Notes from my Knapsack 11-26-20

Notes from my Knapsack 11-26-20

Jeff Gill

Who's pardoning whom?
___

While the dateline for these columns tends to be a Thursday, whether you read these in print or online, the odds are that you won't be reading this on Thanksgiving Day. If you are, Happy Thanksgiving!

It's a mess. Let's just be honest and candid and accepting. With the growing spread of new COVID cases, and the mix of good news about vaccines and the awkward news of what kind of contacts lead to people coming down with the coronavirus, we all are having to make adjustments in Thanksgiving this year. Some bigger than others.

Every year, no matter your own personal situation, each of us has a store of memories, many delightful and always a few awkward and painful ones, about what Thanksgiving has been before in our lives, and how this year's observance will be different. Empty chairs around the table is a metaphor, since we rarely leave a chair empty, but in many homes a standard table will simply not have enough people physically present to fill them. So for many of us, for the first time perhaps, we literally will have empty chairs at the table.

Having a person or two ailing at the holidays isn't actually unusual, it's just that we all do, this year. We all have to deal with a different sort of celebration, and that general adjustment is a way of dealing with it, knowing that we are none of us alone in having a strange Thanksgiving.

Which is why I turn to the turkey. Most years, the United States of America has a deeply weird tradition at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and no, I don't mean anything to do with the election. I'm talking about the presidential turkey pardon. This year, a turkey farmer from Iowa will bring two birds to the White House, and the President of the United States will use his awesome executive branch powers to pardon one, and not the other. But, for decades at least, both end up at some petting zoo or agri-tourism farm as curiosities for the rest of their natural days.

My vegan friends have an obvious solution to this oddity. Don't eat any turkeys. Or Cornish game hens. Or chicken breasts. Et cetera. I'm not a vegan or even much of a vegetable aficionado, except for roasted Brussel sprouts this time of year, but this is where being a carnivore does make me think.

Turkey farmers are in a bit of a pickle, as suddenly people all want smaller birds, and those proud 14 and 15 and 19 pound birds in the freezer are getting shoved aside as people look to cook smaller this year. Will many be spared this year? The internet tells me wild turkeys live 3-5 years in the wild, and 10 or so years is the most they can expect as domesticated farm residents. So there's room for some deferred decisions here. Perhaps next year there will be a turkey surplus, and many commuted sentences will be executed as we rejoice at being together in larger quantities? So good news for us will be bad news for turkeys, just as our bad news this year I suspect will turn out to be good news for quite a few big birds down on the farm.

Perhaps the only good answer here is to at least be thankful for the life of the bird or bird parts or large root vegetables at the heart of our holiday table, to appreciate the sun and rain and struggles that got that food to us, and in it all, to give thanks.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's roasting a turkey breast this year, not a whole bird. Tell him about your Thanksgiving adjustments this year at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-28-20

Faith Works 11-28-20

Jeff Gill

A theme often overlooked

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Lent is a season even non-Christians are familiar with; Advent somewhat less so. It's already news that the pre-Lent celebrations down on the Gulf coast are already in abeyance, the Carnival season of parades and festivities which end in the much better known Mardi Gras, or "Fat Tuesday," the end of revelry before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.

In Lent, you are preparing for Easter, and in doing so, there is for many fasting, or at least the giving up of something. You fast to increase your appreciation of the feast, when Easter day comes with joy and celebration.

Less often appreciated, even in highly liturgical churches, is how Advent is meant to be a similar season. A time for prayer and penitence, a sacrificial season which prepares us for the rejoicing and festivity of Christmas. 

Some congregations have Advent wreaths and candles, four with one to each week leading to Christmas Day and a Christ candle in the middle. The traditional themes are of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, with joy sometimes getting a pink candle contrasting a bit with the frequently purple candles for the other three.

That pause for pink, or joy, or "gaudete" in the Latin formulation, only makes sense if you are looking at the rest of the Advent season as a time for something more restrained, a season for sacrifice, a penitential period. You break out in a bit of anticipatory rejoicing, briefly, on that third Sunday of Advent, but as the rest of the culture is picking up the pace of music and decoration and parties and . . . well. Right. 2020. Let's come back to that.

Anyhow, Gaudete Sunday is either an aberration in pink, or a reminder that the rest of Advent is supposed to be a seasonal reminder to prepare our spirits, our very souls, for the coming of Good News in the flesh, of God's promises yet to be fulfilled but surely coming soon, to be ready to invite the Prince of Peace into our lives, our homes, our hearts. If we just try to celebrate the whole season, the pink candle deal is just one more darn detail to get right in our pursuit of the perfect Christmas season.

This year, I am truly feeling Adventy. That's not a word, but I declare it so. It's an Adventy kind of November and December, don't you think? We have to prepare differently this year, and it's going to be rueful and meditative and reflective if it's going to be anything at all. The parties and decorations and tree lighting ceremonies (my wife always notes that the TV movies always have to have a tree lighting ceremony where various plot developments take place for the budding romances) are all going virtual and careful and cautious. Large group gatherings are clearly unwise and in many circumstances against the best and strongest public health guidelines this year, so it's "the revenge of the introverts" and party planners are crying into their egg nog.

What this does make possible, though, is a renewed exploration and appreciation for Advent as it's actually intended. Not a steady drum beat of expectation growing in intensity and fervent celebration, an escalation that's hard to keep up with, frankly, but a quiet path of meditation and prayer and reflection on why we are glad to celebrate the birth of a baby under odd and awesome circumstances two millennia ago.

Advent, which from the Latin is "to come," is a time of thinking and preparing for what is to come. We are anticipating, adventy-ing if you will, the coming of a vaccine and a restoration of what we've lost this year, but we also expect and anticipate, in a very Advent-ish mode that what is to come will not just be what once was. Things will change, losses have come, and the future, what we anticipate, is going to be different. We have to adjust and adapt and prepare for that.

Which is what Advent has always been about. And something any of us can do with candles at home, and prayers in private, week by week through our adjusted Advent, so we can welcome this Christmas for the blessing that it can indeed still be.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's very much into Advent this year, not just the wreath and candle stuff. Tell him about your seasonal preparations at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-21-20

Faith Works 11-21-20

Jeff Gill

Giving thanks for most everything

___

From 1970 to 1980 we went at least once a month to Grandma's house, after Grandpa's unexpected death shortly after his retirement as a school superintendent. Grandma never learned how to drive, and while the village market was still open in those days, four blocks away, there were a variety of things Mom needed to do for her (or have Dad do).

It was never something we questioned, just what had to be done. I got a line on the attendance chart in the Sunday school class there (even though I certainly never got perfect attendance, there or back home), and grew accustomed to the midnight train across the street whose lights brilliantly lit up the study with day bed where I slept at Grandma's.

And there are pieces of the experience that stick with me in all sorts of ways in memory. The Sunday dinner at 1 pm around Grandma's big table, and the meal on the way home at about 7:30 pm, always as the roadside diner was closing up so we got whatever entree was left from Sunday's earlier rush. Grandma would offer us sandwiches on the way out the door, but it was usually dark about halfway on the three and a half hour trip, so Dad didn't want to stop and eat at a picnic shelter and Mom didn't want to cook when we got back after 9 pm, so the truck stop it always was, an interesting coda to the more formal, on china, pot roast or fried chicken at Grandma's.

Now my wife and I make a trip every other weekend to help her 91 year old father. There is no question you can ask about "have you suggested to him that he…" which hasn't been discussed and firmly rejected. Let's just say he's in the home he's known for over forty years, and he's fine, just fine, but between hearing and eyesight there are things that aren't fine, and we handle the supplies and stocking with his attentive assistance. We aren't moving back to Indiana, and he's not coming to Ohio (nothing personal, Buckeyes!) so we visit, one or both of us, about as often as it takes a quart of milk to either run out or go bad.

It's a three and a half hour drive as well, but with interstate highways and satellite radio and such we don't stop, which in an era of COVID is a handy thing. I truly cannot imagine doing this with four kids in the car. When our Grandma trips began the youngest of us was out of diapers, blessedly, and then I left home in 1978 and only erratically made the trip on my own after that, more often when she grew ill and died in 1982 but during those years my mom and dad went even more often, of course, and then taking care of the house kept them driving down frequently a few more years.

Because of coronavirus, and our care of my father-in-law, we are keeping very much away from people in general, with all the Zooming and texting and emailing that's become so common in work and is working better than we ever realized in the old days of, what did they call that, in person meetings? Remember those?

And my little sister is now a grown professional who has our Mom in her house, caring for her there, near but still another hour and a half from where my wife and I shuttle to look out for her Dad. There's no good squaring of this circle for Thanksgiving, and phones or video are going to have to carry the heavy lifting as we prop up what traditions we can this year.

What I am still quite thankful for is that we can care for our parents, as they cared for theirs. They will not live another ninety years, either or both of them, but they have plenty of vim and vigor and memories to share that are irreplaceable, even if we sometimes have to work to break out of a certain set of stock stories, oft repeated. So we protect them and will distance as needed and communicate as we're able now. Would we have gone to Grandma's less often if we'd had more than a tinny long distance connection back then? I doubt it.

But today, even if we can come together, we shouldn't. So we make the connections we can, and give thanks for what we have together, even apart.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's learned almost every parallel there is to I-70 across the Midwest. Tell him about your Thanksgiving at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-14-20

Faith Works 11-14-20

Jeff Gill

A year like any other (not kidding)

___

"Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream."

I trust these words from one of last week's lectionary readings, used in many Christian churches, are familiar to you whether you were in worship online or in person or even just slept in. It's the prophet Amos, speaking to the people on behalf of God. It follows a longer prophetic tirade about how we think we know what the Almighty wants, but display a definite lack of understanding in how we live our lives about what really constitutes divine blessing and approval.

There's a heartbreaking and beautiful video clip that went around this past week on social media, of an elderly ballerina (I will not say former ballerina, and look for the clip to see what I mean) with Alzheimer's who hears "Swan Lake" played, and is transformed. In part, someday soon in whole, but in a brief earthly moment of transcendence and connection, she is united with her younger self, through the music.

It reminded me of a documentary from 2014, "Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory" which was directed and produced by Michael Rossato-Bennett, and I commend it to the attention of anyone who is old, expects to become older, or knows at however much of a distance any elderly people. And personally, the numbers I associate with elderly-ness get older all the time, but dementia is not interested in your birthdate.

When I see a room of seniors, many of whom do not respond verbally or even with a lifted head or open eyes, start to resonate and sing along with "Amazing Grace" or the words of the Lord's Prayer, it moves me. Worship is not just music therapy, but it participates in the same connective tissues of humanity.

For my entire time in parish ministry, I've always done some form of worship and outreach into care facilities. And in Indiana, West Virginia, and here in Ohio, most of that work is exactly the same - the beds are the same, the halls are the same, and with modest design differences the lounges or dining rooms or chapels are the same. As are many of the sensory inputs of such places, whether well managed or less so.

The speakers sing out overhead, the occasional visitor or staff member ghosts around behind the gathered group, and frankly in most places the staff is likely to act as if you aren't there occasionally, always chastened when they realize they've done it. They'll shout to each other standing right in the middle of your congregation, or walk right into the group on an errand and not see you, the "younger" and upright outsider. And I get it: it's because that's what they have to do seven days a week to keep the care and services going in the middle of people many of whom aren't well oriented to what's going on around them. But even after a quick embarrassed apology, it's unsettling to realize how quickly you become one of the residents. And could, in fact. 

I'm now focused on a much smaller audience, a select number of seniors special to me and mine, but the issues still remain. How to love and serve and speak in the middle of deafness and confusion and uncertainty. How to not become stoic and indifferent and even callous to the needs of the person while serving the outward external momentary situations.

That's in part what justice is. To live justly, love kindness, and to walk humbly with the people God has put in your path. Micah, like Amos, knew directly from God what justice was as prophets, and they struggled in their time, in their words, to communicate it to us so we can join them on that journey.

Justice, and righteousness, are our calling. I lean on the Hebrew Scriptures as my Old Testament, and find those words to be very near me (as Moses says in Deuteronomy, and Paul in Romans) as I seek the Gospel call in my present moment. How shall I live justice, and pour forth righteousness from my life? It begins with serving those who are weaker, where there is need, when the world is not interested.

And you know what? That was true in 2019. It was needed in 1985, and in 785 BC. There's much to distract us, lots going on, but the prophetic call, the Gospel mandate, continues.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not as sure as he was a few months ago that this year is really all that unusual. Tell him what you think about 2020 as we wrap it up at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 11-12-20

Notes from my Knapsack 11-12-20

Jeff Gill

Small gatherings, large memories

___

In two weeks, we come to Thanksgiving, perhaps the one holiday of the year, whether for the religious or the secular, most tied to gathering.

In church circles, if you say let alone sing "we gather together…" you'll hear quickly back "…to ask the Lord's blessing!" For almost anyone, mention of Thanksgiving is less tied to Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock than it is to families and a dinner table of one sort or another., whether with a turkey or some other main course

Most all of my childhood Thanksgiving Day dinners were hosted by now departed family, their homes now in others' hands and even the table and chairs and china now dispersed after my father's passing and the breakup of my parents' household. Oddly enough, I don't recall a single Thanksgiving in the house where I grew up: we were always on the road, to grandmother's house over the river and through the woods, to the great-aunts' condominium, and more recently my parents in Texas for the winter meant my own family would head back to my wife's family, sometimes with a side trip to my sister's.

This year, unprecedentedly, we will be at home. 35 years of marriage, and we can only think of a couple of times we were in our own house for Thanksgiving Day. I've cooked turkeys in other people's ovens, or carried side-dishes down the highway in the trunk carefully wedged, and even made the restaurant pick-up maneuver a couple of times for other households. But starting to prepare in my own kitchen the night before, and giving no thought to how anything I make can be stowed for a long drive, but just carrying things across the dining room… I can barely imagine what to do!

Along with the losses of this year comes the COVID restrictions, looking to be on the increase as we head through November anyhow. So just us at our own home sounds prudent and necessary. This means I need to think through a rich assortment of traditions and recipes and service options, and craft a Thanksgiving for us. It actually feels less like a limitation than it does an opportunity. So many opportunities and obligations are of necessity whittled away, leaving us where we can sit down and reflect on what it means for us to be together.

We will, just three of us, gather together. Three can be together. Twelve or twenty are definitely a familiar sort of togetherness, but three is just fine. And I might make a turkey, or it could be a lasagna with turkey sausage in the meat sauce. I'm not quite sure yet.

We gather together, and we will indeed ask the Lord's blessing, who (as the hymn says) chastens and hastens us, so that God's will might be known to us, and we might pray that the wicked truly will cease oppressing and distressing. At the very least, we will say grace, and give praise to the One who brings us together in twos and threes as much as twenty-sevens and two hundreds, and remember that God "forgets not His own," as we remember those we've sat with at the Thanksgiving table in years past.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's definitely cooking up some cranberry sauce at home this year. Tell him your favorite family seasonal recipe at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-7-20

Faith Works 11-7-20

Jeff Gill

Believing in other people is faithful work

___

Faith is often criticized as being ungrounded, not proven, someone's purely imaginary beliefs without a source that can be independently confirmed. And sometimes, that's what faith is.

Or, he said with an eye to the Christmas season ahead, "Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to." Hat tip, Doris Walker (don't worry, it'll come to you).

Rationalists like to condemn faith as always being that sort of emotionally driven, secondhand sort of attitude, not a way of using your mind to truly understand life and circumstances.

Yet we people of faith like to come right back with the reminder that much of life has to be taken on faith. I've never been to Russia, or Africa, or Poughkeepsie, but I believe they all exist. There's a webwork, a larger context of facts and inferences and (this is the big one) trust that allows me to believe in upper New York State, even when I've never been farther up the Hudson than Wappingers Falls.

For a Christian, our faith is grounded in stories from scripture, history and tradition in the life of our church community, and many would say the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which is exactly the kind of subjective statement that frustrates hard core rationalists. You can't see or smell the Holy Spirit, so when someone says "my faith has been guided and affirmed by the working of the Spirit" they might retort with Scrooge (I do have Christmas on the brain, don't I?) to his ghostly visitor "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

Our senses and even our thoughts can be misled. And beyond the conflict between faith and rationality, you have different worldviews which can be in conflict. My beliefs about where the universe comes from, even before a Big Bang, and where it's going, even beyond the strong likelihood of entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics that I learned in high school, may not keep me from enjoying physics, even as another physicist might be a Buddhist and another down the lab bench an atheist. Worldviews can overlap and interact, even when they have some pretty strong differences beyond their respective margins.

Which is why I've been thinking for a while, and want to say now, that it is good for anyone's faith to learn about and even be challenged by someone else's worldview. This is one reason The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sends their young people out on missions, and why as a non-member I always enjoy conversations with their elders and sisters who are serving on one. They're not afraid to have their faith tested and they've gotten some basic training in how to challenge your assumptions, too.

But I'm not telling you to go hunt up a Mormon missionary (feel free if you want to!); rather, I just hope you can make a specific effort in the next few days and weeks to have a conversation with someone with a different worldview than yours. I'm betting they're not hard to find, and social media makes it even easier, despite COVID restrictions. Most people love to be asked about their worldview, and if you show you're willing to sincerely listen, they're almost certain to be willing to hear yours, as well.

Smarter people than me have pointed out that we live these days in a time of ever increasing "sorting." There's more I'd like to say about this, but in general, is that a worldview you'd take on faith from me? We view media that's in line with our assumptions and listen to others who reinforce what we already think, and even political lines are drawn to lump like with like.

Our nation, though, has a faith, a worldview built into our founding, and is inscribed on the Great Seal of the United States: "E pluribus unum." Or in English, "out of many, one." This country is designed around a faith that from our diversity, we can find unity. It can survive and thrive if we reach beyond our familiar understandings, and listen to those of the other, and think about how they have come to believe that, whatever that is.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; his worldview isn't that unusual, but sometimes it seems like it might be. Tell him about how you've learned from the worldview of someone else at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-31-20

Faith Works 10-31-20

Jeff Gill

And then we pray

___

By the time you read this, it would appear at least half of those of you who will vote this year in the general election will have done so. That certainly makes for a different lead-in to Election Day for any of us, as we think about what's going on and how we relate to it.

But early voting, mail-in, or in person on November 3, you vote, after which if you are a person of faith: and then you pray.

Let's take it as a given that you've put some time and intention into prayer over your vote, not because it's voting, but because any time you are taking up work that impacts others, you would naturally consider communion with God and spiritual intention before taking action . . . right? So we all would certainly want to pray, as we went into the action of voting for elected officials and various civic decisions on tax levies or policies writ large.

After having done so, though, the action itself should be a reminder even more broadly to pray. For our leaders now, and for leadership to come; for our fellow citizens and mutual laborers in these vineyards; for the life of our community and nation in our relationships, our economy, our mutual protection of one another. Voting can remind us to pray.

The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote about a trip he took to Quebec, where he was much distracted and concerned about various matters, unsettled and out of sorts. Then as his hosts drove him around, he noticed on the license plate in front of him, on the next car, a slogan: "Je me souviens" which is French for "I remember," the slogan of that Canadian province. Nhat Hanh knew that phrase had a particular meaning for the local residents, but for him, he decided that whenever he saw "Je me souviens" it would say to him "I remember," in his case "I remember to practice my spiritual disciplines."

How much more then so with voting? We intend to vote, and then we pray. We vote, and then we pray. Election day comes, and we pray. Election night passes, and the next day dawns, as we are likely to be talking about the outcome, still uncertain . . . and then we pray. Right?

Twenty years ago, I remember all too well, the Florida follies, hanging chads, court filings, and the December night pre-smartphones when Dan Abrams comes running down the steps of the Supreme Court to the cameras with the decision of "Bush v. Gore" and Al's concession speech which wasn't until December 13. I don't know that I prayed as much as I should have, could have back then. But my plans are different now.

Who knows what will be declared on which night or even which month, but at each step this year, I know what the question of voting and elections and outcomes will remind me of: it's time to pray. Prayers not just for the candidates and the process and the country, but for my fellow citizens, for how we are working through debates and disagreements and decisions, and asking for wisdom and insight and mindfulness and discernment. And then we pray.

It will continue, as a reminder to me at least to practice spiritual disciplines: on December 14 this year, when the Electoral College meets in the various state capitals (see Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution), December 23 when the tallies are delivered to Washington, in 2021 on January 6 when a joint session of Congress declares election results, and surely on January 20 with the inauguration of the next President of the United States. Each event, each turning point will remind me, and perhaps you: and then we pray.

There are many ways to plan and schedule spiritual disciplines, and weekly worship & prayer certainly is the top of the list for most of us. But to add in the needed reinforcement in between those dates, we can let the electioneering and outcomes stress us out this year, or we can let them be transformed like a simple license plate slogan, and become cues to stop, breath, and be at peace. Because they can be a reminder to worry, or they can be a reminder: and then we pray.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's already voted, like lots of y'all. Tell him how you remember to stay centered and spiritually grounded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 10-29-20

Notes from my Knapsack 10-29-20

Jeff Gill

Nothing is over until we say it's over

___

It is entirely possible that by the time you read this, the winning vote has been cast. 

Over 25% of the total anticipated ballots had been cast by two weeks before Election Day (which is still 6:30 am to 7:30 pm on Tuesday, November 3rd), so it's anyone's guess how many will have been cast before the polling places open. 40%? Half? Even more than half?

But even if you read this after November the whatever, we may not know. Various states limit how much of those early totals can be added up beforehand, and once we see the envelopes ripped open and scans processed and everything else sorted out, I still recall 2000 all too well, with "Bush v. Gore" lumbering through the courts into December, and Dan Abrams running down the steps of the Supreme Court (kids, reporters didn't read press releases off their phones in that far off year). The point being: we've been here before.

As Senator John Blutarski said (in college, years before his distinguished career in public service), "Nothing is over until we decide it is!" While I don't always agree with him, in this case I have to concede the point. There's no date, no event, no election even, that means life changes in the US or Ohio or Our Fayre Village. We move on when we, ourselves, decide it's time to move on. If we want to keep wrangling over an election for a while, we will; when the body politic gets tired of politics, even the loudest national pundits can't keep us going back to that brackish well.

In no way am I saying there's no difference between candidates or platforms, but I would say in the presidential election I can't really point to where there's been much of a substantive discussion (let's not say debate) over actual practical outcomes. Lots of stuff about character and tone and personal example, which is all important, but so very little touching on policy or pragmatic issues. 

What we do tend to see is a flurry of actual governmental action in the first (sigh) eighteen months of a new president in office. Yes, a year and a half of actual governance and crafting of useful initiatives with real outcomes, and then two years of dog paddling then a year of running for re-election. Honestly, I have this vague sense that even re-elected presidents don't do much of substance in their second term, so whether four or eight years, you only get their actual heart and soul in the arena for that first year and a half.

Sure, appointing judges and other executive branch matters have weight, but in general it's reacting to events and running for office, with very little practical leadership. Do I sound jaded? Then I sound jaded. Or perhaps its just that my expectations are low so I have room to be surprised. With low expectations you're never disappointed.

What I do want to persist with is caring. I want our elected officials to challenge us, and inspire us, and lead us. I look forward to caring less about the electoral battles, and more about insisting and empowering our elected leadership to lead, and not just run again as soon as this one's settled. The election will be over, and the engagement with leadership will begin, when we as citizens say it is time. Past time, even.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's already voted, so that's done. Tell him what you'd like to hear from our leaders at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-24-20

Faith Works 10-24-20

Jeff Gill

TEOTWAWKI isn't what you think
___

My, my, my.

So many people making apocalyptic pronouncements about current events. Talk about the end of the world if this or that happens. Well.

There's a phrase, more than an acronym, really, that goes TEOTWAWKI, or "the end of the world as we know it." The last part being key, I think: "as we know it."

And the truth is the world as we know it changes all the time.

With all due respect to REM, who made a song about it in 1987, or those who have more recent associations with TEOTWAWKI whether a natural disaster or personal turmoil, I think the deeper problem is that we don't face honestly the ends of the world that come at us all the time, so we are open to manipulation when someone tries to put a political campaign or social movement in front of us as "the end of the world."

Cancer is the end of the world as one knows it. Jeff Bridges, Rush Limbaugh have both recently shared their changed perspectives and situations due to the presence of cancer in their lives. 

Less mortal ailments can end the world as we've known it. I've written here about adjusting to the permanence of my spasmodic dysphonia as a new world I'm living in. A speech disability, or the loss of mobility even just in one joint or limb, and people have to make changes, many are needed to make accommodations, as the world of movement and opportunity change.

Even just the seasons changing, which happens four times in each year from summer to fall, autumn to winter, and so on . . . we get out different clothes, new household implements (ice scrapers, snow brushes for the car, shovels for the drive), and even the view from certain windows change. Days get shorter, and we have to move around more in the dark, as the world we knew during the summer changes.

Don't get me wrong, I know elections have consequences. The person in the Oval Office does have an impact on our lives, sometimes long after they've left office. It can be a pretty big change from one president to the next. I'll have seen a round dozen in my lifetime, some who looked different when in office than they do now to me in retrospect. Some left due to term limits, others to defeat, one resigned. Each change was trumpeted as a major shift, and I'm not sure any of their departures really meant half as much as I was told at the time.

Meanwhile, in due consideration of the end of the world as we know it, I'd suggest that it's coming, it's real, and in many cases we can do something about it. We can give blood if we're able, because without a pint available people die. That's the end of the world for them, isn't it? Or we can learn CPR: I've had three occasions to use those lessons in my life, and I know I'm very fortunate that two of the three lived. In reality, CPR success isn't 66%, and even in my situation, I've watched as the professionals took over, and told me later "he never had a chance." That felt like the end of the world.

Now that I'm not doing pastoral care seven days a week, I find myself thinking about pastoral care, and praying for those who are providing that kind of caring support. A parish minister most often is having to respond to three things: death, loss, and change. We preach about good news, and the Gospel, and new life, and hope eternal, but in the moment, we are helping people dealing in the here and now with death, loss, and change. 

Often, the challenge for people facing change is to realize it's not death, and the loss may be less than it seems just now. And loss can be hard, but it helps to put our earthly losses in the context of death. Death, though, that's the great mystery, the high barrier, the veil through which none return.

I preach, even in my more limited fashion now, the Good News of Someone who ducked back through that veil to let us all know it's going to be okay on the other side. Beyond the end is a new beginning, and ending the world as we know it now, that's actually a pretty good thing. Which helps to put any immediate TEOTWAWKIs into their proper place.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's happy to leave apocalypticism in the Book of Revelation where it belongs. Tell him about your endings and new beginnings at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-17-20

Faith Works 10-17-20

Jeff Gill

I am an unmasked sinner
___

Sunday mornings I am part of y'all who are experiencing worship online, whether streaming or recorded video or social media "Live" feeds. With my now regular contacts with elderly folk as a caregiver, I'm still not attending even carefully distanced and face-covered indoor worship services.

We've all gotten better at this, speaking still for clergy who had to master cameras and audio and low power FM transmission, even though I'm now two months out from that. I watched my peers and colleagues early on, and now more leisure to check out a variety of online services. I attend vespers at St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana and Spanish language praise & worship in California and a number of services more like I'm used to all across the country and a local service or three I regularly check in on.

I've been asked my opinion about in-person worship; when or where it's appropriate, and how I think gathered worship can be done safely.

Looking back, we know more than we did then; what we were concerned might be the case in March and April is not the same as what we're trying to protect against this fall. That's learning and progress and the beginning of wisdom in an earthly sense. And looking ahead, we have the necessity of losing much of our outdoor options that so many congregations have used well through the spring and summer.

In short, there's no simple answer for me or anyone else to offer to faith communities in general. If a sanctuary has easy, ideally grade-level access with modular seating and excellent ventilation (up to code HVAC), I suspect that reasonable use of social distancing between family groups and face coverings would allow gathered worship just fine, but I'd be leery of congregational singing. But we're still learning about how exhaled viruses get from one person to another, and I'm no expert. What I am trying to do is keep up with the latest and best tested expert guidance on safe assembly, and right now having older and at-risk people (or their caregivers) inhaling a great deal of the exhalations of potentially COVID infected persons for an hour or more seems to be the primary concern.

For my wife and I, we're not concerned about the virus, but we're trying not to put ourselves anywhere we'd not want our respective elderly parent to be. So if we'd not put a 91 year old in that pew for an hour, we won't go there ourselves, simply out of caution from our regular visits as caregivers. That's a different limiting factor than many have to consider. Most people who don't have risk factors can, I think, with reasonable precautions be in a group setting - but shame on anyone who tries to shame someone else into removing a mask. If that's what gives them a sense of security enough to be out of the house and anywhere near strangers and others, we should all support them in what's working for their needs.

What this period has taught me, though, or perhaps I should say reminded me of, is my own sinfulness. Truly. Of the brokenness within me that Christ died to save me from, to start me healing from in the here and now, and to redeem me from when all is said and done.

Because I was watching a football game last Sunday, and I caught myself doing it. Yes, the players are taking their own sort of risks, for my entertainment and to keep the economy of their league and city and their own paychecks humming, I'm sure. Yes, the stands were mostly empty, in some stadiums with cutouts in the seats, others like Cleveland with couples and family clusters all spaced a few seats apart in a scattered array of fans. And mostly when you saw the bleacher sections you saw people with face coverings.

But there was one game where a last minute win turned the TV cameras to the owners box, through the glass, into the precincts of privilege, and almost all the wealthy & well-connected were sitting there without masks. I thought dark, grim, judgmental, unforgiving thoughts about them, and enjoyed doing so.

Then I heard Jesus say "Jeff, look at what you are thinking, and how." And I realized I was unmasked. I was simply looking to who was in, and who is out, and taking pleasure in being in while getting to label those who are not. And said "thank you, Jesus."

Still wearing masks out in public, though.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's finally found some masks that fit him. Tell him about how you're worshiping through the season of Coronatide at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-10-20

Faith Works 10-10-20

Jeff Gill

 

When your stuff looks back at you

___

So you have too much stuff.

 

Trust me, that puts you in an overwhelming majority. And if you have someone else's stuff, on top of your stuff, that's part of the sandwich generation experience as well.

 

In fact, I've learned these last few weeks that there are many of us who are coming to grips with having to sort through a house of a parent or family member after their death or relocation into care, and finding out that within their stuff is the stuff of their parents' home, sometimes three and four generations of relatively unsifted, stacked up, piled together stuff.

 

And I keep using the word "stuff" because it's a good resting place in between junk and treasures. I'm avoiding a side-trip into antiques altogether, especially because so much of what people think amongst their belongings, their own or inherited, are of antique value or are truly collectible assemblages, are . . . not. I'll let someone else write a column about how to identify items of value; my work has brought me up against the reality that this is not a common problem most of us need to worry about.

 

So we have stuff, not to say junk, because it has value if only because of associations and history. I've got items in my home which were made by my father for his mother, or made by an aunt's suitor as a peace offering after her marriage to another. Neither are of an iota of value on the open market, but if you're related to those people, they are precious beyond price stickers.

 

Which is why my most sincere plea to all of you who have been reading (and praying) along with me on this journey of breaking down two homes (and starting to maneuver around the edges of a third) and thinking about our stuff, our own and inherited, comes down to three sincere suggestions:

 

First, get rid of as much junk as you can. That starts with admitting what's junk, and treating it as such. Out of a parental home, everything might have a personal connection, so you have to be wary here: your visceral reaction may not be reliable. But holding onto to stuff for recycling or handing over to the places that historically have taken household stuff is trickier than ever, because with COVID everyone's been doing at least a little closet cleaning, and they're swamped. Some have stopped taking items altogether. So I'm just gonna say it: when in doubt, dumpster it. Really.

 

Second: if it's going to someone, start the process. And be ready to learn from the process. It begins with just going ahead and giving it to them – if you have stuff you're holding onto because "it's going to Muffy when I die" then why are you keeping it? And if you're holding back because you suspect Muffy doesn't want it, let's face that now, shall we? If Muffy is in an apartment and wants it someday, when they have more room, and you can spare the space, fine, otherwise, let's sort this out now. At the very least, make a list, put labels on the undersides, have that family meeting this Thanksgiving: decide in the open who gets what.

 

My siblings and I have been blessed with no disputes over furniture and such, but as a minister I have witnessed far too many tragic scenes of anger and estrangement over sideboards and dining room tables. But I've also been delighted by tales at funerals of how grandmamma had everyone sit down and talk through years ago who gets which item. Last minute adjustments after the funeral are simpler and less tense when the major questions have been dealt with out loud, working together.

 

Third: those last stacks and piles. You need to do the spiritual discernment, the prayerful process of asking yourself what they mean. Most of what we hold onto in terms of stuff has to do with what we're holding onto emotionally, unresolved, in tension. Clothes we won't wear again are indexes of body image anxieties or lost youth; hobby items unused, unopened, ask us questions about our choices and priorities in the past; childhood amusements can be pure sentiment and love, but they also often suggest conflicts and wounds still unhealed, the stuff of youthful sorrows still unmourned, awaiting redemption.

 

And there is redemption. I've given quite a bit to God as I stood at the lip of dumpsters, heaving and tossing. Yes, I've pulled a few items back. We're all a work in progress with our stuff.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's almost done with this phase of stuffism. Tell him how you've navigated the swamps of stuff at knapsack77@gmail.com, or on Twitter @Knapsack.