Re: Faith Works 8-15

Faith Works 8-15-09

Jeff Gill

 

When Ethics Meet Policy, "First, Do No Harm"

___

 

There is a medical saying that often is attributed to the Hippocratic Oath, which in Latin is "Primum non nocere" or more familiarly, "First, do no harm."

 

Going back 2400 years, the Hippocratic Oath is one of the very oldest professional ethics, and a version of it is still said by new doctors. The original version is theological in that it is sworn in the name of Greek gods, mainly Apollo and the lesser divinities Asclepius and his daughters Hygieia and Panacea (the staff of Asclepius is the symbol of medicine still, the snake entwined around a rod).

 

In fact, the Hippocratic Oath doesn't quite have this phrase, although "never do harm" is close. You might even notice that the once common phrase "primum non nocere" is Latin, and Hippocrates was a Greek physician.

 

The root source of "First, do no harm" seems to come from a Latin translation of one of Hippcrates' books, called "On Epidemics." The line in question goes "As to diseases, make a habit of two things--to help, or at least to do no harm." It's also possible that the Roman physician and pharmacist Galen started the aphorism, but he may have been loosely quoting Hippocrates himself.

 

It's good advice and a solid basis for ethical thinking, whoever came up with it first. If ethics, especially practical or "lived" ethics is the process of applying basic principles of what is good to what one must do, "first, do no harm" is not a bad place to start. It acknowledges that for all one's skill, knowledge, and training, you still have limits – if you have reason to believe that taking an action you have in mind is more likely to do harm, more than the slight possibility to do good that motivates you to go forward, then stop.

 

In working with disease and injury and sickness there will always be risk, but an ethical doctor (so says this principle) will not take a risk simply on the off chance that it might help. If the alternative to risk is death or serious injury, then you take your chance, but still with humility and an understanding of your own limitations. A gangrenous leg is a terrible thing to lose, but dying of gangrene is worse, so a surgeon does "no harm" in amputating the limb to save the life.

 

Much of the anxiety and outright fear around the current debate over health care and a national policy or plan goes back to how one calculates the essential ethic of "first, do no harm." Many critics and political leaders argue that we have a case of gangrene on our hands, with a limb of excessively bloating costs and expectations endangering the whole body. Radical surgery, they say, is not harmful, but necessary.

 

Other pundits and polemicists say not so, there is an injury and even a systematic illness here, but lesser treatments targeted at the specific cause of what's wrong with the body politic are what's called for. Some even claim that once under the anesthetic and the knife the patient will lose not one but two legs out of an excess of caution or extremes of zeal to cure the problem.

 

No one is saying that our current health care situation is just an ingrown toenail, but somewhere between that and gangrene is the diagnosis, and then the debate over the proper cure. And over it all hangs the words of . . . well, maybe Hippocrates: "First, do no harm."

 

How does your religious faith inform your ethical stance on personal treatment, and public policy? I suspect this subject will be discussed around more than a few coffeepots before and after worship this Sunday around Licking County.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is not a doctor and has never played one on TV.  Send him your diagnoses at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 7-23-09
Jeff Gill

From the Earth to the Moon, and To . . .
___

Forty years ago this week, many of us were holding our collective breath.

We were counting down, a phrase still new back then (10, 9, 8, 7 . . . 2, 1, blastoff!), counting down the days and hours until the utterly amazing yet long predicted conclusion of the Apollo 11 mission, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

From the Atlantic coast of Florida, where Jules Verne had “launched” his moon shot in an 1865 novel, Ohio native Neil Armstrong (and Purdue University grad), Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins rode the mighty Saturn IV-B booster rocket that carried the Command Module and Lunar Module, Columbia and Eagle, into Earth orbit, on to the Moon, and ultimately to Armstrong and Aldrin landing in Mare Tranquillitatis, the “Sea of Tranquility,” which Armstrong named Tranquility Base on July 20, 1969.

When Armstrong, an Eagle Scout, says that he said “a” in that first transmission from the surface of another heavenly body, “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” I believe him. The radio signal was spotty, the TV picture more so, but given that less than ten years before this was all just a wild tale told by 19th century French novelists and 20th century American science fiction writers, they did pretty well.

I don’t recall Walter Cronkite saying much about poor picture quality. We were watching on a 12 inch black and white set with rabbit ears, Channel 2 in Chicago, where we sat on a back porch of a three story brownstone on the South Side hoping for a breeze while praying for the astronauts.

My ninth birthday was coming up in a month, and it turns out about a mile away, the future Michelle Obama was watching the same unfolding drama on a similar porch hoping for a cool breese on a warm Chicago night. (Barack was watching from Hawaii, his ninth birthday right around the corner, but it wasn’t after his bedtime as we all waited for someone to come down the ladder of the LEM.)

Robert Heinlein sat in with Uncle Walter, a name I recalled from having recently read “Space Cadet” (yeah, yeah, laugh if you must, but go back and read it – what a book, what a story); the night spurred me to want to read more of Heinlein’s work.

Engineers, explorers, scientists, pilots, politicians, even writers . . . how many people, of whatever age, watching that night, were inspired by the awe and wonder and complexity of what the moon landing meant, to go on and attempt and achieve something they couldn’t have imagined before July 20, 1969?

We haven’t been back to the lunar surface, not to leave human bootprints, since 1972 and Apollo 17. There are many earthly challenges that evoke the phrase “if we could put a man on the moon, why can’t we . . .”

And I have to admit I’m one of those who thinks, when that’s said, “. . . put someone on the moon again?” There’s a multiplier effect of the dollars spent on an effort like the Apollo program, but it’s the multiplier effect on dreams and vision that pays the real benefit down the line.

I hope we go back in my lifetime, and I salute this week our fellow Buckeye, Neil Armstrong, and all the thousands who stitched the spacesuit gloves and hammered the bolts for Grumman and drove the trailers at Canaveral, in the vast effort that put him, and us, on the doorstep of the cosmos.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you called him a space cadet, you would not be the first. Tell him a tale of science fiction or fact at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

* * *
* * *

Notes From My Knapsack 8-6-09
Jeff Gill

Few Dollars, Careful Decisions, Timeless Implications
___

With massive budget cuts slicing through the infrastructure of Ohio this way and that, and with almost that random a pattern, it’s hard to know what impact to bemoan or be bothered by first.

Human services, cuts that reduce the ability of agencies like Job and Family Services to protect children, rebuild families, or aid recently unemployed persons, those really hurt. Mental health seems to be kicked to the curb big time, even though untreated mental illness sure seems to be a major cause of many other issues that end up with the state and counties and communities spending major dollars whether they want to or not (jail, for one).

Developmentally disabled folk, both children and adults, have a marvelous group of people working for their interests here in Licking County, but they’ve been short the allocation they need to fully support everyone they would like since before electric lights became all the rage.

And education receiving actual cuts, not just “as adjusted for inflation” reductions, seems like the cruelest cut of all. The only way to create the jobs that we need in manufacturing and engineering, to start building and making and crafting actual things again is to support education, and not just youth warehousing, either.

But it’s the sweeping, devastating cuts to the Ohio Historical Society that I want to talk about in the space I’m offered here, not because I think the social services above or the library services not even mentioned here are less important, but because I worry that OHS has so many fewer advocates than any other public purpose on the chopping block. You will no doubt hear more about the Licking County Historical Society and the budget impacts from the county commissioners reduction than you will about OHS, even though the latter owns four major properties in this county.

(By the way, this is written long before the actual figures and decisions will be made, most of which will be finalized and irrevocable, for this year at least, by the time you see these words on newsprint.)

Given that the emotionally distraught, the mentally disabled, the immediately hungry and hopeless must be served first, where does that leave a state entity like OHS?

In my next “Knapsack” column, I want to ask you to join me in a “blank sheet of paper” walk through the question of what a state absolutely must have and still be worth calling a state with a history and a story worth telling.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if Ohio was burning down, what history would you grab on the way out the door? Tell him about your choice of an armload at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

* * *
* * *

Notes From My Knapsack 8-13-09
Jeff Gill

Picking Up and Preserving the Pieces
___

When I try to think through a “blank sheet of paper” assessment for an Ohio Historical Society budget, asking “what absolutely must be done, even in trying times?” the list I come up with goes like this:

The state archive has to be protected; the documents and papers and books and pictures that make up the primary sources of the Ohio story have to be preserved. Ironically, not allowing access to them might help preservation a bit, and the state does not require that OHS have certain visiting hours, just that there are certain public records they are legally and duty bound to protect.

So there too, no library hours to speak of . . . well, three hours on Sunday afternoon. But the humidity is kept under control, the lights kept dim, and the archival boxes of acid-free cardboard sit on their shelves.

Properties must be preserved for future generations – when I’ve done student groups and class field trips out at Flint Ridge and Great Circle, I would always remind them that the Ohio Historical Society exists to 1) preserve, and 2) present the story of Ohio for the people of Ohio. I’m a big believer in 2), but if you don’t do 1) then you won’t have anything to present.

That means mowing, snow plowing, and roof repair, plus a little security to make sure no one snuck in a basement window of a historic building or interpretive museum. There would need to be some landscape architectural oversight of earthen and semi-buried structures.

And for all the treasures of the past that turn up on a near daily basis even as excavation and construction continue on a slower basis, you need a few archaeologists to help figure out what’s been found, and what to do to preserve, which is to say stabilize the locations that often don’t look like anything from the side of the road.

The scary part for people like me is that my back of the envelope calculations say that doing just that much, the least they absolutely must do, probably maxes out the best case scenario of what they can expect in state government grants and aid.

To do anything more by way of restoration, education, or recreational educational activities, may take us beyond the budget dollars from the state and also beyond what local supporters can raise (nickles). Seriously, how many golf events and raffles and car shows and 50/50s can one area support?

Bill Laidlaw, OHS executive director, and local leaders here in Licking County helped to show how a new model of partnership could help keep properties owned by OHS open. The Licking County Convention and Visitors Bureau, and The Ohio State University’s Newark Campus’ Newark Earthworks Center have helped maintain much of the educational and interpretive programming at Great Circle Earthworks. Getting that museum renovated, renewed, and shared with LCCVB staff means that a tourist attraction closed for some five years is now open and greeting visitors from around the world. When the pace quickened, and Flint Ridge looked on the verge of closure (already having a newer, up to date museum), the Licking Valley Heritage Society jumped into the gap and is holding things together.

You will hear more in the coming weeks about the next “Newark Earthworks Day,” October 17, which will come at the end of a remarkable week of pilgrimage, with a party of walkers making their way on foot from Chillicothe’s ancient mounds and embankments and Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, some 75 miles by road and 60 miles as the thunderbird flies to the Newark Earthworks. Much is being held together, if only by careful application of metaphorical and actual duct tape.

People from around the world are coming, have been coming, will come. How shall we greet them? And for coming generations who will be on the scene someday to assess how we have cared for our past and theirs (which will include us!), how will they look back on our stewardship?

There are no easy answers, but much to be discussed, let alone plenty to be done.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have ideas for how to preserve and present Ohio’s past into the future, tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Faith Works 7-11-09

Jeff Gill

 

Uploading Your Life To Reliable Storage Media

___

 

 

Fourth of July week wrapped up with a Ferris wheel ride and a last corn dog (there'll be more of those in August).

 

It didn't wrap up with a bang, those having come earlier in the week, and truth be told, I don't take pictures of fireworks. They never even remotely do anything for me – films of them, almost, but still not quite.

 

From fireworks to parades to street fairs to quiet time on the porch at home, I had plenty of photographs that did do something for me, and there are relatives and friends across the country (and even a couple overseas) who want to see something of the Lad and the Lovely Wife and possibly even me, at least if it's an amusing shot of me peeling potatoes.

 

Like much of the earth's mammalian population, I'm on Facebook now, have been for some months, and I'll say that their photo album feature is fast and easy, the latter being a very important quality for me. We just got a digital camera last August, and it took a while to figure out how to send photos other than as email attachments (hint: not a good way to make yourself popular, even with people who want the pics), and I've fiddled around with a number of online album sites.

 

So late last Sunday night I'm uploading digital photos from my camera to my laptop, and then picking through the hundreds I shot for those dozens that would go into an album where even my non-FB friends and family (some folks haven't gone there, believe it or not) could see them and download them if they were of a mind to.

 

And it occurred to me: do these pictures really exist? OK, that's the philosophy major way of putting it, but maybe I could say it this way: how real are these shots, anyhow?

 

They were electronically shown on a mini-monitor on the back of the camera, showed up in thumbnail shots on my hard drive that I clicked and slid over onto a menu screen that turned them into in-betweeny sized images on my web browser at a certain page, where you could click on them and make them bigger.

 

At no point had the captured image hit chemically treated plastic film and made layers change color, or been projected onto sensitized paper and slowly revealed itself as a print awash in a pan of fluid.

 

In that sense, pictures are real. They aren't, of course – Errol Morris, the essayist and Academy Award winning documentary film maker, has made a career out of helping us understand how film and photographs bend and shape the truth – but they are tangible and actual . . . and preservable.

 

True, you can run across a box of old photos at an estate sale, separated from those who know the faces and can put names on them, and my dad has spent years telling family members "please, please, put names on the photos you have" out of frustration from how many pictures he's been given with more missing names than known ones.

 

They are still around, though, in drawers and trunks and chests, and capture a bit of something. Digital photographs, now, are everywhere and yet . . . nowhere. If my hard drive crashes, the website is deleted, and there's no backup file anywhere, it will be as if I had never taken the picture at all. Ever.

 

And if I back up the folders from my laptop onto a flashdrive, but years from now the program that "reads" the 1s and 0s is no longer around, the digital artifact may itself be unreadable, and the picture is just as gone.

 

Reliable data storage. That's what we are so often looking for: the knowledge that our most precious memories and images are fixed somewhere, with someone, in a way that can't vanish in a sudden flame or degrade into dust, silica or silt.

 

Where, we ask, can we look for a secure home that will endure, beyond fire and damp and earthquake and . . . because somehow, we are more sure that we exist now, if there is some way in which we have a stake, a place in that which endures.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about the picture that preserves you, or that you keep close to your heart, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

Faith Works 7-18-09

Jeff Gill

 

There's a Ditch On Both Sides Of the Road

___

 

No getting around it, especially in the formerly damp parts of Licking County, where horsedrawn scrapers and steampowered tractors often dug drainage ditches that still go deep alongside the modern paved roadway.

 

If you don't watch yourself on a warm summer day, you can slowly swerve off to one side, and if your tire catches a sharp edge of pavement, and you correct poorly, you can jam your car right down into a ditch that even a Hummer would have trouble getting out of.

 

What would be even more embarrassing is if you do catch yourself ka-thumping off the road on your right, over correct with the steering wheel, and suddenly jerk across the oncoming lane, only to fall into the opposite ditch.

 

It's fairly common to find ditches on both sides of the road, although you usually are only close to one or the other . . . if you're equally spaced between the ditches, you're right over the yellow line, which has its own hazards.

 

Traveling the road of faith has some tendencies you have to watch in the same way you need to tend carefully to your steering on certain roads.

 

On one hand is the possibility of authoritarianism, of subjecting your understanding to one person or particular view in such a way that you lose all your critical faculties. The standard definition of a cult is when the new adherent turns all their decision making over to an authority figure, or their representative. When a parent comes to the door and asks "can I talk to my daughter?" the answer "I won't speak to you, Mother, unless Brother Ruprecht says I can" tells Mom to call the deprogrammer.

 

That's what happens in the ditch of authoritarianism, but many of us drive closer to that edge than others. In practice, most of us need to acknowledge that we aren't the first people to travel in this direction, and there are those who have gone before us and travel with us now who have valuable experience.

 

Listening to authorities, and even letting some of our life choices be guided by something other than how we feel (heart, stomach, lower) at the moment, is not a bad thing in and of itself.

 

If you swerve too sharply away from the side of authority, you can quickly find a couple of wheels hanging out over the ditch of uncertainty. The default mode for most of us finite, limited, tangibly restricted human beings is to say "who knows" to most questions . . . but when we answer "who can know, anyhow?" there's a ditch that becomes an abyss beneath you.

 

Staying up on the solid road, a certain amount of uncertainty can actually support not only the pavement, but a solid layer of humility.  "I don't know" is a good answer for many of us more often than we use it, even when we are speaking of subjects where our knowledge is great, but our wisdom may be limited.

 

There's a ditch on either side of the road, and you don't want to put yourself in either of them.  You need to be in the correct lane, and most religious traditions help to lay out for you the rules of the road by explaining where they drive.

 

Some faith communities stay right up against the white line, nudging into authoritarian practices that they feel give their congregation coherence and clear direction. Others encourage questioning almost to a fault, with their uncertainty beyond a few bright lines being the very ground they traverse.

 

There are those who say they'd rather be in the ditch on their side of the road than traveling down the wrong lane. My sense is that we're all called to stay heading in the direction we believe God is calling us, and that none of us should ever settle into the ditch, let alone the valley of shadow.

 

Or as my grandmother would say "A mind stuck open is as useless as a mind that's stuck shut," which matches nicely with what Groucho almost said – "A perfect church wouldn't take me."

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about the road you're traveling at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

Faith Works 7-25-09

Jeff Gill

 

That Which Divides Us May Bring Us Together

___

 

The last hundred years have certainly seen a shift among Christians in general, in de-emphasizing doctrinal differences.

 

Time was that you could make a Calvinism joke around Methodists, or crack wise about Arminians around Presbyterians, and people would smile and nod, while a few would hope for a stinging rebuttal of the errors in the other group's beliefs.

 

Now, if you make a smart remark around a roomful of Presbyterians about Calvinists, they not only won't take offense, they won't know what you're talking about. Catholics are generally not thrilled about making jokes about popes (ask them for a couple, and you'll hear some good ones, but you don't get to tell them); make a sardonic comment about works righteousness or that darn German monk, Brother Martin , and it'll fall right flat on the ground.

 

My point is that within living memory, those sorts of remarks would get a general response because that was the sort of thing that you would hear in preaching. Non-Presbys would take shots at predestination, non-Methodists would snipe at either having bishops you voted for or for having bishops at all, non-Episcopalians would snark over the crazy outfits their clergy wore on the altar, and non-Baptists would snicker over all that darn water sloshing around their sanctuaries.

 

It's hard to argue that anyone wants to go back to the days when pastors and congregations built themselves up by tearing separated brothers and sisters down, in preaching and teaching. On the other hand, I think we go backwards in some ways when from the point of view of most people both inside and outside of our churches, their main takeaway is "what's the difference?"

 

Can celebrating our differences actually draw us together? Well, if we really have nothing that makes us distinctive, we should merge tomorrow. No one thinks that is likely, for reasons bureaucratic but also theological ones. If there are places and settings where further organic unity should be practiced, I think that we can do that best if we understand how we became separate expressions in the first place.

 

And in large part, I don't see God calling out for more organizational union, but the call for unity in purpose and ministry starts in John, chapter 17, and echoes into the world today in many ways.

 

What our differences preserve are varieties of gifts that should ultimately bless the oneness of spirit that is our proper inheritance. So . . . I love the expression of the Catholic church in sacramental practices that remind believers how all of creation can be a vessel of the divine.  I love how Calvinism, Presbyterian or Baptist, turns our often unwilling hearts to the glory of God being larger than everyday logic.  I love how the Society of Friends teaches us in what the world calls "Quaker worship" that silence is filled with more meanings than words can often provide.  I love how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints shows us what a vital and joyful awareness and closeness to God the Father can look like.

 

I love how The Episcopal Church lives out the awful mystery of what faith-filled democracy looks like in practice (and how their Anglican roots gave us the English language at its best).  I love how the United Methodist Church holds high and low styles of worship, liberal and fundamentalist strands together in a relative lack of tension, on both the local and wider level.  I love how the Church of the Brethren keeps washing feet, even when it would be so easy to take this one little tradition and put it on the curio shelf.  I love how the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) manages to take so many elements of these other churches seriously, but little of it all literally.  I love how the Assemblies of God manages to maintain a strong identity and unity in the Holy Spirit while having almost no visible structure at all.  I love how the United Church of Christ shows that you can have multiple mergers and still not appreciably change the genial atmosphere of congregational life in multiple strands.  I love the Southern Baptist Convention because they told me I should!

 

And, to close an emphatically non-exhaustive list, I love how Lutherans celebrate such deep roots that still transplant so very well from place to place, even if it amuses me that so many of them seem to think Jesus grew up in a small village on the north edge of Bavaria, speaking flawless Deutsch.

 

There are none of these differences that I would happily see vanish into the mists of history. Few of them are necessary, little enough about these quirks finds a rootage in the Gospel, but there is a history and a reason why these qualities are so distinct in each communion.

 

If more of us knew what these variations were, and why, it might be that much more likely our stories can weave even more closely in the future.

 

Meanwhile, you can ask Msgr. Enke about that tunnel in his church's basement.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about a different thing or two at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

* * *
* * *

Faith Works 8-1-09
Jeff Gill

The Arc of History Bends Towards Justice
___

Martin Luther King Jr. once said that "the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."

An arc, like a rainbow, spans a broad swath of sky, bends a wide bundle of light to cast a bright colorful shadow across the landscape. The story of the civil rights movement in America, the campaign against Hitler from lonely journalists in Munich to GIs and Russian infantrymen shaking hands across the Elbe, the journey from Goddard’s Massachusetts backyard (or even the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop in Dayton) to the moon – 40 years ago last week! – these are what Hollywood screenwriters call “story arcs,” long tales with multiple subplots that draw you in and hold your interest.

The arc of Scripture . . . when we talk about the wisdom found in the Bible, the automatic reflection is on short, punchy phrases: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” “"Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it," “Come to me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

(This time of year, I love the direct practical wisdom of Deuteronomy 23: 12-13; yes, I’ve been at camp the last few weeks.)

There are also the strictures and requirements that are quoted in a few words, some of which got quite a workout with some of the public admissions of political figures earlier this summer, many of which include the word “accursed.”

Those are the pithy aphorisms of Biblical wisdom, and they stick nicely in the memory.

For wise action, we have the examples from Scripture found in stories, “pericopes” in the technical language of Biblical studies. There’s the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, with its climactic question by Jesus of “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”

The story of Job plays out over 42 chapters, from temptation and torment to ambiguous vindication, anchored by Job 19: 25 “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.”

Even Solomon’s wisdom displayed in I Kings 3 requires a full narrative: just saying “cut the baby in half” doesn’t quite sum it up very well. You need the story in full.

So you have the phrases and the commandments, which carry one sort of wisdom, and the stories, which expand teaching and guidance beyond length to depth and breadth.

Where I think you really start to grapple with the wisdom, the deep knowledge of how God is speaking to you and to me in today, found in the Bible, is when you read across chapters and books and even from Old Testament to New, and follow the arc of not just history, but of wisdom, bending towards revelation.

During the summer season, the most unexpected folk pick up big, thick, heavy books. Michael Patterson and Danielle Steele and John Irving and Amy Tan can put out a paperback that looks like it would serve as a structural support for a small shed, and people still shell out for them and take ‘em to the beach.

Now, I know lots of beach reading titles don’t get read all the way through. But what about some Biblical beach reading, a long family epic that starts with a refugee family (Abram and Sarai out of Egypt, Joseph’s brothers heading back into it), meanders through temptation and redemption and a dramatic, tragic exit (Samson and Delilah), builds to a dynastic family struggling to maintain the family business with collateral relations often ending up collateral damage (Saul, David, Solomon, and then the two sets of heirs from their bashing their way to an ultimately bloody end), and then exile.

I haven’t even gotten you to Bethlehem and the innkeeper yet.

Is the Bible suitable beach reading? Why not? The plot and story and dialogue holds up next to most of what the revolving racks have on sale.

And the ending . . . well, the arc of the Bible is long, but bends towards . . . oh, I don’t want to spoil it for you.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him what devotional reading you hid in your magazine on vacation at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

* * *
* * *

Faith Works 8-8-09
Jeff Gill

Flavors of the Summer Taste Sweeter Than Honey
___

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!”

Psalm 34: 8 reminds us of the power of taste to speak to the deepest impulses of our heart.

I love this line from the Psalms because it clearly reminds us that the goodness of God, the doings of the Almighty are not just a matter for intellect and rationality.

We can get stuck in “think and understand that the Lord is good,” with the logic of sermons and study guides the royal road to theological comprehension.

But in the Psalms, in Ezekiel, and in Revelations, we’re asked to relate to God’s teaching and lawgiving by flavor: “How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119: 103)

For my wife, the goodness of summer and a bit of the glory of God is in getting a big plate of sweet corn roasted on the grill right inside their own green husks, and a sliced garden fresh tomato fanned out red and juicy. Summer is not right and God is not secure in heaven until the corn and tomato dinner has taken place – but when those fresh flavors hit our palates, we get a feeling that encompasses our whole being that all’s right with the world.

“Taste and see.” The Lad is not always as thrilled with the vegetables that so excite his parents; Dad gets very excited each time the basil plants are ready to be whacked back and a pesto fest is the result. I know eating food grown in our own garden, product of this land and location, is both good for your nourishment and good for creation, taking in calories that took almost no fossil fuel investment to produce.

He, on the other hand, sees a vegetable paste, and wants nothing to do with it. Next, he knows, I’ll be trying to get him to like peas again, and that ain’t happenin’.

As parents, we know that an unexpected taste might jar the mouth, but we have experience and wisdom that helped us realize that this was indeed good. It will take time, and patience, but we know one of our jobs as parents is to not let him just stick with the three foods he likes right now – “taste, and see . . . this is good.”

Sharing our faith with others has much in common with trying to encourage a skeptical friend to try Thai food. We know what’s so right about a plate of pad thai, and we know our friend even likes spicy food, but they like spicy food with an order of refried beans on the side. Where are the refritos with these odd looking noodles, anyhow? “Taste, and see . . .”

You can’t just shove food into people’s mouths and expect them to go “yummo.” They have to choose to pick up a forkful, and chew with an open mind, and stomach.

To imagine the journey of faith as a banquet, a table set out (in the presence of mine enemies?), covered with both comfort food our grandmothers used to make, and strange delicacies that we’ve never heard of, let alone seen before – what might this image do for our spiritual growth.

Taste, and see. Don’t just take my word for it, or rely on your prejudices. Taste, and try for yourself, and after a fair interval, see how the flavor settles into your mouth and your mind and your life . . . until you find yourself asking for more.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him what tastes good to you this summer at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Knapsack 7-9

Notes From My Knapsack 7-9-09

Jeff Gill

 

Out Across the Hilltops

___

 

 

Some forty feet above Broadway, the Lad and I sat in a swinging bucket of a bench, waiting for the Ferris wheel operator to unload and load passengers right below our dangling feet.

 

The view around us gave a sense of what made this site worth selecting in 1805, to the pioneers who could not have imagined whiling away leisure hours sitting on a vast electrified circle turning as if by wizardry.

 

But this charmed circuit showed us, above the treetops, a leaf shrouded simulation of the wooded bowl where they stopped their ox carts and chopped down the first log of their lean-tos.

 

Straight ahead, Sugarloaf, just to the left of Broadway's indistinct line. Then clockwise around: College Hill, dipping into the saddle where Swasey Chapel sits, and rising to the prow of Prospect Hill, pushing Pearl Street into a broad curve.

 

Then looking over my shoulder, the breadth of Clear Run valley, the golf course of today invisible from that view; beyond, Alligator Mound ridge running as a north-south wall across the eastern horizon. Switching shoulders, Mount Parnassus to my behind-left, then a sweep across Raccoon Creek to Flower Pot Hill on the far side.

 

These six hills neatly define a bowl, cut by two watercourses and percolated with a chain of springs out of the south-facing layers that draw their flow down out of what becomes the Welsh Hills to the north.

 

A sharp glance down ("No rocking" a sign reminds us, which we did not need, paused at the peak of the cycle) and the modern lines and edges and electricity of Broadway and the street fair brings us back to Granville today.

 

Back down on the ground, we stroll back towards the food booths (Troop 65 fresh cut French fries, hooray!), and pause as we do each year under the traffic light at Broadway and Prospect. "You can't stand here any other time," he reminds me (annually), as we put our right foot on the survey disc and spin around three times.

 

Some friends walk by as we do this, and ask "is this some old tradition?" Yes, I answer, a new one we're trying to start! And they join in.

 

There's no place like home, there's no place like home . . . and here we are.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a tale of home, lost and found, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Faith Works, July 4, 2009

Faith Works 7-4-09

Jeff Gill

Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Choose

___

233 years after yesterday, when the Declaration of Independence had
been approved by the Second Continental Congress the day before that,
John Adams wrote to his beloved and trusted wife Abigail these words:

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in
the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be
celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary
festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by
solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized
with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells,
bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the
other, from this time forward forever more."

Well, we got the pomp and parade and illuminations part right. John
was off by two days since they privately approved, with New York
abstaining, the motion on July 2; but the full, edited Declaration
was approved the next day, today, July 4.

"Solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty" got a little lost in the
shuffle, didn't they?

Just to keep everyone disoriented, Adams was a Unitarian. Anyhow.

So I'm thinking about freedom and self-governance and no taxation
without representation this week, as we wait for word out of Columbus
for how the addicts will rationalize their habit. You see, the
spending junkies in government know that if we stop spending money we
don't have, then the federal government will stop sending us money
they don't have, and since it's for Medicaid, it's all good, isn't
it? Health care for poor people . . . except we apparently aren't
spending enough at our currently bankrupting rate, so we need
national single payer health insurance for (almost) all, and we just
have to decide how illegal it will be for doctors to provide services
that aren't authorized by a federal bureaucracy, and how we will
provide these services legally to people not here legally.

Which means, voters get kicked to the curb, and all our "votes" to
the contrary, with all the Ohio faith communities, liberal and
conservative in complete agreement (please go read that clause again,
would you?), liberal and conservative Christians in complete
agreement, affirming that state sponsored gambling is not healthy for
children and other living things – but we're gonna have more
gambling, run by and for the state government, in order to pay for it.

Because, as I'm sure you know, gambling happens all the time (true)
and especially in neighboring and further but easily accessible
states (also true), where they are making money (quite true) from
something people would do anyhow (possibly true, hard to know), so
let's do it here because we'll make a huge pile of cash (likely
nowhere near as true as the backers claim).

Which makes me think in this Ohio corner of the land of the free and
the home of the brave – so we will be legalizing prostitution soon,
right?

Oh, don't be so drastic, you say. That's not gonna happen.

I can easily recall when gambling was Las Vegas only, and Atlantic
City was a controversial second, with Steubenville a distant historic
Dean Martin memory. If you can remember that, can you recall
envisioning that we'd have people buying lottery tickets in line
ahead of us at the feed store, the grocery mart, or when you're just
trying to buy five pounds of ice?

I'm just asking about prostitution – it happens all the time (check
the papers), more so in neighboring states (explains all the Michigan
jokes), and they are making money from something people would do
anyhow (check that with Gov. Sanford), so let's do it here because
we'll make a huge pile of cash (not really all that much, but the
procurers will tell us our cut will be huge right after the next
payday).

And we can license prostitution, thereby checking health care
quality, providing inoculations, and protecting public health, while
replacing mean spirited pimps with good hearted governmental
supervisors, who will have taken all necessary sensitivity training
classes . . . and who will make sure Gov. Strickland gets his cut.

Seriously, although I would dispute the math behind this statement
with all my might, if restoring library funding and Ohio Historical
Society support and the "Help Me Grow" program was only possible by
adding even more legal gambling that is state run and directly
earmarked, I would say to all those worthy causes: Don't take it.
Don't eat the pod. Don't take the trade off.

Or: "What profiteth a man if he gains the whole world and loses his
own soul?"

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around
central Ohio; he's not against gambling, just the state doing it and
calling it "revenue enhancement." Feel free to disagree with him at
knapsack77@gmail.com.

CUB SCOUTS -- JOIN IN
Granville's Annual 4th of July
“Mile Long Parade”


(Last year's award winning Pack float!)

MEET: Wildwood Park Entrance
WHEN: 9:30 AM (Broadway will be closed for parade preparations)

Parade Starts at 10:45 AM and the Scouts will be Handing Out Candy and Flags

Contact Brandy Brooks or Ed Hock for any questions
mdbrooks@windstream.net or triciahock@windstream.net

The view(s) from Finney Peak - posted from Flickr for my Dad! From north, clockwise around to west-northwest...

Summer Solstice Sunrise at Great Circle Earthworks:



As i was shooting this, i kept looking up over the camera to see if i was . . . seeing what i was seeing! The glowing patches looked like lens artifacts at first, but then they began moving, right to left. There wasn't really any ground fog or mist directly visible when i walked in, but as my stills showed when i ended this and walked towards the Grand Gateway, there was just enough moisture above the turf to catch the light.

Faith Works 6-27-09
Jeff Gill

Summer Slump May Be Story Of the Past For Churches
___


There really was a day, a summer day for many congregations, when the sanctuary pews were empty, or at least emptied out.

Once upon a time, when travel was harder, but ironically, vacation was often longer, there truly was such a thing as the “summer slump.”

Part of me wishes for people the chance to take a two or three or even four week trip, even as I understand that in a time of double digit unemployment and workplace competition, the concept of “a month off” is not going to make a comeback – not this year.

It is true, as Rick Steves keeps reminding us all on his PBS travel shows, that Americans take both the least AND the shortest vacations of any industrialized nation. If we get four weeks off, we’re likely to take two one week vacations and a few days here and there . . . at the most.

This may not be as good for productivity as an economist might think (let alone a manager), since getting your head out of the details might be the best way to get your head in the game. Studies show this, and the Biblical injunction of Sabbath has something to say about it, as part of the very nature of Creation itself.

So faith communities might do well to speak up for time off, both on a weekly basis in Sabbathkeeping, and through the year for a sort of annual Sabbath. We could remind people of the values, contingent and eternal, behind remembering how God is in charge and we aren’t. Vacations do that for us.

Plus, some of the most interesting ideas in congregational life come from church members who go visit a place of worship somewhere else, and return saying “Hey, did you realize we could do THIS?”

What’s more immediately of concern, on the home front, is the tendency to echo the world’s ways and get so blooming busy through the summer that any rational believer would start thinking “I need some time off from this place.”

Somehow, it seems like we’ve gone in a generation from churches that often all but shut down from Memorial Day to Labor Day (other than the odd church that did a VBS or an occasional rummage sale) to being twice as busy in June, July, and August than we are any months that don’t have “ecember” in them.

What can we do to improve this situation? I think it can be a Godly and gracious thing for churches to think and speak as if vacation time is part of a healthy, inspired life, not something to apologize for. You know the flip side: the folks who are first to say “oh, a vacation; I’ve never taken one in the last fifteen years.”

No, church leaders can affirm and celebrate time away, and also lift up worship as a healthy part of this health-filled decision; we can offer to help identify locations near where you’re going to attend worship, or we can provide materials for family worship out on the beach or up in the mountains. Little “vacation worship pacs” in the narthex say to everyone “time away is actually time that is part of a fully engaged life, and worship has a place there.”

The alternative is, well, what we have, where the whole “um, yeah, we’re, uh, taking some time off” along with the horrendously unhealthy “what happens in Blank stays in Blank” leads to the auto-assumption that no sane person goes to church on vacation.

Truly, some of the most powerful and personally productive worship services I’ve attended have been during “time off,” when I was utterly just another worshiper, with no other expectations or assumptions weighing my soul down.

And for those still hesitant about taking their growing personal faith and taking into corporate worship: there is no better way to try out church attendance, without worrying that a congregation you know you can’t stand will chase you for months, than going to Sunday services hundreds of miles from home.

Maybe on vacation is where you can start to find the path to your heart’s true home.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story of worship on the road at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Knapsack 6-25

Notes From My Knapsack 6-25-09 – Granville Sentinel

Jeff Gill

 

Stepping Cautiously Into Adulthood

___

 

When does a child become an adult?

 

I have the honor and responsibility of writing a column every Saturday in the Newark Advocate for the "Your Faith" page, and last week's "Faith Works" asked Licking County faith communities to think about their rituals and observances and milestones for young people that mark their passage into adulthood.

 

Out at Camp Falling Rock last week, I had the chance to think about this watching a record setting Cub Scout Day Camp play out, with over 400 kids and more than 100 adults spending Tuesday through Friday clambering around the fields, rocks, waterfalls, hills, and high points (real and symbolic).

 

Pack 3 of Granville was also represented by 34 Cub Scouts and over a dozen different leaders and parents (some one day, some all four), anchored by Cubmaster Ed Hock, who was very pleased and proud with the turnout.

 

For these kids, from all around Licking County and a few Packs out of neighboring counties, there were many who had their first time in a rowboat, first time shooting arrows from a bow or firing a BB gun, who had never launched a rocket they made themselves from a two liter bottle (air pressure style) or walked up a creek looking for crawdads and frogs. A few may even have never been in a pool before, or walked up a hill so steep they couldn't see the top of it when they started.

 

That's part of why events like Cub Scout Day Camp are so memorable, for children and parents. They're full of firsts, of benchmarks and bright lines and beginnings of new experiences that may pale and wear smooth with repetition, but whose origin will never be forgotten.

 

Which is marvelous for seven and eight and nine year olds, who start to sense their place, and their ability to find it, in a world they now know is larger than the backyard and TV remote can encompass. But they know, as they watch the older Scouts helping out (which my son got to do for the first time this year), that they're still a long ways off from adulthood.

 

When is that, though? We put driving at sixteen, which is a major milestone for young people, but voting is at eighteen, "adult beverage" consumption is at 21, and quite frankly, we seem to keep back some sense of cultural acknowledgment that "young adults" are really grown up and fully responsible right through college graduation around 22 and beyond.

 

As we look around the country at an out of wedlock birthrate now past 4 out of 10 babies born to single mothers, I wonder if there's an element in this of young people wanting to prove in a definitive, inarguable way: "I am an adult." Fathering a child or giving birth to one is, indeed, a horizon you can only step across once.

 

Somewhere between a learner's permit and pregnancy is a place where as a community we need to help affirm the gift and privilege and responsibility of saying "I am responsible for my choices and actions and decisions." Even as we build a society where, blessedly, many hard landings are cushioned and buffered, can we also create a solid place to stand that says "Here I begin to shape my life with intention and purpose."

 

One possibility: I think I see and hear a bit of this sort of "rite of passage" with those who go on work trips and mission trips, to take their beliefs and values somewhere beyond their comfort zone and act on them, whether with drywall mud and hammers, or in conversation and conversion.

 

Those who come back from experiences like that know they are creating their lives, not just experiencing events; even as they better understand how dependent they are on others, no matter how independently they might adventure.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about a rite of passage you've known at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow "Knapsack" @Twitter.com.

Faith Works 6-20

Faith Works 6-20-09

Jeff Gill

 

Growing in Wisdom & Stature Before God & Man

___

 

 

When is a child an adult?

 

Religious rituals are often the benchmark for this moment. Most of us know of Judaism's "bar mitzvah" tradition for boys when they turn 13, "bat mitzvah" in some Jewish traditions for girls.

 

It's a cultural milestone with certain religious overtones marking when maturity and responsibility start to include responsibility for one's own faith.

 

Among Christian infant baptism traditions, the maturity milestone is often called Confirmation, a ceremony that's part of worship but, like a bar mitzvah, is usually preceded by a meaningful period of preparation. While First Communion may be at 7 or 8, Confirmation is usually offered at 12 to 14 years of age.

 

In a believer's baptism tradition, a preparation class or "pastor's class" is offered, to help a young person get ready for coming forward to make their own confession of faith. The usual age in such churches for baptism has been, in the past, traditionally around the age of Confirmation, but many congregations have tended younger in their encouragements over the last couple decades, often to 8 years old or so.

 

The Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, usually baptize at 8 calling that "the age of accountability," then young men are ordained deacons at 12, the beginning of their work in the priesthood of the LDS.

 

All of this helps to define how faith communities prepare children and youth for increased responsibility for their own practice and understanding of the beliefs they share, but you can see how the tendency is to lean towards the doctrinal and the structural.

 

What gets left out is the question: when is a child an adult?

 

Anthropologists would point out to us that 12 or 13 is the age of physical maturity, when sexual activity starts to have, um, rather dramatic consequences. (OK, it always does; you know what I mean.) Most religious traditions marking a maturity milestone echo or shadow that benchmark, which makes a certain kind of sense.

 

What we struggle with in today's society is that we have been steadily defining the horizon of mature and self-responsible behavior older and older. Abe Lincoln and Charles Dickens were sent out to work at 12 in the early 1800s, and no one thought it particularly odd. Now we place the major passage into adulthood at 16 for getting a driver's license, but only allow voting at 18, and consumption of alcoholic beverages at 21.

 

When I hear people say that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnson at 18 are too young to know what they want in life, part of me agrees, but I also wonder about how they would have been about right for most of the last few thousand years to be starting a family.

 

Carrie Prejean at 22 was said to be too young and inexperienced to know what she was getting herself into in the Miss USA pageant, and Britney Spears at 27 is still described as a near helpless "young woman":  maybe she is. The Jonas Brothers range from16 to 21, and they're still the anchor act for a show called the "Kid's Choice Awards."

 

There's much anguish over "our kids are growing up too soon," but I'd ask if we could wonder if we try to keep them children too long, and make it almost impossible for them to see when they become men and women. Is it the first car? Leaving for college? Getting a job?

 

And I wonder about this as I read, on the verge of another Father's Day, that in 2007 we crossed the milestone of 4 out of 10 children born to single mothers, out of wedlock, choose your term.  1.7 million kids, in this county, nearly two years ago, out of  4.3 million born, effectively had no father . . . of course we know, whoever showed up in the delivery room, there was a father out there somewhere.

 

Is it that we have no clear, clean benchmark for moving out of childhood that so many young men – for they have certainly passed that biological horizon we discussed earlier – put themselves in the lifelong complication of "fathering" a child without setting up the standard and support system of marriage and being a husband, because it is a clear-cut, unmistakable way of saying to the world "this day, I am a man."

 

I wonder no less so for the young women involved, who are surely mothers and doubtless women, even if not a wife. When most of our faith oriented rites of passage are set so early in childhood, as most now are, how can churches help to offer a public way to celebrate maturity and responsibility?

 

Perhaps more awkwardly, to do that we'd have to discuss and agree on the question: at what age or by what measure should we declare them an adult?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your rite of passage at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow "Knapsack" @Twitter.com.

Faith Works 6-13

Faith Works 6-13-09

Jeff Gill

 

Putting Youth To Work For the Summer

 

If you have a teenager about the house this summer, now that school is done – and let's be brutally candid: jobs are hard to come by.

 

So they don't have work to do, and even a teenager is liable to the sorrowful cry of summer plus a day or a week or so, "I'm bored! I haven't got anything to do!"

 

A very interesting and worthwhile option is to wander out the east side of Newark, turn at the KFC on Tuscarawas Street, behind Blessed Sacrament School, and then left on Penney Street, going past the old historic Penney Mansion, until the road runs into the vast berm of Route 16.

 

You may have noticed, if you glance to the right driving east on Rt. 16, just after crossing Cedar Street, that a new house is being built on the last lot next to the highway. This is a Habitat House, a project of the Licking County Habitat for Humanity, a key part of our community response to housing and homelessness since 1988, and this "build" is the 21^st the local chapter has put up.

 

But this project is a bit different: it's called a "Youth Build," a special invitation is out to young adults, ages 16 to 21. Project supervisor Allan Smail is welcoming young people – who will, of course, need to sign some waivers and such, and a parent signature for those under 18 – regardless of skill level or experience to come and help build a house.

 

The house will be occupied by a family chosen by the local Habitat chapter, whose director, Sarah Oneson, has worked with the board and Habitat team to select. They need to get to where they have a clean credit record, and be willing to put what's called "sweat equity" into the project, whether that's labor on the house itself or office support with Sarah, but in return for their participation, they get a house with an interest free loan that they pay back into Habitat's revolving fund, so their "mortgage" payments actually go to help build the next house, and so it goes.

 

Habitat for Humanity is a Christian-based ministry open to the entire community; in fact, a number of area churches are looking at teaming together to do a "church build" for the 22^nd house that Licking County Habitat for Humanity will build. But right now, the interest is in bringing together young adults, 16 to 21, to learn a bit about homebuilding, a great deal about teamwork, and perhaps more than a little about faith in action.

 

Obviously, you might want to call and find out more, and the office number for Habitat locally is 788-8778, but Allan assures me that if you can bring a parent to start out the process (particularly for 16 and 17 year olds), just come on out today to the end of Penney Street, and say "hey, can I help?"

 

The project will be under roof shortly, and interior work will create many options for building trade "newbie's" to help out. Allan and the team will be on site Wednesdays and Saturdays, 8:30 am to 3:30 pm; he'd really like to thank C-TEC and the students with Mr. Kirschner for the work building the exterior walls and framing before the school year ended.

 

If you'd like to see this project through to completion, or help a youth in your family know what it's like to see a house finished that you helped to build, put down the paper and come on over today . . . or give Sarah a call and see where you can pitch in later.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's proud to have helped with a half dozen or so Habitat projects, but has never swung a hammer next to Jimmy Carter – maybe next time. Tell him about your celebrity carpentry experience at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow "Knapsack" @ Twitter.com.

An online bonus to the Granville Sentinel piece set for this Wed./Thur., June 10/11, 2009, a short scene from just a little further on in Rev. James B. Finley's autobiography, just after Nov. 1810 --

"During this round I made an attempt to preach in the town of Newark. This place was notorious for its wickedness; and, as no house was opened for me, I was obliged to preach in the bar-room of a tavern. Fearing the citizens would cut my saddle, or shave my horse, I hid him in the bushes. When I stepped into the door I found the room full; and many were crowded around the bar, drinking. It looked to me more like the celebration of a bacchanalian orgie, than a place for the worship of God. But I had made an appointment ; and I must fill it at all hazards; and, as the Gospel was to be preached to every creature, my mission extended to every place this side of hell. I procured a stool, and, placing it beside the door, got upon it, and cried out, at the top of my voice, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life."

[Finley ended up preaching in the new log courthouse, and formed a Newark class meeting in 1811.]

Faith Works 6-6-09

Faith Works 6-6-09

Jeff Gill

 

What's a Trinity, & Do I Really Need One

___

 

Trinity Sunday is traditionally the Sunday after Pentecost, the first Sunday of "Ordinary Time," the long slog through the church calendar to Advent, with the green paraments on the altar (or table), Bible stand, and vestments.

 

Personally, when I've served churches where there were paraments, I always liked to keep the red paraments of Pentecost out through the first Sunday of July, if only to even out the wear on the long suffering green ones.

 

Trinity Sunday is also traditionally ignored even in the liturgically oriented churches that might be more likely to keep track of such things.  Like Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of Ordinary Time just before the first Sunday of Advent, it tends to get shoved to the back of the preaching and worshiping cupboard and not even get taken out and shaken out on the one day they could claim.

 

Quite frankly, the very concept of the Trinity tends to get short shrift, and quite a few Christians aren't sure even why we need the idea. Other than a few lines in very old hymns about "Three-in-One," we don't go there much, and end up being de facto unitarians (nothing personal to Unitarian Universalists, who at least know why they're Unitarian!), since the theology behind the Trinity doesn't get often unpacked. It doesn't "do" much in practical terms, and in our pragmatic, non-theological age, even many committed Christians think of the Trinity as being out there with Purgatory and the Apocrypha, largely optional and basically unnecessary holdovers from an earlier age.

 

On the eve of Trinity Sunday, I'd like to suggest you give this another thought.

 

Like most key elements of Christianity, it begins with Jesus.  As Romans declared their emperors "Son of God, Prince of Peace," they elevated each one into a raucous pantheon of divine beings, a Mount Olympus filled with heavenly condos, and a contentious owners association where Zeus may hold the chairmanship, but the members don't always listen to the decrees from the top, and the roster keeps changing.  Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, Caligula's horse: there was plenty of room on that mountaintop for expansion.

 

Christians said, in keeping with their Jewish roots, "No, there is one God, Lord over all, creator of all that is and was and ever shall be."  So who is this Jesus whom you call Lord? Greeks and Romans alike pointed out that if Jesus was God, then his prayers were to . . .

 

What does it mean to say that God decisively intervened in human affairs through a person in first century Palestine? When Christians say that, if you would see and understand God, you can look to Jesus for all you need to know, though not all there is of God, how does that work?

 

It is essentially out of the question "what does it mean to say that Jesus is God incarnate" that the doctrine of the Trinity arises.  Beginning with Jesus' own words about his relationship to his Father, the early church wrestled with the right way to express who the Son is until 325, when the Nicene Creed was written, stating that Jesus is "God from God, light from light, true God from true God . . ."

 

And how does the Holy Spirit, manifested on Pentecost (which we observed last Sunday), relate to the Father and the Son? In fact Eastern and Western Christianity still have a subtle but resonant disagreement on this question, going back over a thousand years (think "filoque").

 

But the essence of Trinitarian belief goes back to the need to say two things at the same time: "The Lord our God, the Lord is One"; and also, "Jesus is Lord."  Unitarian belief takes most of the pressure off that debate by saying that Jesus is not in any specific or unique way "of one substance with the Father."  He may be the exemplar or focus for our human sense of who God is, but that's it from a Unitarian perspective.

 

Trinity Sunday is another opportunity for us to ask ourselves "Who is this Jesus? What does it mean to call him the Christ, the Son of God?" And gets us closer to the question "what does Jesus tell us about God?"  Which is the heart of the matter.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him what you think about the "filoque" clause in the Nicene Creed at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow "Knapsack" @ Twitter.com.

Knapsack 6-11

Notes From My Knapsack 6-11-09 -- Granville Sentinel

Jeff Gill

 

A Swashbuckling Granville Privateer, a Roughhewn Preacher, and…

___

 

Laura Evans ably holds down the historical side of things here in the Sentinel pages, and always adds a narrative dose of personality to the oft' distant figures she describes.

 

I hope she doesn't mind my poaching on her terrain a bit, as I carry on a little further about one William Gavit, converted at a Methodist revival in Muskingum County in the summer of 1809, and the first "class leader" of what became Centenary United Methodist Church in 1810.

 

There's a number of versions of the story that led the "freethinker" Gavit to attend a camp meeting, but they all agree that he rode some distance east and spent time at a preaching revival. As it happens, Rev. James B. Finley was appointed to that area in the spring of 1809, and on pg. 202 of his "Autobiography" he describes his unassuming arrival in Zanesville:

 

"Several days travel brought me to Zanesville, the principal appointment on my circuit. When I arrived in town it was raining hard. In lieu of an overcoat, to protect me from the storm, I had procured a blanket, and cutting a hole in the middle of it, I thrust my head through it and found it a good protection. Riding up to the door of one of the principal Methodists of the place, I asked for lodgings, informing the brother that the conference had sent me there as the preacher. Eyeing me closely from head to foot, he replied, "You look like any thing else than a preacher." I told him he should not judge too rashly, as he might, perhaps, think better of me on a closer examination, and I suggested the propriety, at least, of his giving me a fair trial."

 

Almost sounds like Clint Eastwood coming to the door in the rain, doesn't it?

 

His preaching the next day was, in fact, well received, and he continued from there to Barnesville and Leatherwood Creek (ah, now there's a story for later), and up around to the Tuscarawas River. It was in that valley that the first camp meeting east central Ohio was held, somewhere near Dresden, and it was almost certainly that revival where Gavit and his traveling companion heard and responded.

 

Of Gavit it must be said, in the words of an early Revolutionary War historian, "His application for pension reads like a romance of the sea." Born in Westerly, Rhode Island, he joined the small privateer navy that the Continental Congress tried to throw together on the cheap, enlisting in New London, Connecticut at the age of 15. He was a sailor on the privateer "Favorite," the sloop "Randolph," the schooner "De Crops," and the brig "Martin." But his most dramatic post was as a prisoner of the British on the grounded prison hulk "Jersey," an infamous deathtrap for literally thousands of American prisoners. He was captured by the Royal Navy not once but twice, escaping from the "Jersey," and returning near the war's end. 8,000 and more died there, but Gavit escaped, married his boyhood sweetheart, and headed in country away from the sea to Granville, Massachusetts, where he joined the famous 1805 settlement party.

 

What I find most interesting, but so far unprovable – his second son had the middle name "Denison," the one-n type. And Westerly is just a few miles from the Denison Homestead near Mystic, Connecticut, where William S. Denison was born and from which his family set out for the valleys near the junction of the Tuscarawas and Muskingum.

 

Was William Gavit related to the Denisons by blood, or by marriage to his wife Sarah? And could the elderly old pillar of his Granville community, still alive in 1854, have helped pass the word to a wealthy relation over Muskingum way, who made a gift that placed his name upon the college on the hill?

 

Ah, that's more a storyteller weaving a tale than history, but that's why it's so much fun to be a storyteller.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; spin a tale for him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @ Twitter.

Faith Works 5-30-09

Faith Works 5-30-09

Jeff Gill

 

Meeting Of the Minds, Maybe Not

___

 

There's been an interesting intersection of left and right, liberal and conservative, religious and secular in political debate lately.

 

Since the "sides," so to speak, have backed into each other, they may not know how close they've gotten, or that they've actually bumped a bit.

 

On the one side is the torture debate. This gets sticky for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is that no one (or at least very few) want to come out as being "pro-" torture. My own sense is that no one actually is for torture, anyhow (even Dick Cheney).

 

And to be perfectly candid, I think there's quite a bit of posturing on the anti-torture side, not that they aren't actually against inflicting pain to speed an interrogation, but because the politics are driving the discussion far more than the facts of what's at hand.

 

What's at hand goes back to 2002 and 2003, which if you were around then, were nervous and anxious days, with smoke still metaphorically rising from the crater around the site of the World Trade Towers, and every plane crash and "Breaking News" seemed to have the potential to tell us of another mass casualty event in a city or mall or airport, even here in central Ohio.

 

Apparently, government officials, with the usual disputation between the FBI and CIA folks, looked into what actually and technically constituted torture, got legal opinions on where the line was, and used a set of new guidelines to creep right up as close to the line as they could justify to interrogate freshly apprehended terrorist suspects.

 

There were three fellows who had these new techniques used, and now, some six years later, there's still dispute over how helpful it was, and actually longer ago it was decided the line should be eased back further towards where it had been, and waterboarding should be considered off-limits.

 

Lost in the political debate over whether waterboarding was, or legally should be prosecuted as torture, is not only that everyone agrees we should stop doing it (even Dick Cheney), but that there's general agreement that if you could read the law as allowing the specific set of techniques to be this side of torture, the USA should stop doing it because . . .

 

This is where the noise and static sets in. If doing waterboarding can be done in a way that is technically legal under US and international law, what's the problem?

 

Well, the biggest problem is that it is so close to torture that it really doesn't matter, mainly because it a) creates a coarsening effect on those who use it, b) those who have it inflicted on them, c) those who support those it's used upon, and d) our entire culture. "If this is OK," the argument goes, "then no justification in the short run makes up for the damage it does to who we are and what we represent in the long run."

 

Which is exactly the argument used for years by the pro-life movement.

 

Truth be told, there are many pro-lifers who are not comfortable with a Constitutional amendment putting life as beginning at conception, and are not willing to vehemently affirm that a baby at three weeks is morally and theologically equivalent to a baby at eight months.

 

But the working majority of Americans who are opposed to the growth of abortion and public funding for abortion is based in no small part on the large number of us who think that there's a coarsening effect on our entire society when you kill a living thing because that's what some other living thing wants done. We're not sure about the exact moment a soul or a spirit or moral standing is imparted under the law to a fetus, but it seems scientifically reasonable to stay with conception as a default safeguard – because working from the other end of viability gets us nothing but coarse and roughhewn definitions that change with the season.

 

The torture debate and the abortion debate are largely saying the same thing, if partisan politics can be lifted away from the basic faith in human uniqueness and value that is our common holding in this country. Don't inflict pain, even for good reasons; don't kill fetuses, no matter how early – because any justification in the moment becomes a rationalization that can spread and grow and gnaw away at so much more.

 

Draw bright lines, do no harm, and don't try to dance too close to the edge. You never know when you might fall off.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's against a great many things he will never have to deal with himself, but he's also for quite a bit he will never get to do, either. Tell him what you're for or against at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @ Twitter.

Winning the Battle of Wallabout Bay -- Pentecost Sunday, May 31, 2009
Centenary UMC, Granville OH