Faith Works 8-15-20

Faith Works 8-15-20

Jeff Gill

 

George Washington and the prophet Micah

____

230 years ago this week, George Washington came to Newport, Rhode Island.

 

As a general during the American Revolution he had been there, but as President of the United States he had skipped over a Rhode Island visit earlier because the state had not yet ratified the new Constitution.

 

But in 1790 they did so, and to affirm that choice, along with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and other top officials of the new nation, Washington came to the thriving seaport on August 17th of that year.

 

He was greeted, as you'd expect, by a series of speeches by local officials. One of them was Moses Seixas, an official of Yeshuat Israel, the first synagogue for Jewish people in that place, and one of relatively few in the country.

 

Celebrating Washington's presence, and the new system of governance he represented, Seixas said in his address that he and his people were glad to be part of "a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance—but generously affording to All liberty of conscience." This had not always been true in those waters, as anyone who knows the history of Rhode Island vis a vis nearby Massachusetts can attest. Pilgrims fought with Puritans, Unitarians rebelled against Congregationalists, and dissenters of all sorts got expelled from Boston and came to Providence and Newport where they then had a residual tendency to expel people who dissented from them (and almost everyone harried the Native Americans off of their land, all within living memory in 1790).

 

But that line, saying of America that here we are to be governed by authorities whom "to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance," comes from the Jewish community leader Moses Seixas. It has entered our common lexicon of America, though, because a few days later George Washington sat down to write thank you notes to those who greeted him in Newport, and to Seixas and the Touro Synagogue – which you can still visit and I recommend the experience! – he wrote a very beautiful and deeply meaningful letter.

 

You see, one of the points of contention around ratifying the Constitution had to do with that pesky First Amendment, which was specifically intended among other things to forbid the federal government from formally "establishing" any one church as a state church – and in 1790, half of the new states had state churches. Including Massachusetts until 1833 with Congregationalism, and Rhode Island's other neighbor Connecticut likewise; Roger Williams had come to establish Rhode Island in the 1600s as a refuge for, among other things, "separation of church and state." His Baptist faith became a central element in the new colony, but it was never the established church. This attracted Baptists and Quakers and Jews to Rhode Island; Catholics were tolerated, barely, until the good behavior of French naval officers during the Revolution made such a good impression in Newport that it led to formal permission to build a Catholic church there (where JFK & Jackie would be married decades later).

 

Washington's thank you to the Touro Synagogue in 1790 nears its conclusion with this: "May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants." And rather than affirm mere "toleration" of religious pluralism, he emphasizes religious liberty in "the exercise of inherent natural rights," echoing Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence, on the heels of repeating and reframing Sexias's powerful phrase: "for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."

 

What I find most appealing in what our first President says to the Jewish community of Newport in 1790, and through them to us today, is when he quotes Micah 4:4 about what "the good will of the other Inhabitants" is intended to bring about: "while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid." Every one, not just George or Moses, but all of us.

 

His last line is: "May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy."

 

Signed simply "G. Washington."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's weeding his vine and fig tree this morning. Tell him how you use your religious liberty at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

 

 

Faith Works 8-8-20

Faith Works 8-8-20

Jeff Gill

 

Whom Do You Trust?
___

Any time period has its moments of testing and trial. Ancient history, current events, living memory, the day before yesterday: they all have turning points and challenges for those who live in them to make a decision, even by not choosing.

 

Since the death of John Lewis, I've been taken back to reading Taylor Branch's three volumes on "America in the King Years," with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as the hinge on which the whole narrative swings, but with a solid door of civil rights activism opening up across the decade and more it spans.

 

The third book, "At Canaan's Edge," starts with Selma and the pivotal role John Lewis had in getting to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, before he and King and so many others finally cross it, and then makes the longer sad journey through Chicago and Vietnam to the sacrifice in Memphis of King's life to an assassin's bullet, so from 1965 to 1968.

 

I won't claim to remember those years well, but I remember them; hence, I'd argue it's not that long ago (indulge me). I've also read this particular book three times now, and each time, I'm confronted with different aspects of how far we've come as a nation, and where we've yet fallen short.

 

From the lies LBJ felt he had to tell about how the war in Southeast Asia was going, to the falsehoods sworn in court by a legal system committed to sustaining segregation, it is both wrenching and necessary to confront how untruth has been used for supporting assumptions left untested, how willful misrepresentations have been used to keep some in the darkness, and avoid the light shining on the acts of favored others. Can you trust the FBI? Not in 1966, that's quite clear. Can you trust a President when their re-election is at stake? Not entirely, that's for certain. Can you trust the New York Times, the Washington Post, even the National Council of Churches when they're asked to speak against self-interest? History says not always.

 

It's not a long jump to the apparent likelihood of having two Speakers of the House in Ohio politics break the law to line their own pockets, and in a short period of time. Promises made and commitments offered, sometimes right to your face . . . well, this is where I have the advantage of at least enough years to know they wouldn't be the first politicians to lie to me directly. I nod and smile, and hedge my own expectations when it comes to political support and plans for the future. As a politician said (ironically), trust but verify. Which is to say don't trust at all until you have independent confirmation.

 

Today, 75 years ago, the second and we pray last nuclear weapon was used to kill in warfare, the bomb at Nagasaki following by a few days the first A-bomb at Hiroshima. I have known people, family and fellow worshipers, who saw the flash of nuclear fission and felt the impact in their lives if not their senses, all of whom have said "it had to be." I take them at their word, and I read and hear of other perspectives, and I wonder: if only to ask how we can not create such necessity again.

 

Racism, and nuclear weapons, and . . . wearing masks. Maintaining distance. Taking care to use caution to reduce the spread of a microscopic agent which can't be seen until it registers on a thermometer or triggers pain and discomfort within. If you've not seen a full ICU for yourself, or been around an intubation, let alone an extubation, this all might seem very abstract, hypothetical even.

 

And it all comes down to the question, a question at the heart of religious faith and practice in any era: whom do you trust? If someone dares try to tell us about how our actions today have meaning a millennia from now, or what two thousand year old acts might impact our lives today, can you believe them? Should you live and work and act based on the testimony of another, and if so, which one? (Especially if they're just a name in a book, and an old one at that.)

 

Trust, but verify. Listen, assess, balance out your understandings, but then we all have to act. Or not act. As we do, we have a chance to ask ourselves where our trust is being put. And in whom.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; his trust is in the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth. Tell him in whom you put your trust, and why, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 8-6-20

Notes from my Knapsack 8-6-20

Jeff Gill

 

It's really just not fair

___

Normally, he said, starting a paragraph the way too many are beginning these days, I would be preparing to help open the Hartford Fair with an ecumenical worship service Sunday morning, as the sun rises over the Natural Resources pavilion, and with sheep and goats singing out nearby.

 

Nope. Not this year! The least of many losses. More significantly, I won't be eating a corn dog or pulled pork sandwich or fair ice cream barn cone this year. Oh, and I'm resigning my job as a parish minister that Sunday.

 

Yeah, it's been a weird year in many ways. No, I am NOT old enough to retire, and I hope that's not actually what I'm doing . . . though if this all goes on long enough, that's what it will turn out to have been. But my wife and I have roots here in Granville, but each a parent in Indiana, both of whom are quite intent on staying there (hey, it's a nice state in many ways, we're both from there) but each of whom has needs. As people who are moving into the upper end of elderly, their needs require a certain amount of direct support, and I'm going to become a more active part of that plan.

 

We aren't moving, but we do need to be very careful about our social contacts with the general public as we are primary social contacts with our parents. To be blunt, we don't want to transmit coronavirus to them. So going to the fair, or leading a crowd of relative strangers in song, then driving to Indianapolis to help tend to business with a 91 year old who's fine, just fine, thank you very much, and when are you coming next? Nope, that's not going to work.

 

And my resignation is less to do with the complications of church life as it does with the needs and expectations of ministry, which takes me regularly into settings where, even as the congregation itself couldn't be more flexible and careful, I end up in the middle of groups of . . . well, relative strangers who in many cases are not interested in either masks or social distancing. It's not fair, either to me, or to the church I serve, but the fact of being out and around means having to be in contact with people who reject coronavirus precautions, which means I need to leave my job. I am fortunate that I have that flexibility at this juncture in my life, and a great deal of sorrow for those who have the same concerns in their lives, but can't do what I'm doing to protect the people I love.

 

It's not fair, but as my son has heard all through his growing up years, the fair is in Croton, and it's not August . . . except here it is August, and the Harford Fair is on, but I'm not going. Which doesn't seem fair. What I can do is look forward to the day when I can go back, and maybe even sing a hymn, and eat a Trojan Burger. Not at the same time, though.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he will need to change that tag line in a couple of weeks. Tell him about changes you've had to make during coronatimes at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

 

Faith Works 8-1-20

Faith Works 8-1-20

Jeff Gill

 

Don't make any major decisions

___

When you have a major loss in your life, people always say, and rightly so, "don't make any major decisions."

 

The logic is that when you've been under great stress, grief, or exertion, you are less mentally and spiritually ready to make tough choices than you would be with some time and rest and renewal behind you. It's kind of the emotional version of "don't shop while you're hungry." Who knows what you'll buy at the grocery store if you haven't eaten for a while, right?

 

Except the problem is always that this is exactly when we all have to make major decisions, when it's already been a hard stretch of road. This is why you've read here before my exhortations to make your end of life plans now, not just so you don't have to in a difficult context, but so those who love you don't have to wonder the day after you're gone "what did they want us to do, anyhow?"

 

It's so often one of the worst days in many people's lives when they have to make choices about things no one wants to think about. You can buffer or cushion that impact, but you can't take the burden away entirely. The main thing is to not make it heavier and harder.

 

I'd already brought this up about "the Hidalgo Effect" and understanding that your reaction times, your peripheral vision, your self-assessment is measurably worse when you've been under stress. (This is how two good drivers got into a wreck on the way to picking up their father's ashes.) You have to make allowances for not entirely being yourself. And under the pressures of COVID-19, we all need to give ourselves and each other a little slack.

 

All of which is why I wish I weren't having to make a major vocational choice right now, and where I'm at least looking for helpful lessons to pass along to the rest of you. Mostly, I'm just shaking my head at the ironies of our time and circumstance. But as it turns out, a week from tomorrow I preach my last sermon for the congregation I serve . . . from the front steps of the church porch to a parking lot full of cars, whose occupants are invisible behind the glare of the rising 10:30 am sun. I had not yet given my last sermon much thought, and if I had, it wasn't about how I'd preach through a low power FM signal to a congregation sitting in their vehicles, running the air conditioning to survive even an abbreviated service in the summer sun.

 

Wild stuff, eh? But my situation is simply that I need to refocus to help with family matters, intensified by coronavirus but this would have had to have been the case even if we weren't on state health department restrictions. My wife and I each have a surviving parent who has needs, and both of them happen to be in Indiana with no intention of moving. Neither do we, and my wife is continuing in her work here in Ohio while doing some virtual commuting, but soon I will be doing more of the back-and-forth. Since our parents are both up into the high risk zone as elderly persons, we need to be extra cautious about our social contacts, masks or otherwise. (By the way, all the questions you're thinking of that start "have you thought about…" can be answered "yes.")

 

So I have resigned as a pulpit minister, while resisting the term "retiring." And my "last sermons" I really hope will not be preached this Sunday or next, but it's hard to know for sure. How long will this virus still be a threat to older, more vulnerable people? For how many years will we need to do the particular kind of support we're gearing up for right now? As the song says, "God only knows." Perhaps I'll preach again, supply or interim or something else, but for now, my ministry is to my family.

 

It has been a good ministry in the church I serve, since May of 2012. I had more of a twelve to fifteen year plan when we started out, but between spasmodic dysphonia and global pandemic and joining the sandwich generation of starting to care for parents just as you stop caring for children, to use the archaic phrase: "man proposes but God disposes." It's not the best time to step down, for me or the church, but when is?

 

Newark Central has plans and leadership moving forward to take them onwards into God's plan for the church, and I'll be around here as long as the Advocate has space on the Faith page, in pixels or on paper. Because this is home, friends!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he will need to change that tag line in a couple of weeks. Tell him about changes you've had to make during coronatimes at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

 

Faith Works 7-25-20

Faith Works 7-25-20

Jeff Gill

 

The Hidalgo Effect

___

A week and a half after my father died in south Texas, I drove in a rental van with his ashes and a load of Mom's belongings north to Indiana.

 

It was the second half of March, and as I drove out of the Rio Grande Valley the Midwest already had stay-at-home orders being imposed, but that place had one reported case of coronavirus. Now they have tens of thousands, and they're looking at their first county shut-down of all but essential businesses.

 

We're all weary of the numbers, and the categories, and the reports, and how to deal with the implications of what may or might or likely will happen. The mask debate is, in my opinion, a more visible and specific argument about the whole general question of what we can do, what we should do, and what we must do. Even if it's going to a restaurant and ordering off the menu, let alone sending our children to school.

 

A couple of pastoral notes here: first, this too shall pass. It will not be forever. Some changes will endure – I think we will look at seasonal flu differently, and some of the sanitation and disinfecting procedures will stay with us, perhaps because we always should have done them during the heart of that six month annual stretch.

 

But between microbiology and evolution and treatment improvements, let alone vaccines, this will effectively end. Maybe in a year or so, maybe longer (but I don't think that long), but it will be over. So take a deep breath, and let's face the immediate issues without hyperventilating over "this will be with us forever!" I'm sure they felt that way about cholera and tuberculosis and polio, and those were horrible and culture changing infectious agents, but they were not forever. This won't be, either.

 

And speaking of TB sanitariums and public health orders: this is not new. Not at all. We've been here before. America has been extremely fortunate that we last dealt with something like this in 1919; concerns were accurately raised, but never really fully developed, about Swine flu and H1N1 and SARS and Ebola, because they never really took off here, for a variety of reasons. This virus did, and we have to deal with it. We actually are, fairly well, considering, and we will have to be vigilant in new ways, because it's probably not going to be another century before we have to do this again.

 

What we all, churches and communities and leaders and clergy have to be ready to do, is minister to the very real trauma we have all experienced. Saying we all have PTSD might be a bit of a reach, but any trauma has stresses in the post-period. And make no mistake, this has been a social trauma which will trip us up in unexpected ways.

 

I've told people dealing with grief about this reality for many years: you will find the loss, and your mourning, to pop up in odd ways at strange moments, and seriously – it messes with your short term memory, and your reaction times. Be ready for that, be kind to yourself, and be careful. Take care not to make major decisions (HA! many say rightly, because how do you not make major decisions right after a death?), and be a little extra careful. It will take weeks, maybe months, for things to steady on for you, and that's okay.

 

So many people have heard me say this. And I said it to my sister, as we stood in the sun by the side of the road in Hidalgo, Texas. I mentioned at the start I drove back to Indiana a rental van. My parents had a van in Pharr, Texas where they wintered, but . . . we wrecked it. My sister and I were out on a list of errands, having flown down to be with Mom and take care of business for her. He had now been dead five days, and we both had adjusted to waking up to this reality. We were fine, talking about things we normally did, laughing and joking, giddy even, and . . . BAM. An awkward merge, a speeding vehicle, and boom, the van was a steaming total wreck. (Did I mention our next stop was to pick up the ashes? Yeah.)

 

Short term memory, reaction times, skewed perceptions. After a loss, following great stress, there's a price to be paid. PTSD? Dunno. Maybe we could call it "the Hidalgo Effect." But I think once this is all behind us, we're all going to have a little of it ahead of us to get over. And we will need then, as we need now, to be kind to one another, as well as to love one another.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's working through his Hidalgo Effects by writing. Tell him how you deal with stress and trauma at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.