Faith Works 2-16-19

Faith Works 2-16-19

Jeff Gill

 

Why are there poor people?

___

 

Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. ~ Proverbs 14:31 (NIV)

 

In all the back and forth over housing and emergency shelters and compassion there's a question that keeps coming up in various and subtle forms: why are people homeless?

 

Of course, a simple answer is "because they don't have a home to go to at night."

 

Well, then, how does someone end up that way?

 

A child has a home with parents; legally, they can't kick them out until age 18 but, to my shock when as an adult I realized this actually happens, they can at that point. And yes, some young adults who have spent their teen years in foster care can be ushered onto the street on their eighteenth birthday. Maybe a dozen to a score per year right here in this county. So that's one source of homelessness.

 

You can go to college or move out to a job, and have things fall apart on you, still without a credit card to fall back on let alone a savings account and emergency fund. Relationships abruptly end, decisions are made – we have a landing place for victims of domestic violence, but if you leave a relationship because of stuff (and stuff can be serious yet not violent), you may or may not have a place to go.

 

And even if your stuff doesn't involve a spouse or roommate, in today's economy if you run short, eviction court is not far away. A few badly timed bills, a gap in employment, losing your child care and juggling this versus that: you find your stuff on the street, and your locks changed.

 

If you avoid that, or after that all happens, and you move in with Aunt May or Gramma, are you homeless? According to the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guidelines on homelessness, no, only if you are residing in a place "not intended for human habitation" (i.e., sleeping in your car); according the Department of Education (DoE) definition for homeless students, yes. I've had respected older members of our community, after hearing me explain this, come up after and say "so, my Dad died when I was in second grade, and we moved in with Grandmother, stayed with her until Mom remarried when I was in fourth grade – are you saying we were homeless back in 1952?" Well, according to 2019 DoE rules, yes, you were. That can work, but it's not stable, and not assured, so I see why the rule is written that way to protect students.

 

Then there's the classic. It's the image that tends to hit the mental movie theater when I say the word "homeless." It's a guy in an old ratty overcoat with a brown paper bag sticking out of the pocket, and a bottle inside. Or the woman pushing a cart filled with random plunder, wearing four jackets and a badly fitting wig, muttering to herself down the sidewalk.

 

Yes, those are realities, even here in our town. We know this. And there's a long conversation to be had, in public and civic terms, about involuntary admissions and pink slips and threat of harm to self or others. You can be mentally unstable, even have a relatively stable disability income, but lack capacity to fend properly for yourself while not technically being a danger to yourself. You and I might think they are, but the law . . .

 

Also those who are actively using, who in many cases will speak eloquently about wanting to quit, but not yet. [Deep sigh.] Not a big chunk of the population on the street or couch-surfing, but the hardest to serve, the toughest to know how best to help. Is guaranteed 365 shelter assistance, or enabling? It's a fair question.

 

But the biggest chunk of the challenge is represented by the factoid "the average age of a person who is homeless in America is nine years old." Now, the reality behind that is a 25 year old young mother with a baby and three year old, not quite making it, and trying to get by as best as the three of them, averaging out to age nine (do the math), can manage. If there are 250 young mothers who have lost children to foster care due to drug use, there are 1250 who fear losing their kids even though they're clean and green, but just can't put together that first and last month's rent. And are losing hope that there's a way forward with dignity and respect.

 

That's where we all come in. More next week!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's been working on housing and homelessness issues since 1986, and stopped believing in easy solutions by about 1987. Tell him where you see paths forward at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Notes from my Knapsack 2-14-19

Notes from my Knapsack 2-14-19

Jeff Gill

 

Not our best look

___

 

It's understood that the latter half of winter is not Ohio's best look.

 

Filthy piles of melting snow, crystalized and refrozen around revealed trash and debris, scattered in between the soggy yellow-green patches of grass. Soil mostly mud around the edges where we're often having to step, not always in waterproof boots, grit and salt tracked into our homes and stores and churches, a fading trail of filth that custodians struggle to keep up with.

 

Trees are starting to crack and split, a few sagging over as the ground releases its hold on root balls with the deep saturation. The wet bark is a slimy sort of black and one tree can barely be told from another, just a handful of upright splinters against a grey backdrop.

 

What I'd encourage you to remember during our slow return to longer days, brighter hopes, and more stable soil underfoot, is that the look of the natural world right now is kind of like someone finishing a stretch at the gym, or a runner completing their day's training, or a laborer heading home after a rough day at the salt mine. That's when you might look sweaty and bedraggled and haggard, but the hard work is done. The benefits are yet to be repaid, in muscle tone or endurance or just the pay check, but it had to be completed for the payoff to come in.

 

Winter, hard winter, is just that for the landscape. Dead branches are fallen, weaker tree structures revealed, leaves are mulching into the soil if they weren't mown over before, and beneath the surface, below the dreadful looking turf, worms and bugs and stirring rootlets are stirring the earthy pot.

 

Hibernation for some animals, migration for others, means a turnover in the fauna as well as the flora, and while we've come into a time with climate change where robins are here year round and even great blue herons can be seen in January, beating their slow steady way across the valley below, soon we will have the smaller birds making their way north.

 

Within those grim ghostly trees, the warmth of a higher sun angle, let alone more hours of its light, are drawing up from the roots the sap, which is beginning a process that will feed the inner life of those woods and to each branch spur the buds to become leaves . . . and a bit of it will be diverted by local syrup makers in the next few weeks, tap by tap, bucket by bucket, heading for the kettles to boil down to the sweetness meant to feed the canopy, used by us for our blessed pancakes.

 

It's not a pretty time, but there's as much going on in nature right now as was true back in July or will be this June. The life of the world is hidden in plain sight, and ready to burst out. When you slow down to notice the signs of this enlivening energy at work, it makes the grey gravelly days of February a good bit more tolerable, and even encouraging.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him where you see signs of pre-spring at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 2-9-19

Faith Works 2-9-19

Jeff Gill


Conversation hearts by any other name
___

Yes, there's more to say about emergency shelter and addiction and the faith community coming together. Not this week! But more to come. Thank you again to the more than a dozen congregations which shared time, treasure, and talents to shelter over 30 persons who are currently homeless in our county, plus another dozen who for a variety of reasons stayed out of any shelter, formal and ongoing or temporary, but who received care and concern in a time of need.

 

Much more to say here. But not yet!

 

This week, we honor an obscure saint of the Christian faith who once lived in an ancient imperial capital.

 

Valentinus lived in Rome, did something for a young couple out of his faith in Jesus, which resulted in his martyrdom. Certainly he deserves honor and respect for that example, that witness – and that's what the word martyr literally means, witness – which lives on in the Christian community today.

 

The normal way to do that in the church calendar is to mark a saint's day, like St. Nicholas on Dec. 6 or Saint Lucia on Dec. 13. So St. Valentine is remembered on Feb. 14.

 

The commemoration has, um, changed over the years.

 

The community leader who died a martyr has been replaced with cupids and hearts and lots and lots of candy. It has become a festival of love, and that's not entirely beside the point. Love is at the heart of what Christians believe, and everyone knows something about love and its transformative power whatever your faith perspective. So Saint Valentine certainly can be shared, even if some of us would like to make sure he doesn't get buried in the cards and decorations and boxed delivered sets of pajamas and giant teddy bears holding a heart.

 

Saint Paul wrote a powerful passage in I Corinthians chapter 13 about faith, hope, and love, and how the greatest of these three is love. He didn't mean sentiment, and he surely wasn't talking about romance, but his Greek original talks about "agape," one of four Greek words that can be translated as "love" but is specifically "sacrificial" or self-giving love. It's not about deciding who gets the rose, or the chocolate covered cherries, but about giving of yourself.

 

My own Valentine is a woman who has given much to me over the years. Ministry is, to be blunt, not always the best thing that can happen to a marriage. When I was a little tiny baby minister, there were still older clergy who would come and tell seminary students, and I quote, "you need to understand that between the church and your family, the church will always come first." Ahem.

 

The hard reality of this is that there's a particular bandwidth of life and ministry where this is true. When a family event is happening, and the message comes that a church member is being rushed to the Emergency Department of the hospital; when the family schedule is set but a funeral plan intrudes, it's often true that the family has to make the change. But those critical incidents shouldn't become anything and everything to do with church life . . . yet I recall when I first moved to Ohio an older clergymember asking why I didn't come to a particular event in the region, on hearing me say "because it's the same weekend as my wedding anniversary," responded "I haven't been home for my anniversary for thirty years, son."

 

That's not the Body of Christ, that's just stupid. Thirty years ago, I didn't say stuff like that out loud, but I'm now that older minister, and I want to say loudly "don't go down that road." Sacrifice that is compelled is no sacrifice at all, it's basically theft.

 

Yet I know my wife has given up much so I can serve, and I honor her for that; she's gotten a chance in the last couple of decades to do some leadership of her own in building up the Body of Christ, and I hope I am at least making some offerings in response. We've learned, as couples do, that there's always the need to adapt, and to change. This year, the originator of "conversation hearts" has ceased production, but other makers have stepped in. Things change, and to keep the continuity of love, we have to figure out how to deal with the sacrifices of the temporary and external to allow the essence to carry on.

 

That's where many older couples are indeed a witness to us; my prayer for you, dear readers, is that you have an older couple or two around you to witness to what a life of adaptation and stability, change and enduring love, can look like. Sacrifice, and gift, and change, but something truly permanent in this changing world.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; write him at
knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 2-2-19

Faith Works 2-2-19

Jeff Gill



A warming tale
___



No church event is over until two pastors are walking around behind
push brooms . . .

Okay, 9 am Thursday and we have shut down our temporary overnight
warming shelter, a pop-up project of local churches working together,
across denominations and traditions, with one holy spirit driving us
all. (Holy? Spirit?) Blessings to Vertical 196 for opening early this
past week, and Newark Naz for doing transport back and forth – it was
so cold Wednesday morning their van wouldn't start, but they Dunkirked
the problem and five drivers later we #GotRDone.

We also got some help taking beau-coup blankets over to the Haven at
St. Vincent De Paul Center Newark, OH, whose blanket stash was empty,
but we were certainly overabundantly blessed at Newark Central
Christian Church. Hundreds of blankets were brought in through the
first night.

What we didn't need: food. Sadly, I had it strongly demonstrated to me
that one major impact of meth is not that it "makes you skinny," but
it does massively depress the hunger instinct (among other things).
Food was not a big item, and we didn't move much of what we had.
Blessings to our friends at the Naz and Brucker and Kishler and John
Edward Price Flowers for dinners, and to Trinity Episcopal and Family
of Faith Community Church for breakfasts (and Pastor John for helping
with final clean-up the first day). We didn't need much in the way of
food, as it turned out. Coffee and lots of sugar and creamer go fast,
and we were all set there.

Did I mention we don't need blankets? Blessings to all the families
and individuals and churches, we didn't get names, no thank you notes
to write I guess, but they came from friends and acquaintances and new
friends I haven't met yet from all over Licking and half of Franklin
County. Truly, God bless you.

Thanks to Licking County EMA and Sean Grady, we got 14 cots, ended up
with 12 filled the first night, and if we had 3 new arrivals (all 12
said "oh yeah, we will come back if we can") on Wednesday night, we
are out of cots. Two guys have sleeping bags we gave them, and they
offered before anyone even asked to sleep on the floor for new people.
No, I'm not crying, you're crying.

(Did I mention the guy who left at 5 am to get to work? And his 8
months pregnant girlfriend who left at 5:15 because she wanted to
stick close to him? Wouldn't take a ride. Nope. One guy the van crews
found getting ready to sleep in his car at the library lot, and asked
him if he wanted to sleep warm. He said "well, yeah!" and came in, got
a cot . . . but ended up sleeping most of the night in a chair, which
seemed weird to me, until I realized: he's been sleeping sitting up
for weeks. It felt more comfortable to him, in the warmth, but sitting
up, like in his car. [sniff]. Did I mention the guy who dug through
all the coats and sweatshirts on offer, found a lone towel, and asked
if we had any washcloths? No, we did not have a single washcloth. A
hundred blankets, no washcloths. "If it's okay, and you have some
scissors?" And this fellow thinking faster than I cuts the towel into
six washcloths. Problem temporarily solved, eh?)

I am so thankful. Thankful for this opportunity to serve in Christ's
name, and for our community to measure with a new angle on things the
need. We had full emergency shelters, and about 20 unsheltered
homeless who needed what we offered in two locations overnight during
this chill interval. We know for sure of two guys the Crossroads
Crusaders took propane to, who stayed out in tents with their dogs. So
the need is there, and it is real. The problems people have that get
them to this place, they too are real, but they have solutions. We can
find them, together.

Let keep working on that. Bless you all who were mindful of us last
week, and who are praying still. All God's people need homes. Now, and
forever.



Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he
got a little upset when folks said Monday afternoon we just couldn't
come up with a warming shelter for two nights in this community. He's
touchy that way. Tell him what gets under your skin and spirit at
knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 1-26-19

Faith Works 1-26-19

Jeff Gill

 

Seeking faithfulness

___

 

Two weeks ago I picked up a theme off of the well known hymn "Great Is Thy Faithfulness."

 

I talked about a number of ways we struggle with faithful living and faithful lives in terms of church attendance and involvement. There were allusions to wider questions of being faithful in our culture, but I didn't go there.

 

You all did, however. And I'm not surprised.

 

A number of emails and messages came to me sharing pain and struggles with marital infidelity. As I stated, faithfulness isn't honored as much as it once was, and those who have experienced that most intimate form of faithlessness can see that problem more clearly than most.

 

Add to marital breakups the increasing infrequency of not getting married, putting faithfulness in a relationship into a more fluid, less trustworthy basis. If you've been together for ten years, own a house together and have a child or two, you don't – as we're told all the time, it seems – need a piece of paper to make that relationship real. But if the conversation's never had, if it's just assumed (and sometimes assumed by one, not the other) that this is now a committed, faithful relationship, without the marriage bond it's much easier for one or both to say "well, we're not tying each other down."

 

And I appreciated hearing it wasn't just me thinking that there's a link, distant thought it might seem, between a lessening of faithfulness in personal relationships to a loss of faithfulness in some fairly trivial areas of life: and a question about chickens and eggs. There used to be Ford families and Crest toothpaste users and CBS households and Captain Crunch breakfast tables, just as people once looked first for the Methodist or Presbyterian logos before they asked about the youth group or the preacher's politics.

 

No, I am not saying consumer choice led to rootless emotional and spiritual lives, but I would argue it becomes a large sticky ball of clamorous choices, rolling right over all of us and leaving a certain amount of anxious confusion in its wake. If we are the sum of our consumer choices, in a world of obvious advertising influences, then how can the real me be my choices, when clearly a clever ad with Flo or Tony the Tiger or Matthew McConaughey can cause me to choose differently?

 

Leaving us with an odd taste in our mouths as we're all encouraged to define ourselves by our choices while the media culture we're saturated in pounds away to influence those decisions, in means both obvious and subtle.

 

And the larger corrosion of that acid bath into our psyches is to implicitly condemn as false and foolish any sort of consistency. How many different little oblique ways do you feel it communicated that staying in a pattern, sticking with a "rut" (can you hear it there?), continuing with a product line or shopping habit, or even staying with the same partner for decades is somehow a denial of your true self, even your best self? Change is the sign of life, and more change is more lively.

 

What reinforces that is how the marketplace makes it hard to stick with anything for long. You find a candle whose scent you like, a gum you want to chew, a brand of shirts that works for you, but inevitably, you can't get it anymore. The five types becomes sixteen, and you hunt in vain among the sixteen for the closest to the one you used to buy. Do you notice what that also means? You have bought a product for years, then it's discontinued, and you have to buy a couple of different versions to ultimately come up with the closest match to what you already knew you liked.

 

Less product gets sold if you keep selling the same stuff. Everyone knows that. So we stay off-balance, vulnerable to impulse, groping for the right new that's really who we are.

 

So it is with picking a spouse, or choosing a church. Dating apps and cafeteria spirituality allow us to keep on playing the field, checking out what's new. Meanwhile, faithfulness is not just kind of stuffy, but implicitly a bad thing. You might just get comfortable with who and what you have, stay at home, make some bread, throw some things out you don't need, and not replace them.

 

And you might just develop habits of the heart, towards peace and love. Where's the profit in that?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he usually tries to avoid being too snarky in these columns, but sometimes it's hard. Tell him where you see faithfulness as a blessing at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.