Faith Works 12-19, 12-26, & 1-02-2021

Faith Works 12-19-20

Jeff Gill

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

___

He knew his grandkids would be unhappy with him for doing this.

His neighbor, whom he hardly knew since she and her kids had moved in after the first of the year, and COVID had made a mess of neighborliness by the time it got warmer, was sitting in his truck.

She had her mask on, and he his, but she'd come over as he'd been backing out, asking for a ride to the drug store to get a prescription for her mother, who was living with her now along with the two small children. Tammy was her name, and she'd explained her car was at the shop, but a medication change for her mom's pacemaker prescription put her in a bind, and hey, he was wanting to get out anyhow, just to drive around the courthouse to see the lights.

So he put his mask on, let her in the truck after she ran back to her house to explain where she was going, and now they were almost there.

"I really, really appreciate this," Tammy said, staring through the windshield. It was hard to read her face what with the mask, but he could tell she sounded a mix of embarrassed and anxious.

"Honestly, I wanted to go somewhere, and you caught me just heading around the block and maybe downtown. Happy to do it." His reply was sincere, and she could tell it, and relaxed accordingly. 

"I'll just be a moment," she said as he pulled into a parking place at the pharmacy door. 

"Hey, if you need to pick up some other stuff, since we're out, feel free. I'm in no hurry."

"Thank you, so much. Is there anything I can get for you?"

"Nope," he smiled over his mask. "I'll just be out here enjoying my escape from the house."

"Okay, just a minute," and she clambered quickly out, closing the door and darting inside.

It was more than a minute, but not too long. She came out with a medication bag and a plastic bag with a few items weighing it down. "I got some candy for the kids, for their stockings Christmas Eve. You like chocolate?"

"Nah, I'm on a diet." He pulled back, looking over his shoulder, swinging around and then back into traffic. "Hope this helps your mom."

"It should." Without any other warning, Tammy started crying. "Oh, I am sorry to be a pain."

"Not at all."

"It's just, she says if I wasn't working from home, we'd probably have her in a nursing home, and she's right, but she gets so discouraged."

"She can't fend for herself, is that the problem?"

"That's right. And things are so… different. She just says about every day what's the point, she's just a burden."

They stopped at a light, then as he made the turn, he said "This is hard, what you kids have to deal with. When I was your age, it was different, but we had a clear enemy to fight, and a goal to reach, and just the newspaper and radio to sort out about it."

"You were in World War II?"

"I was. Just the last couple years of it. It was no walk in the park, but I was one of the lucky ones. Came back, got married, got a good job, bought this house, raised my kids, now my grandkids raise me, but…" He paused to make the last turn, then into her driveway, putting the truck into park.

"So now I can't do everything I could, but I'm blessed to be able to do more than some."

"Wow. You're like twenty years older than Mom, then."

"Aging is tricky. Anyhow, I'm just saying my generation gets a lot of praise, and we did our part, but now you're doing yours. I'm glad to help you out, even just a little. We got through ours, and you'll get through this."

"Thank you," she replied, "but I still worry." The bag from the drug store crinkled as she squeezed it between both hands. "I guess I shouldn't."

"Oh, you'll always worry. You have kids, don't you?" She laughed, with a hesitation, then more emphatically. "So you worry, but you hope. You have hope, right?"

She stopped laughing. "I don't know. I may not. Not much. Some."

"Look, that's what Christmas should help us with," he said to the windshield as much as to her. "We remember what got it started, a baby and a birth and a little town, and who we've celebrated it with, and how they're with us in the traditions and decorations and stories and songs. That's where my hope sits, up on the shelf with my grandma's manger scene. Hope that keeps an eye on me, showing me the way ahead." 

(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.

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Faith Works 12-26-20

Jeff Gill

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

___

His young neighbor got out of the truck. He had given her a ride to the drugstore, both of them wearing masks, not well acquainted having barely met this past year since she moved in.

It was January when she and her two kids had moved in, March the COVID business had made everyone careful. He was glad at his age he could still live on his own, drive, pick up his groceries in the "drive-up" stuff his adult granddaughter set up for him, and he was getting bored enough at home he was checking out channels on the cable the kids got hooked up him beyond the usual network fare he usually stuck to.

The truth was he'd just planned to go out for a drive around the courthouse to see the lights, since the roundabouts bothered him less than they did his son (to hear him talk about it when he visited), when Tammy from next door had showed up, nervous and anxious, needing help picking up a prescription for her mother who had been moved into her house somewhere in the last few months, he wasn't sure when.

They got back, the sun down and all the lights on, the chill in the air more distinct. They talked a bit in the cab of his pickup about Christmas and hope, then she thanked him for the fifteenth time, and got out. He was going to pull back, and then into his drive and the garage, but years of habit meant he sat and waited as she walked up to the door to go in, and . . . 

Which is when she slipped on some unseen patch of ice, and went down in a heap. Faster than he thought he still was able, he put the truck in park, turned off the engine, and swung out to walk carefully over to where she was slowly getting up from the stoop.

"Oh, that drip from the gutter put a slick spot on these steps, please be careful." She said it out of breath, getting up with a hand on the railing, her bags strewn around. He smiled at her warning.

"I will. You be careful getting up, young lady, and I'll grab your bags here." She opened the door, and he stepped gingerly across the shiny tread onto the shallow stoop, and into the front room.

The girl's mother was across the room, farthest from the door, with an oxygen tank next to her recliner, and a table with various tubes and bottles and remotes on the other side. She wore a nose tube thing, whatchacallit for oxygen, her eyes bright and wary as this new face entered the house. He reflexively reached up and tugged his mask up under his glasses, but they fogged up anyhow. Tammy took the bags.

"Mom, this is our neighbor I was telling you about, who gave me a ride to get your new pills."

"Ma'am, pleased to meet you, sorry I can't stay and be sociable." He stood uneasily at the door as Tammy disappeared into what he knew was the kitchen, from sixty years of living next door. "I need to stand here a bit, though, and get my glasses cleared before…"

"Before you go out and fall down and we call the squad for you?" she chuckled.

"Exactly."

A pause hung in the air, behind the frosted lens of his glasses. "Sorry I hadn't been able to come over and introduce myself."

"That's the kind of year it's been, don't apologize."

"Still feels odd, though. Anyhow, hope you have a happy Christmas: you've got a good daughter there looking out for you."

"Oh, they're all good to me. Falling apart, but they tend the pieces just fine. You get to see anyone for Christmas?"

"I've got adult grandkids who live locally; we're careful, but I'm keeping to myself mostly. They've shown me how to use my tablet to see 'em, but I generally like to talk and great-grandkids don't talk much. It's a mix."

"Great-grandkids, eh? Don't know that I'm likely to see them in my shape."

"Hmmm," he said, not having much to answer to that. "They'll hear about you, though. I guess we just try to leave a good impression behind."

"Thank you," she said.

"Sure. Um, I was going out anyhow."

"No, not for giving her a ride, though I appreciate that, too. I mean for not sugar-coating it. You're right, my great-grandkids will hear about me, won't they?"

He smiled over his mask. "One way or another." His glasses had cleared to where he could see her nodding vigorously.

"You've reminded me of what I can do, not told me what I might someday do. I can give them some good memories of Grandma." He nodded back.

Reaching for the door, he said "I'll be going, but hope to see you again."

"One way or another," she answered.

"Amen, and Merry Christmas," was his farewell out the door.

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.

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Faith Works 1-2-21

Jeff Gill

An Advent postscript in Christmastide

___

Christmas morning he'd gone out his front door to get his paper, and found a bag with ribbon around the top on the front porch.

There were some candy canes, in colors he didn't think were really candy canes, but might be worth trying, and a couple of foil wrapped Santa Clauses in chocolate.

There were also two packets of hot chocolate, which he wasn't sure needed milk or water, but he might just mix up with his coffee, half a packet at a time. His wife had always made fun of his habit of tending to use half of whatever was in an envelope of soup or spices or cocoa, but it went back to the Navy in the Pacific, and that's just who he was. Even if she usually threw out the clipped half packets as they piled up, but now they tended to stack up until his daughter came over and cleaned up the kitchen.

He liked to think he didn't give her too much to do when she did, but of course that had not happened this year except that trip over in July. There was still one adult grandchild in town (well, the next town over), but she kept out of his business unless asked. He tried not to ask too much. Mostly the cable and the tablet stuff; she's the one who showed him the Christmas log channel he'd come to like so much.

Her kids, the great-grandkids made him crafts and ornaments these last few years, but they hadn't done cards. At the bottom of the bag on the porch were two big sheets of paper, folded in half, done in a mix of marker and crayon with some faint pencil guidelines underneath in a more adult hand.

Setting the candy and packets of hot chocolate on the dinette table in the kitchen, he went back out to his chair, turned on the lamp, and held up the two cards.

They were brightly colored — one had a rainbow on it, in fact — and both said "Thank you" and "Merry Christmas" on them either in front or on the inside. That's where the pencil lines were most clearly at work below the heavy crosshatching of color.

One, with the rainbow, was definitely a tree, with a big yellow five pointed star at the top, and the rainbow arched from (or to) the star, going off the page in a way that told him someone had to scrub the table where the artwork was done.

The other card he was less sure of, but after some scrutiny, and grandparently intuition, he decided it was a manger with a baby. It could have been a sleigh, or it might have started as a sleigh which turned into a manger rather than wedge in some reindeer. There was something of both vessels in the reddish-brown oblong, and either a gift-bearing saint or a child with a halo atop it. Either way, he thought. Either way. A gift and a blessing, that's what Christmas is.

Inside, the guessing was even more challenging. Could be wise men and camels, or possibly a family view of mom, two kids, and grandma in her recliner. You could see it either way in the one card.

The other card, inside, was shockingly easy to recognize. It was his house, his truck, and him, cap and glasses and old jacket. "Must be the older one of the two" he thought, admiring the work clearly done from the window on the end, but capturing his home from the front even so. He got up and crossed the living room and dining room to the far window, looking towards their house. 

Sure enough, through the frosty coating, there was a child with two hands pressed flat against the glass, a nose print in the middle, then a frantic wave. He waved back, and then the shadowy figure vanished back into the house.

Heading back around to the kitchen, he set the two cards on the mantlepiece on either side of the manger, open and propped in place with camels and sheep. Grabbing the bag with the ribbon he'd opened, there was another note at the bottom, no crayon or colors, just handwriting.

"Thank you for the reminder. Spent last night making some good memories with my grandkids. See you one way or another, after the vaccine or in God's good time."

We shall see, he thought. We shall wait, and see.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he is as curious as anyone about what the new year might bring. Tell him what you think is ahead for us all at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Commencement Day as it were: Dec. 12, 2020

 

Notes from my Knapsack 12-10-20

Notes from my Knapsack 12-10-20

Jeff Gill

Tales of mystery and imagination

___

You almost certainly will end up somewhere or another hearing Andy Williams sing for you these words: "There'll be scary ghost stories, and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago…"

That line is from "It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" by Edward Pola & George Wyle, a duo with no other hits worth mentioning. Their lasting contribution to Christmas music (and song writing in general), it occasionally raises eyebrows with that line about "scary ghost stories."

If you go back into Victorian times, before the feast and festivities of Christmas had become more what we're accustomed to today, ghost stories by the fireside were fitting, on these longest nights of the year in the weeks just before the winter solstice (Monday, Dec. 21 this year). Long dark cold nights, a group huddled close around the hearth, and a chill already on your spine as you face the warming flames: what better?

The hinge on which a more modern Christmas observance swings, 1843's "A Christmas Carol" is where Charles Dickens gives us not one but four ghosts (Marley, Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come), along with the turkey and pudding and punch, the ornamented tree and sharing of presents that this novella helped to mainstream as a "typical" Christmas celebration. With the parties and banquets and family dinners, the ghosts began to be shoved into the more dimly lit corners if not banished entirely.

In England, even nearby Canada, ghost stories are still seen as part of a usual string of Christmas traditions. Electrically lit, commercially powered, media ready American Christmastide really doesn't have much room for scary ghost stories, except that one fossil remnant as Andy's shade sings in his ugly sweater (I think he's the one who single-handedly made loud patterned sweaters a seasonal commonplace from his TV specials).

Yet most Christmas commemorations in individual households are haunted, in my experience. This year, our home is even more filled with bits and pieces of Christmases from other households, now broken up or being slowly dismantled. My childhood stocking, rediscovered and on our mantle, my wife's musical plastic cathedral glowing on the sideboard, and her parents' magnetic skating party, all new ghosts at the feast this Yule from packing and moving earlier in this strange year.

And for most of our marriage, my great-aunts' last ceramic attack on the multi-piece manger scene graces our mantle; my mother's World War II plastic creche set from the Ben Franklin, in a stable made by her father from the barn wood of his parents' last farm. Oh, and the tree: ornaments from first married Christmas, child's first Christmas, first Christmas in our own home, handmade ornaments from relatives whose names we stretch our memories to recall . . .  haunted? It's a spiral of ghosts, mostly happy ones, generally benign, all the way up to the tree top angel whose story goes back to a tragedy which turned out well and is too long to tell here. But the ghost of those days haunts me, and I want them to, which is why that angel is always there.

Sometimes it takes a ghost to remind us of the glory of Christmas, long ago and still possible this year.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been known to tell a ghost story or two. Let him know how you're haunted this Christmas season at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Newark Earthworks column - December 2020

Newark Earthworks column 2020

Jeff Gill

Seeing the moon again for the first time

___

Learning about the Newark Earthworks, and sharing their story with new audiences over the last thirty years, I've become aware of a few things.

One is, of course, how many people know little or nothing about what Native Americans accomplished on this continent two thousand years ago. People who are aware of all sorts of details about kings and queens and pharaohs, pyramids and Stonehenge and cathedrals, even though they've never been outside of this country, are at best dimly aware of "mounds." 

And I've been in conversations where people speak excitedly of a European trip where for a week they rented a room on a square "right across from a church that's a thousand years old!" If I add "did you know every time you drive down 30th Street in Newark you're in the middle of an earthwork complex that's twice that age" it's likely to be met with initial unbelief.

I enjoy teaching people, both local residents and international visitors, old and young, about this gem of prehistory and culture we have in our midst — but I also value what I've learned myself. One big part of that learning has been about the moon.

Sure, I knew there was a moon in the sky, and I'm old enough to have followed the Apollo program mission by mission with great excitement; I could still tell you where on the visible surface on a full moon night you could spot the Sea of Tranquility.

The Old Farmer's Almanac had helped me dimly be aware of the phases, waxing gibbous and waning crescent and so on, cycling from sliver to bright round rise at the full, opposite the sunset. What I wasn't really conscious of, though, until I came to become acquainted with the Newark Earthworks, was how the moon's arc can swing from high in the sky to low on the southern horizon: not within the course of a year, as the sun's path runs, but within weeks.

Even as I know the sun's time in the sky at our latitude gets shorter each day to the winter solstice, then from Dec. 25 longer each day as the path overhead gets consistently higher until the summer solstice in June, I had not noticed how the moon's rise and set cycles on a different pattern altogether, too complex to describe briefly here, but in the sky during the day at times, rising nearly an hour later each night, more or less, shifting north and south in its westward path overhead.

But now, after delving deep into what's known and what we still struggle to understand, about the geometry and astronomy of the Octagon portion of the Newark Earthworks, I find that somewhere in the back of my head I'm more aware of the moon than I once was. I step outside and look up anticipating the moon's presence and place in the sky, and there it is. The moon used to surprise me, but now it's more of a constant companion, anticipated and welcomed in its natural place in the sky.

Something like the hour and minute and second hand of an analog clock, the sun is the easy to notice second hand of the cosmos we live in, the seasons the minute hand, and the moon, perhaps, the hour. Once you understand a bit more deeply how the whole system works, the parts and their movements make more sense, and even start to find echoes inside your own awareness.

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.

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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

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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."

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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.

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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.