Faith Works Advent story 2020

Faith Works 12-5-20

Jeff Gill

A trip around the block (first part of a story in four parts)

___

His grandkids had shown him how to maneuver through the buttons on the remote to find the holiday fireplace video.

The music was more the sort he liked for the season; the radio was a mystery to him these days, and the Christmas channel he did find on his cable system with songs had all "updated" tunes by performers he didn't even know.

If they kept it a picture of the fireplace, he'd be happy, but it was all jazzed up with puppies and kittens. Not too often, though. The music was bright and familiar and pretty much all instrumental, which was fine since he couldn't make out most of the lyrics when people sang on TV anyhow.

He wasn't as lonely as he was frustrated. People from the church, from the Meals on Wheels crew, or his own family would ask him, with the expectation that they knew the answer, if he was feeling lonely. He wasn't, really. He hadn't felt lonely on watch in the Pacific as his LST had shouldered the waves, or as the "Large Slow Target" had absorbed incoming fire off of Kwajalein Atoll and Iwo Jima. Working night shifts after he came home, taking night classes to use his GI Bill to move up into a better job, starting out as a traveling sales rep after college and during his newlywed days . . . he got used to being on his own.

Perhaps as a husband and father he was too accustomed to being self-contained, private and reserved, but he'd now been widowed almost as long as he'd been married. Driving past crowded restaurants and busy shopping centers, he'd never felt like he was missing out, and the bar scene had never attracted him. 

Now the parking lots were emptier, and people wore masks in the stores, and no one came to his door. None of that bothered him much, and he had stopped answering his phone years ago when he realized most of it was asking for his money or his vote or a combination of both. He just couldn't imagine not being in the phone book, so he hadn't cut off his land line. It felt vaguely disreputable, even though he had to admit he hadn't taken the phone book out for years himself, and his grandkids certainly didn't.

His oldest granddaughter texted him every morning, and each night (well, about 9 pm, night for him), and he knew why. Sometimes he thought about texting back "nope, not dead yet" but he knew it would just make the kids worry about his state of mind. His state of mind, though, was just fine. He was glad Christmas was on the way again, and he hoped to see a few more of them, especially after all the folderol of this December with restrictions and cautions and people giving each other a wide berth.

While they checked on him often, and brought groceries and goodies fairly often, he still drove, and it was about time to go out. It wasn't good for the car to just sit for too long, the engine and the tires and the springs or shocks or whatever they had now. Just a lap around town, and a few turns to prove to himself if not anyone else that he was still fit to take the road.

The old house was well painted, recently re-roofed, and squared away as only an old Navy man would have it. When the shingles were put on a few summers back, he thought "I'm paying for someone else's roof, mostly" when they told him they were good for thirty years. Reaching 125 wasn't his plan, but taking care of what was his own was, so up the roofers went. He crossed from the back stoop to the side door of the garage, just right for the 1953 Buick Special they first bought when they were married, and barely enough room for the Chevy SUV he bought eight years ago thinking it would be his last vehicle purchase, but he was starting to wonder.

As the garage door went up, he thought about when his son had surprised him by installing an electric opener, which he did every time the door went up or down. It was all he had left of him, really, along with the grandkids, but all that was here at the house. He was glad of the reminder.

Looking back over his shoulder, he started to back out of the garage and down the drive to the street.

(to be continued)

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he usually writes some odd bit of fiction for the Christmas season. Tell him what you think should happen next at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

+    +    +

Faith Works 12-12-20

Jeff Gill

A trip around the block (part two of a story in four parts)

___

She was lit up strangely by the red glow of his brake lights, her hands waving to either side in his rear-view mirror.

She has more confidence in his alertness and reflexes than I do, he thought to himself. Having stopped, he put the SUV in park and rolled his window down a crack as she walked around the rear of the vehicle to the driver's side. She was wearing a mask, while he had one, but it was still on the passenger seat.

"I am so sorry to stop you like that, but I didn't know what else to do," she panted breathlessly.

"Not a problem," he replied. "What's the situation?" 

He recognized her as Tammy, the young woman who had moved in next door just after last Christmas. What with winter weather, they hadn't seen much of each other, and she was moving in piece by piece all through January. By the time he thought he should try to be neighborly and knock, March 15 had rolled around, and everything about being neighborly had changed, so he just hadn't. Some shouted conversations between the mailboxes when they went out at the same time, and that he didn't much hear clearly, but she was a single mother with two kids, but some family in the area.

"Well, my sister and I decided to have our mother live here with me for a while, during the holidays. She's not been doing so well out in the country where we grew up, and we got her here a couple of weeks ago, and I just took her to the doctor's." She stopped to catch her breath, and while it was hard to tell through the mask, it looked like she might have been crying, at least not long ago.

"Okay," he said, meaning to sound encouraging and hoping he did.

"So, she has this pace-keeper thing . . ." 

"Pacemaker," he added softly.

"Oh, you know about them?" she asked. He thought about saying "everyone has one by now, don't they?" but kept to just nodding his head. She went on "so her pacemaker means she has to take medications but they just called and said she needed to be on a different dosage, and were phoning in the prescription, and I should change it as soon as I can, but my car is at the mechanic's because I had a blowout and I ruined the rim and he…" Now she clearly was crying.

"Walk around and get in. I haven't been around anyone at all for weeks, but I have a mask. Don't want you to freeze." After he said this, she walked around to the passenger side as he slipped the mask over his ears.

Once settled, she half-turned and went on. "Anyhow, I can't get my car back until day after tomorrow, I have a ride to work tomorrow but that's all, and if you could just take me to the pharmacy I would so appreciate it. I'd rake your leaves or whatever I do to thank you."

"Leaves are raked," he said mildly. "But it's no matter, because I was just going out anyhow. Do you have your wallet?"

"My what?"

"Your purse, or your cards or phone and such?"

"Oh, my, yes, right here. Mom's watching the kids, let me run in and tell her where I'm going."

She darted back out of the SUV and across the lawn between their houses. He thought to himself, "well, you wanted to go out, and now you have a reason."

There's always a reason if you look around for one, for almost anything you really need to do, he reflected, as he turned the heater up another notch. His wife had always been cold in the car, and he assumed that was probably true for most women. He could always turn it back down if need be.

(to be continued)

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he usually writes some odd bit of fiction for the Christmas season. Tell him what you think should happen next at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Advent devotionals CCINOH 2020

+    +    +

Micah 3:1-2, 5; 4:1-2; 5:2; 6:8

Micah is an under-appreciated prophet of Advent.

Isaiah and Amos would have known of Micah's message as contemporaries, and Jeremiah speaks approvingly of him from the generation just after him. One thing we get from Micah's preaching is that there were obviously other prophets speaking in his era, and that they were speaking a word more congenial to what the kings and princes wanted to hear, whose "prophetic" word was comforting to those in power, even in support of those who oppressed the people.

And I said:

Listen, you heads of Jacob

    and rulers of the house of Israel!

Should you not know justice?—

    you who hate the good and love the evil…

A prophet who loves evil is hard to imagine . . . or maybe not. But Micah warned God's people against such speaking. And had harsh words for those who said such preaching was what the Lord Most High had to say to those in lowly estate.

Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets

    who lead my people astray,

who cry "Peace"

    when they have something to eat,

but declare war against those

    who put nothing into their mouths.

Yet Micah did offer hope, even if that hope was not in those who had authority and power during that particular period.

In days to come

    the mountain of the Lord's house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

    and shall be raised up above the hills.

Peoples shall stream to it,

    and many nations shall come and say:

"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

    to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

    and that we may walk in his paths."

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

Micah's word on behalf of God's Word was that yes, the land of Judah could be a place where divine favor was found, where heavenly purposes would be fulfilled. But it might not be out of the center, the capital, the palaces of Jerusalem from which such leadership would come:

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,

    who are one of the little clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

    one who is to rule in Israel,

whose origin is from of old,

    from ancient days.

And to live prophetically? Micah may have summed up in one verse better than any other prophet God's intention for us: 

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

    and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

    and to walk humbly with your God?

In that three-fold command is a map for Advent, now and always, walking towards hope which endures. "To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God."

+    +    +

Revelation 21:3-4

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them; 

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away."

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 Christmas has been before in our lives.  We also all know and anticipate how this year's observance will be different. 

"Empty chairs around the table" has usually been just 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.

The illnesses that are active right now — and there are always people dealing with sickness in this season who find the juxtaposition challenging, even before the virus came into our lives, cancer patients and people recovering from surgery needing special seating and the overall impact of age and infirmity — bring a weight of circumstance into the situation which can threaten to drag the whole celebration right down to the ground. I pray that we don't let that happen. Again, 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 Advent.

Planning and preparation for Christmas has always been part of the Advent season, however we mark this penitential period. But this year, we all will be feeling the prayerful and preparations part of Advent in a more Lenten fashion than we normally do. We are all giving something up for Advent in 2020, which is in fact not all bad. Just as sacrifice and discipline is a standard part of Lent, it's supposed to be in part why we have an Advent season, so Christmas like Easter is a joyful feast we prepare our hearts and minds to observe in all the depth and breadth and expansiveness that those joyful culminations deserve.

May our Advent, with what we will lose and leave and set aside, be part of tuning our affections and focusing our love towards the gifts of God meant for our lasting blessing. Not towards the gifts or meals or events, but into relationships and memories that endure, and how our freshly understood valuations in this life turn us towards eternal values that can change what we do next, how we advocate and prioritize and work for the values of Jesus in the community and world around us.

Prayer: God of grace and God of glory, in our humble moments and sorrowful passages, help us to be more understanding of those in pain around us, to appreciate the losses others have known, and to see this world's tears and mourning with compassion and appreciation. May we learn from our losses, and be empowered in our Christmas understandings to build up and support those who live in loss every day, to care for the abandoned and lost, and to share Good News out of heaven that changes the news people hear in their neighborhood to hope and help. Amen.

+    +    +

Psalm 90: 1, 4, 10

Lord, you have been our dwelling place
    in all generations.

For a thousand years in your sight
    are like yesterday when it is past,
    or like a watch in the night.

The days of our life are seventy years,

    or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;

even then their span is only toil and trouble;

    they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Advent's usual translation from the Latin of "To come" can also be interpreted as "to wait." We all know what it means to be waiting for a departure. In an airport terminal or just marking time in a living room before the time comes to take off, to drive away, there's a certain sort of waiting involved, sometimes wishing time would go more slowly, other circumstances wishing it would speed up.

Most of us have also known those long and complicated farewells in the doorway, on the porch, and even onto the driveway that go on and on, right down to the waving in the rear-view mirror. "Well, good bye! Okay, so it's time we're going, good bye . . . oh, and . . ." Good byes can take a while.

There are also those times of waiting for a good bye which go far beyond words. So many of us have known them, and none of us are "good at" such times of waiting. In a hospital or nursing home or even a curtained bay of an emergency department: waiting for a life to end. The doctor and chaplain and staff have all said their piece, but the figure on the bed is hanging on, and the digital readouts tell their own declining story of already but not yet.

So we wait. Waiting for . . . no. Not that, really. Or do we? We wait for an end to the waiting, which necessarily means an end we do not welcome, but the waiting itself starts to build into an intolerable pressure for expecting something to come, a passage, a moment, and yes, an ending that tells us what to do next.

That sort of waiting is beyond words, because nothing more can be said, yet there's always conversations to be had, even as we are waiting. On a hospice floor, around a hospital bed in the living room of a home. Waiting, for something that is "to come," an Advent of an end that, in our prayers and hopes, an end that in faith and trust we believe is something more than an ending, so we wish it away even as we wait for it "to come," in that other, darker, but also deeper meaning of Advent.

Advent means there is pain and change and transformation coming. We want that passage, we seek the closeness to God and holy living that we trust is waiting on the other side of what we're waiting for, but there's a hesitation, even an anxiety wrapped up in it, too.

Waiting for something we know will come, must come, and is the inevitable, necessary next phase, a good bye and a departure, and yes, even a death — that's a kind of Advent, a waiting for what is to come, that is intertwined with what our Advent for Christmas is meant to be. The birth of Jesus into this world, the coming of the Christ into our lives, means a dying to self, a change in priorities, a leaving behind of certain elements of what's been normal until now. 

Coming to Jesus can be wrenching and transformational and yes, even a death in this life, to rise with Christ into newness of life, a passage into life eternal. Not just at the end of our earthly lives, but for a reality of God's Realm in our here and now — which can mean a sort of dying to much that's here and now, too.

And so we wait. In hope, in faith, but with our hearts in our throats, as we wait.

Prayer: Lord of us all, you give each of us certain opportunities, a specific span of days, and the chance to be part of your work here on earth as we all prepare for what you have in your mind for eternity. May we reflect your eternal values in our work and our waiting, as we wait with others in their trials, and work for the good of one another in all that we do, bringing joy to all who hear your Name. Amen.

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

___

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.