 2009 Christmas season even before January. "Our supply chain is stretched tight, and we don't carry lots of materials inventory through the Christmas season - we're used to cleaning this place out, and then picking right up on Jan. 2 to get ready for next year."
Jimmy Jingle, senior provost of the Ancient & Honorable Order of Workshop, Delivery, and Transport Elves (also known as the "Little Teamsters"), agrees that a capital and credit guarantee is in order. "We think it is very important to maintain confidence in the entire North Pole operation -- there are very few mass gifting and very-special-delivery models out there, and this one, with the active support of parents and grandparents and local retailers, is doing the very best they can. We stand behind, while standing on each others' shoulders, the choices the Old Man has made that led us to this point, and are certain he will lead us into a brighter, more efficient, and new holiday season."
Kringle notes that in his initial contacts with Congress, he has made but sparing use of the fact that, in his words, he "knows who's been naughty and nice." Admitting that the senators and representatives he speaks to are aware of this capacity of his position, Kringle doubts that it has unfairly influenced any of the key committee chairs -- or Mr. Obama.
"President-elect Obama is acutely aware, through his two daughters, of how important continuity is to the Christmas morning surprise from year to year. We hope that no political considerations would end up endangering a smooth transition from one season to the next." Kringle has not spoken to the Chinese government about their possible underwriting of his operation, but he does say "we have talked, and that channel will always be open as long as parents want cheap toys."
As a privately held company, there was no immediate response on Wall Street from the news of the bailout request.
Dec. 26, North Pole
Santa Claus Enterprises, LLC, has formally approached the incoming Obama administration team for a share of the bailout dollars, or TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) Fund, saying that "Christmas toys for girls and boys" may be endangered next year if access to capital and debt relief is not provided.
Kris Kringle, president and CEO, says "our operation has been a successful model for business success over generations, but when people are cutting back the way they have, we may not be there when the economy recovers without a boost to tide us over."
Mr. Kringle pointed out that they are, in fact, already needing to purchase supplies and materials for the 2009 Christmas season even before January. "Our supply chain is stretched tight, and we don't carry lots of materials inventory through the Christmas season - we're used to cleaning this place out, and then picking right up on Jan. 2 to get ready for next year."
Jimmy Jingle, senior provost of the Ancient & Honorable Order of Workshop, Delivery, and Transport Elves (also known as the "Little Teamsters"), agrees that a capital and credit guarantee is in order. "We think it is very important to maintain confidence in the entire North Pole operation -- there are very few mass gifting and very-special-delivery models out there, and this one, with the active support of parents and grandparents and local retailers, is doing the very best they can. We stand behind, while standing on each others' shoulders, the choices the Old Man has made that led us to this point, and are certain he will lead us into a brighter, more efficient, and new holiday season."
Kringle notes that in his initial contacts with Congress, he has made but sparing use of the fact that, in his words, he "knows who's been naughty and nice." Admitting that the senators and representatives he speaks to are aware of this capacity of his position, Kringle doubts that it has unfairly influenced any of the key committee chairs -- or Mr. Obama.
"President-elect Obama is acutely aware, through his two daughters, of how important continuity is to the Christmas morning surprise from year to year. We hope that no political considerations would end up endangering a smooth transition from one season to the next." Kringle has not spoken to the Chinese government about their possible underwriting of his operation, but he does say "we have talked, and that channel will always be open as long as parents want cheap toys."
As a privately held company, there was no immediate response on Wall Street from the news of the bailout request.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
"Christmas" by John Betjeman
The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain.
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hooker's Green.
The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that villagers can say
"The Church looks nice" on Christmas Day.
Provincial public houses blaze
And Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says "Merry Christmas to you all".
And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.
And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad,
And Christmas morning bells say "Come!"
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.
And is it true? and is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
Notes From My Knapsack 1-1-09 – Granville Sentinel
Jeff Gill
December 31, 1945
George hung up the phone and looked up at the picture of his father.
Just beneath it was the cross-stitch his mother had made for him of his dad’s favorite quote – 'All you can take with you is that which you give away.'
He looked past them to the window, where the snow was still falling outside. The building whose owner had just been speaking to him was sifting into invisibility behind the mist and growing dark.
Potter wanted him to know they had “found something of interest to both of them.” It was the much-searched for $8,000, in an envelope left in a deposit slip rack. A good-hearted customer had discovered the crumpled packet and turned it in to a teller; they had given $50 of it to the finder, which he was sure George would approve of.
Sure, said George. He was surprised how little excitement he felt at the return of the prodigal deposit, although he was amused at Potter’s generosity with George’s money. For a moment, he thought about asking “If I had found $10,000 of yours, and had given $20 as a reward, would you have been fine with that?” But he just added “Thank you for thinking of that, Mr. Potter.”
There was a peculiar tone to the rest of the call, though. Potter sounded positively wistful, asking him about his children’s Christmas day, and how the aftermath of that already fading Christmas eve had gone, with half of Bedford Falls crowded into his house on Sycamore Street.
It was true that the hall carpet was essentially ruined, but he didn’t tell Potter that.
Harry had left yesterday for Pensacola, where he would be training new pilots. “Watch out for that Potter,” he said at the train station, adding “he’s got something he wants to prove, and you’re in the way of it.”
So it was with an extra sense of unease George had heard the words “Why don’t you and that charming family come over to my house for dinner tonight, and toast a new year, and the prosperity of peace?”
There was silence on both sides of the line, long enough to punctuate with a couple of Potter’s carefully controlled wheezes, just enough sound to indicate listening silence.
“I’ll have to check with Mary first, Mr. Potter; to tell you the truth, things have been so busy I’m not sure what our plans at home might be.”
“Of course, of course my boy, you do that; wouldn’t want to upset the missus. Just give me all call when you get home out here to Beech Grove.”
Potter’s father had begun a large rambling Georgian home on a knoll well out of town, and built barns and a pond and trails for horseback riding around the wooded acreage. It was along those, everyone knew, that a young Potter Junior had been thrown by a spooked horse, and been paralyzed ever since. There were stories about a young woman and a broken engagement, but all that was before George was even born.
The current Mr. Potter had added wings and grey stone and a high iron fence, but the few who had been on the grounds reported back food that was excellent, cooked in Continental style by a chef who it was rumored spoke no English. George said “I will certainly call as soon as I get home.”
“Excellent, excellent. George, we have much to talk about. My best to your Mary,” followed by a decisive clunk.
Should he go out there, he wondered? Should he even mention the invitation to Mary? She would wince and shake her head, but then say sternly, “We ought to say yes, if only to find out what he’s up to.”
And just how would it be, with his children, no doubt in danger of breaking a priceless object at every turn, sitting there about to say things they’d heard at home? There was no way it would be a pleasant evening.
Yet there was something in the old man’s voice, or in that silence as he chose not to wheedle or plead ingratiatingly, as was his usual style. Something *was* up, that’s for sure.
George reached for his hat, and thought “at the very least, I’ll have a story for Harry the next time he calls.” And then stopped and read for the millionth time those words of his father, neatly stitched by his mother - 'All you can take with you is that which you give away.'
Well, I’ll always have this evening then, thought George.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
December 31, 1945
George hung up the phone and looked up at the picture of his father.
Just beneath it was the cross-stitch his mother had made for him of his dad’s favorite quote – 'All you can take with you is that which you give away.'
He looked past them to the window, where the snow was still falling outside. The building whose owner had just been speaking to him was sifting into invisibility behind the mist and growing dark.
Potter wanted him to know they had “found something of interest to both of them.” It was the much-searched for $8,000, in an envelope left in a deposit slip rack. A good-hearted customer had discovered the crumpled packet and turned it in to a teller; they had given $50 of it to the finder, which he was sure George would approve of.
Sure, said George. He was surprised how little excitement he felt at the return of the prodigal deposit, although he was amused at Potter’s generosity with George’s money. For a moment, he thought about asking “If I had found $10,000 of yours, and had given $20 as a reward, would you have been fine with that?” But he just added “Thank you for thinking of that, Mr. Potter.”
There was a peculiar tone to the rest of the call, though. Potter sounded positively wistful, asking him about his children’s Christmas day, and how the aftermath of that already fading Christmas eve had gone, with half of Bedford Falls crowded into his house on Sycamore Street.
It was true that the hall carpet was essentially ruined, but he didn’t tell Potter that.
Harry had left yesterday for Pensacola, where he would be training new pilots. “Watch out for that Potter,” he said at the train station, adding “he’s got something he wants to prove, and you’re in the way of it.”
So it was with an extra sense of unease George had heard the words “Why don’t you and that charming family come over to my house for dinner tonight, and toast a new year, and the prosperity of peace?”
There was silence on both sides of the line, long enough to punctuate with a couple of Potter’s carefully controlled wheezes, just enough sound to indicate listening silence.
“I’ll have to check with Mary first, Mr. Potter; to tell you the truth, things have been so busy I’m not sure what our plans at home might be.”
“Of course, of course my boy, you do that; wouldn’t want to upset the missus. Just give me all call when you get home out here to Beech Grove.”
Potter’s father had begun a large rambling Georgian home on a knoll well out of town, and built barns and a pond and trails for horseback riding around the wooded acreage. It was along those, everyone knew, that a young Potter Junior had been thrown by a spooked horse, and been paralyzed ever since. There were stories about a young woman and a broken engagement, but all that was before George was even born.
The current Mr. Potter had added wings and grey stone and a high iron fence, but the few who had been on the grounds reported back food that was excellent, cooked in Continental style by a chef who it was rumored spoke no English. George said “I will certainly call as soon as I get home.”
“Excellent, excellent. George, we have much to talk about. My best to your Mary,” followed by a decisive clunk.
Should he go out there, he wondered? Should he even mention the invitation to Mary? She would wince and shake her head, but then say sternly, “We ought to say yes, if only to find out what he’s up to.”
And just how would it be, with his children, no doubt in danger of breaking a priceless object at every turn, sitting there about to say things they’d heard at home? There was no way it would be a pleasant evening.
Yet there was something in the old man’s voice, or in that silence as he chose not to wheedle or plead ingratiatingly, as was his usual style. Something *was* up, that’s for sure.
George reached for his hat, and thought “at the very least, I’ll have a story for Harry the next time he calls.” And then stopped and read for the millionth time those words of his father, neatly stitched by his mother - 'All you can take with you is that which you give away.'
Well, I’ll always have this evening then, thought George.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Faith Works 12-20-08
Jeff Gill
A Scrap of the Pageant
She sat in the back of the now darkened sanctuary, watching the first few children come onto the lighted platform. It is Christmas Eve, and the beginning of the service tonight is a Christmas pageant, with costumed young people acting out the Christmas story.
Mothers with cameras filled the front pews, so she was content to be further back, even her grandchildren now adults, and mostly far away. The story was as familiar to her as her own life, from engagement to wedding to childbirth, though she didn’t have the memory of being Mary herself when she was the age of the kids on stage.
That old country church so long ago didn’t have the tradition of a Christmas pageant, but she’d gone to this church since her marriage. She’d been on the altar guild and with the mission circles and helped in the kitchen, and she’d made most of the costumes now appearing in the front of the church.
Hardly anyone here tonight would know that, she reflected. It’s been a long time since most of those were made, and they’ve held up well. Her gift for the Christ child, and he gets the honor, so she was content.
The angels were in wings that had been made more recently – angels are always hard on their wings. It looked like that foam sheet material, with sparkle edging, which made her think about what a sturdier set might be made from with materials available now. Her first set was wire frame with cheesecloth covers, and they lasted about four years, even with patching.
This year’s Mary walked to her place next to the manger, and set herself down on the stool that normally sat behind the pulpit for shorter speakers. The blue of her cowl was a bit faded, but the woman in the back row knew that you’d have to have seen it new to realize that the color had changed. Or maybe it was her eyes.
Either way, the flow of fabric and the gather at the waist still looked good, although she couldn’t help a small internal wince at seeing the young lady dressed as Mary had a black turtleneck on. Ah well!
Then they came out, and she squinted just a bit to watch for it. The magi, the “wise men three” as the hymns and carols say, if not the scripture. Three unique, brocaded, bejeweled, shining costumes. And for each, a unique headpiece, each not quite a crown, all seeking an eastern exoticness. Turban and fez and flared hat that her grandson accused her of stealing from the third Star Trek movie, but was a picture stuck in her memory of a great-aunt’s manger scene on a coffee table from years ago.
Like the costumes, the hats for the wise men were a bit over the top, with trim and edging filled with gold thread and fussy embroidery – she noted with satisfaction that all three looked as good as they had when new, even after (as she knew) they had been tossed about in the church hallway before the service began.
The turban had an alternating series of diagonal panels, all curving into the topknot. Half of the panels were a particular fabric of light blue and grey stripes, with just a touch of silver thread woven through a black line between the stripes.
When her husband died, she took months to finally sort through his clothes and set aside some for Goodwill, some for the family as mementos, and throw out much of the rest. There were a few items she kept for herself, and there was one shirt in blue and grey stripes that she couldn’t stand, so of course he wore it almost every Saturday. Now she couldn’t bear to part with it.
That year, now long past, they asked her if she could make new headpieces for the wise men to go with the costumes she had made earlier; there were crowns that had been used that went back to who knows what, but they were crumbling and shabby looking. Could she knock something together?
As she planned out her design, she saw that shirt in the closet, and then she saw it in the turban, on a young man, coming out each Christmas onto the platform at the church. Without hesitation she took it off the hanger and began to cut.
It was Christmas Eve again, and there he was again, the young man she married memorialized in a way no one but that one elderly woman in the back row would know . . . that woman, and the young man grown old and now sitting waiting for her, in a Pageant that began in Bethlehem.
She gazed on the scene, and that turban, and sat back content. Tomorrow was Christmas, and she had her gift already.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
A Scrap of the Pageant
She sat in the back of the now darkened sanctuary, watching the first few children come onto the lighted platform. It is Christmas Eve, and the beginning of the service tonight is a Christmas pageant, with costumed young people acting out the Christmas story.
Mothers with cameras filled the front pews, so she was content to be further back, even her grandchildren now adults, and mostly far away. The story was as familiar to her as her own life, from engagement to wedding to childbirth, though she didn’t have the memory of being Mary herself when she was the age of the kids on stage.
That old country church so long ago didn’t have the tradition of a Christmas pageant, but she’d gone to this church since her marriage. She’d been on the altar guild and with the mission circles and helped in the kitchen, and she’d made most of the costumes now appearing in the front of the church.
Hardly anyone here tonight would know that, she reflected. It’s been a long time since most of those were made, and they’ve held up well. Her gift for the Christ child, and he gets the honor, so she was content.
The angels were in wings that had been made more recently – angels are always hard on their wings. It looked like that foam sheet material, with sparkle edging, which made her think about what a sturdier set might be made from with materials available now. Her first set was wire frame with cheesecloth covers, and they lasted about four years, even with patching.
This year’s Mary walked to her place next to the manger, and set herself down on the stool that normally sat behind the pulpit for shorter speakers. The blue of her cowl was a bit faded, but the woman in the back row knew that you’d have to have seen it new to realize that the color had changed. Or maybe it was her eyes.
Either way, the flow of fabric and the gather at the waist still looked good, although she couldn’t help a small internal wince at seeing the young lady dressed as Mary had a black turtleneck on. Ah well!
Then they came out, and she squinted just a bit to watch for it. The magi, the “wise men three” as the hymns and carols say, if not the scripture. Three unique, brocaded, bejeweled, shining costumes. And for each, a unique headpiece, each not quite a crown, all seeking an eastern exoticness. Turban and fez and flared hat that her grandson accused her of stealing from the third Star Trek movie, but was a picture stuck in her memory of a great-aunt’s manger scene on a coffee table from years ago.
Like the costumes, the hats for the wise men were a bit over the top, with trim and edging filled with gold thread and fussy embroidery – she noted with satisfaction that all three looked as good as they had when new, even after (as she knew) they had been tossed about in the church hallway before the service began.
The turban had an alternating series of diagonal panels, all curving into the topknot. Half of the panels were a particular fabric of light blue and grey stripes, with just a touch of silver thread woven through a black line between the stripes.
When her husband died, she took months to finally sort through his clothes and set aside some for Goodwill, some for the family as mementos, and throw out much of the rest. There were a few items she kept for herself, and there was one shirt in blue and grey stripes that she couldn’t stand, so of course he wore it almost every Saturday. Now she couldn’t bear to part with it.
That year, now long past, they asked her if she could make new headpieces for the wise men to go with the costumes she had made earlier; there were crowns that had been used that went back to who knows what, but they were crumbling and shabby looking. Could she knock something together?
As she planned out her design, she saw that shirt in the closet, and then she saw it in the turban, on a young man, coming out each Christmas onto the platform at the church. Without hesitation she took it off the hanger and began to cut.
It was Christmas Eve again, and there he was again, the young man she married memorialized in a way no one but that one elderly woman in the back row would know . . . that woman, and the young man grown old and now sitting waiting for her, in a Pageant that began in Bethlehem.
She gazed on the scene, and that turban, and sat back content. Tomorrow was Christmas, and she had her gift already.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Friday, December 12, 2008
[Scroll down past two columns/posts to see the pictures from the Candlelight Walking Tour last weekend, which are much more worth looking at that reading these columns . . . really!]
Notes From My Knapsack 12-18-08
Jeff Gill
Toys In a Less Than Playful Time
With the economic downturn, and retail sales down five months running, I know stores and shop owners are nervously watching their sales this Christmas season. That three percent growth that we keep hearing is a baseline for a healthy economy makes me wonder what a healthy economy is by their definition.
Still, there’s that whole tradition of gift giving that the Magi got started with their dratted myrrh, gold, and frankincense, and the children expect something under the tree.
Between the recession on steroids and a kind of retreat into nostalgia that times like these promote, we’re seeing less of the hip, cutting edge, high tech look for what is the ad world’s normative seasonal atmosphere, and more knit mufflers and carolers and even the stray top hat and lantern.
What would happen if we got really all throwbacky about Christmas for the kids? The Granville Historical Society had a set of old-timey tools out for the Candlelight Walking Tour which generated a great deal of conversation on the streets about rug beaters and sugar shears and all those things labor saving devices were invented to save us from. But what about toys?
Somehow the standard street scene meant to holler out to us “olden times” in movies has come to include a lad in knickers with a hoop and stick. Currier and Ives put this young fellow in a number of their atmospheric scenes, and whether in old engravings or today’s TV programs, you get the impression that this was all the rage at some indeterminate point, long ago but recently enough to have metal barrel hoops.
I can’t find a reference that tells me if children got a hoop with a special stick for a present, or if it was more like kids playing with the cardboard box Christmas afternoon. A found toy, perhaps, but what an interesting toy for today, promoting getting outside, aerobic activity, and hand-eye co-ordination? (The Lad says “No, it isn’t.”)
Those of you who loved “A Christmas Story” (25 years last month, with the house in Cleveland now a delightfully kitschy shrine – see www.achristmasstoryhouse.com, and you can search my knapsack.blogspot.com site for photos from there, see archives at right, scroll down) remember the Red Ryder BB gun, which I still can’t recommend: you’ll shoot your eye out!
But there was a prequel made later, with a different cast yet the same names, Jean Shepherd narrating, and filmed at that house again, called “My Summer Story.” The plot anchor here is not an air rifle, but a fighting top.
Yes, a greatly desired and fondly hoped for gold painted top that you tossed with a pull string. If it looks easy, try it sometime; cracking a whip is easier. I played with one, with grim intent, over at Ohio Village years ago, and the movie makes group play with them look like marbles with attitude.
Dolls are a whole ‘nother category of then vs. now. In keeping with laws first outlined in “Brave New World,” no new toy can be released, apparently, without being more complicated and feature-ridden than their predecessor.
Try to find a doll that is warm, soft, well stitched, and without any Velcro pockets for batteries, voice recorder devices, or embedded aliens to burst from Betsy-Wetsie’s chest (you thought excreting baby dolls were bad). They do exist, but they are well hidden. If the voice and posture and activities are to be supplied by the owner from her or his own imagination, you’ll not find them on the front shelves in the larger stores.
This isn’t just to idealize corn husk dolls – my brother and I loved to play with some rubber figures with internal wires in what was a high-techy play set for the late 60s, Maj. Matt Mason and Sgt. Storm. I looked on-line to see if I could recover a bit of our childhood for both of us, and wow . . .
If we still had ours, and they were in good shape, let alone in original packaging, they . . . just go look at eBay and marvel. They’re worth something, but apparently (gulp) as antiques. Our guys lived full and active lives before vanishing into wherever their tattered bodies and plastic parts ended up. (I didn’t buy him any; he couldn’t let his girls touch them for what they cost now anyhow.)
But for those few fellow astronaut toy fans out there, consider this – Jeff Long just beat Matt Mason for President!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send him a word at knapsack77@gmail.com.
PS - If you're having trouble remembering Major Matt Mason, but think it rings a faint bell, here's the line's 1969 Christmas ad, which has it all (i think my brother and i had about half of it all between us):
Notes From My Knapsack 12-18-08
Jeff Gill
Toys In a Less Than Playful Time
With the economic downturn, and retail sales down five months running, I know stores and shop owners are nervously watching their sales this Christmas season. That three percent growth that we keep hearing is a baseline for a healthy economy makes me wonder what a healthy economy is by their definition.
Still, there’s that whole tradition of gift giving that the Magi got started with their dratted myrrh, gold, and frankincense, and the children expect something under the tree.
Between the recession on steroids and a kind of retreat into nostalgia that times like these promote, we’re seeing less of the hip, cutting edge, high tech look for what is the ad world’s normative seasonal atmosphere, and more knit mufflers and carolers and even the stray top hat and lantern.
What would happen if we got really all throwbacky about Christmas for the kids? The Granville Historical Society had a set of old-timey tools out for the Candlelight Walking Tour which generated a great deal of conversation on the streets about rug beaters and sugar shears and all those things labor saving devices were invented to save us from. But what about toys?
Somehow the standard street scene meant to holler out to us “olden times” in movies has come to include a lad in knickers with a hoop and stick. Currier and Ives put this young fellow in a number of their atmospheric scenes, and whether in old engravings or today’s TV programs, you get the impression that this was all the rage at some indeterminate point, long ago but recently enough to have metal barrel hoops.
I can’t find a reference that tells me if children got a hoop with a special stick for a present, or if it was more like kids playing with the cardboard box Christmas afternoon. A found toy, perhaps, but what an interesting toy for today, promoting getting outside, aerobic activity, and hand-eye co-ordination? (The Lad says “No, it isn’t.”)
Those of you who loved “A Christmas Story” (25 years last month, with the house in Cleveland now a delightfully kitschy shrine – see www.achristmasstoryhouse.com, and you can search my knapsack.blogspot.com site for photos from there, see archives at right, scroll down) remember the Red Ryder BB gun, which I still can’t recommend: you’ll shoot your eye out!
But there was a prequel made later, with a different cast yet the same names, Jean Shepherd narrating, and filmed at that house again, called “My Summer Story.” The plot anchor here is not an air rifle, but a fighting top.
Yes, a greatly desired and fondly hoped for gold painted top that you tossed with a pull string. If it looks easy, try it sometime; cracking a whip is easier. I played with one, with grim intent, over at Ohio Village years ago, and the movie makes group play with them look like marbles with attitude.
Dolls are a whole ‘nother category of then vs. now. In keeping with laws first outlined in “Brave New World,” no new toy can be released, apparently, without being more complicated and feature-ridden than their predecessor.
Try to find a doll that is warm, soft, well stitched, and without any Velcro pockets for batteries, voice recorder devices, or embedded aliens to burst from Betsy-Wetsie’s chest (you thought excreting baby dolls were bad). They do exist, but they are well hidden. If the voice and posture and activities are to be supplied by the owner from her or his own imagination, you’ll not find them on the front shelves in the larger stores.
This isn’t just to idealize corn husk dolls – my brother and I loved to play with some rubber figures with internal wires in what was a high-techy play set for the late 60s, Maj. Matt Mason and Sgt. Storm. I looked on-line to see if I could recover a bit of our childhood for both of us, and wow . . .
If we still had ours, and they were in good shape, let alone in original packaging, they . . . just go look at eBay and marvel. They’re worth something, but apparently (gulp) as antiques. Our guys lived full and active lives before vanishing into wherever their tattered bodies and plastic parts ended up. (I didn’t buy him any; he couldn’t let his girls touch them for what they cost now anyhow.)
But for those few fellow astronaut toy fans out there, consider this – Jeff Long just beat Matt Mason for President!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send him a word at knapsack77@gmail.com.
PS - If you're having trouble remembering Major Matt Mason, but think it rings a faint bell, here's the line's 1969 Christmas ad, which has it all (i think my brother and i had about half of it all between us):
[For painfully lovely pictures of last weekend's Granville Candlelight Walking Tour, scroll past this blather, which is my Advocate column for tomorrow. pax, jbg]
[seriously, just scroll down! jbg]
Faith Works 12-13-08
Jeff Gill
Your Family May Be Dysfunctional
Just taking a wild shot in the dark, but I’m gonna guess your family is dysfunctional.
No?
You’d think pretty much every family is. This Christmas season is cinematically all about “Four Christmases” and now “Nothing Like the Holidays,” along with movies like “The Family Stone” from a couple years ago (telling us that if we only would “fly our freak flag” then all would be well).
Actually, I’m ready to embrace my inner AND outer dysfunctionality, not to mention that of my family. All families are dysfunctional in some way or another, even if we rarely make it to “Momma Mia!” level chaos.
Leo Tolstoy, whose “Anna Karenina” somehow hasn’t made it to film as a heartwarming family holiday classic (the ending needs some work), famously opened his novel with the line “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
That’s a clear signal for a novelist that you want to write about unhappiness as much as possible, because happiness, sameness – yawn. Who wants to read about that?
The uniqueness of unhappiness, though, gives you texture and novelty and a narrative arc to follow.
So we have the uniquely dysfunctional family at the heart of our seasonal story this month. There’s a fellow who had some kids when he was younger, working hard, traveling a great deal to follow the major construction projects contracted by the Romans. His first wife dies, and as time goes by, he is set up to be engaged by concerned family members (he’s a busy working man, remember), to a young woman . . . a very young woman.
She’s of good family, good enough that they probably aren’t exactly thrilled by the workman, skilled though he might be, who is older and rough-hewn and is engaged to their dear one. Who turns out, she says one day, to be pregnant. The circumstances are, from the point of view of most of Nazareth, murky.
Business and taxes and family ties force them to make a trip while she’s pretty far along, making you suspect already that the older half-siblings aren’t exactly excited and supportive of Dad’s late in life remarriage. She gives birth on the road, in a strange town, away from her OB/GYN and neo-natal intensive care unit back home, but everything works out.
They meet some of the kind of folk you expect to meet on the road, dusty and stained by labor and their last meal, not to mention by their work (think herding), accepting the aid and support of this aromatic and picturesque crew -- again, Mary’s family, coming from the lesser aristocracy, can’t have been charmed by all this picturesqueness.
Yet those relatives and in-laws should have been pleased, since they made contact with some minor royalty (so they claimed), exotic celebrities who had been received at court. Herod’s rule might have been shabby and disreputable, but a king’s retinue is nothing to be sniffed at, especially by people with a tendency to sniff at many. Noses wouldn’t have turned up, though, at a house with a hatful of kings in residence. Soon enough they leave, and the image becomes an almost legendary part of neighborhood lore. “Do you remember when there were wise men from the East staying with those two?” It was an unpredictable house in many ways, so soon the story no longer sounded to their credit, but was just more evidence of their peculiar nature.
This non-traditional family finally comes back home with many strange tales of close calls and grim danger, which just makes the neighbors ask each other, after the couple is out of earshot, “What were they thinking, taking a baby into a war zone? When they made such a long jaunt, a side trip into Egypt – did he say he had a dream? – how could that have been a good idea?”
Then they try to get back into the usual groove of life back in the home place, Joseph working up the road in Sepphoris and the family back in Nazareth, tending the shop, baking bread, whittling scraps of wood next to the earth oven. They join the throngs heading up to the Temple for festivals as any prosperous craftsman might, but they keep losing track of their boy – can’t these two keep a sharp eye out on their child? He just roams at will and rules the roost – let me tell you, say some, I’d let that child know who was in charge if I were in that house!
As best we can tell, the older Joseph dies well before the boy gets too old, but seemingly not before his chance to teach a trade, which is a father’s chief role, then and now. If the son became a carpenter, then the father had done well by him.
Is that a dysfunctional family? Is yours? So what?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and is part of a gloriously dysfunctional family. Tell him about yours at knapsack77@gmail.com.
[seriously, just scroll down! jbg]
Faith Works 12-13-08
Jeff Gill
Your Family May Be Dysfunctional
Just taking a wild shot in the dark, but I’m gonna guess your family is dysfunctional.
No?
You’d think pretty much every family is. This Christmas season is cinematically all about “Four Christmases” and now “Nothing Like the Holidays,” along with movies like “The Family Stone” from a couple years ago (telling us that if we only would “fly our freak flag” then all would be well).
Actually, I’m ready to embrace my inner AND outer dysfunctionality, not to mention that of my family. All families are dysfunctional in some way or another, even if we rarely make it to “Momma Mia!” level chaos.
Leo Tolstoy, whose “Anna Karenina” somehow hasn’t made it to film as a heartwarming family holiday classic (the ending needs some work), famously opened his novel with the line “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
That’s a clear signal for a novelist that you want to write about unhappiness as much as possible, because happiness, sameness – yawn. Who wants to read about that?
The uniqueness of unhappiness, though, gives you texture and novelty and a narrative arc to follow.
So we have the uniquely dysfunctional family at the heart of our seasonal story this month. There’s a fellow who had some kids when he was younger, working hard, traveling a great deal to follow the major construction projects contracted by the Romans. His first wife dies, and as time goes by, he is set up to be engaged by concerned family members (he’s a busy working man, remember), to a young woman . . . a very young woman.
She’s of good family, good enough that they probably aren’t exactly thrilled by the workman, skilled though he might be, who is older and rough-hewn and is engaged to their dear one. Who turns out, she says one day, to be pregnant. The circumstances are, from the point of view of most of Nazareth, murky.
Business and taxes and family ties force them to make a trip while she’s pretty far along, making you suspect already that the older half-siblings aren’t exactly excited and supportive of Dad’s late in life remarriage. She gives birth on the road, in a strange town, away from her OB/GYN and neo-natal intensive care unit back home, but everything works out.
They meet some of the kind of folk you expect to meet on the road, dusty and stained by labor and their last meal, not to mention by their work (think herding), accepting the aid and support of this aromatic and picturesque crew -- again, Mary’s family, coming from the lesser aristocracy, can’t have been charmed by all this picturesqueness.
Yet those relatives and in-laws should have been pleased, since they made contact with some minor royalty (so they claimed), exotic celebrities who had been received at court. Herod’s rule might have been shabby and disreputable, but a king’s retinue is nothing to be sniffed at, especially by people with a tendency to sniff at many. Noses wouldn’t have turned up, though, at a house with a hatful of kings in residence. Soon enough they leave, and the image becomes an almost legendary part of neighborhood lore. “Do you remember when there were wise men from the East staying with those two?” It was an unpredictable house in many ways, so soon the story no longer sounded to their credit, but was just more evidence of their peculiar nature.
This non-traditional family finally comes back home with many strange tales of close calls and grim danger, which just makes the neighbors ask each other, after the couple is out of earshot, “What were they thinking, taking a baby into a war zone? When they made such a long jaunt, a side trip into Egypt – did he say he had a dream? – how could that have been a good idea?”
Then they try to get back into the usual groove of life back in the home place, Joseph working up the road in Sepphoris and the family back in Nazareth, tending the shop, baking bread, whittling scraps of wood next to the earth oven. They join the throngs heading up to the Temple for festivals as any prosperous craftsman might, but they keep losing track of their boy – can’t these two keep a sharp eye out on their child? He just roams at will and rules the roost – let me tell you, say some, I’d let that child know who was in charge if I were in that house!
As best we can tell, the older Joseph dies well before the boy gets too old, but seemingly not before his chance to teach a trade, which is a father’s chief role, then and now. If the son became a carpenter, then the father had done well by him.
Is that a dysfunctional family? Is yours? So what?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and is part of a gloriously dysfunctional family. Tell him about yours at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
