Faith Works 11-4-06
Jeff Gill
What Does That Turban Tell Me?
So last week we were reviewing the basic split in Islam.
To be a seeker after submission to the will of the One God, or "Allah" in Arabic, you have five basic responsibilities. If you follow Islam, or "submission" to Allah in your life, you observe the pillars of prayer five times a day, charity to the poor, pilgrimage to the Holy Mosque of Mecca at least once in your life, reading and affirmation of the prophet Mohammed’s writings in the "Qur’ran" (Arabic "Readings"), and fasting during the month of Ramadan.
All Moslems observe these five basic responsibilities, and through the Koran, each believer is responsible for "jihad," or struggle within oneself for "Islam," or submission and obedience to the will of God.
But the will of Allah according to whom?
This is where the division between Sunni Moslems and Shiite Moslems becomes very important, even when Shiite groups represent as little as 10% of the billion and more adherents of Islam.
"Sunna," or traditions from the Prophet Mohammed make an addendum to the Koranic text; likewise, the interpretations of Sunna can lead to a variety of perspectives, which is true within Sunni Islam. A Caliph, or secular leader accountable to the religious teachers, has not existed in Islam since the fall of the Ottoman Empire (modern Turkey), but the schools of various "sunna," or Islamic traditions are all over the Moslem world.
The "party of Ali," or in the Arabic contraction "Shi’ia," are those who look for authoritative interpretation from the descendants of Mohammed, who get to wear black turbans such as Moqtada el-Sadr, the leader of his father’s Sadr City in Baghdad.
So if you are trying to influence Shia Moslems, you need to focus on relationships and understanding with particular leaders who carry inherited influence. Among Sunnis, civil institutions on one hand and institutions of religious interpretation ("madhab") on the other hand, dealing with Islamic law or "shari’ah," would make a productive approach.
Given that Shia are a minority in the Islamic world as a whole, but a majority in Iran and parts of central Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, understanding how their approach to relating religion and life works isn’t of interest to everyone. You’d think it would be of surpassing interest to Congressional and Defense Department leaders.
But a Washington Post reporter a few weeks ago ran a simple test with key elected and appointed officials, Republican and Democrat. "Can you tell me a little about the differences between Sunni and Shia Islam? And which countries have which groups?"
Almost all of the officials he spoke to couldn’t even take a stab at the question. They hemmed, they hawwed, and they finally took a pass.
They didn’t know.
Which is why I appreciate the fundamental curiosity of the readers here and on-line. Our American problem, and it isn’t a party or a Beltway problem, but across the country, is incuriosity. In Ohio, that’s limiting; in Washington, it’s dangerous.
I shouldn’t have been as stunned as I was to read about elected leaders who deal with foreign policy in the Middle East having nary a clue about basic religious concepts. And I shouldn’t have been startled to read that President George Bush, often referred to by his critics as "essentially uncurious," is the first president to regularly host dinners in the White House to mark the end of Ramadan.
And he knows off the cuff the differences between Sunni and Shia. If that makes some of you proud, and motivates others to make sure they know at least as much as Mr. Bush, then let the Googling and Wikipedia-ing begin!
(Oh, and "The Monastery" has three more Sunday nights at 10 pm, on TLC. Check it out…)
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and he’s visited mosques from Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem to Al Tawwhid in Chicago; ask him your faith and religion questions through knapsack77@gmail.com.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Notes From My Knapsack 11-05-06
Jeff Gill
Brady Johnson and Gerald Patton were not men to want special treatment, or to be singled out.
Which is why I want to do just that for a moment.
Forget "Greatest Generation" if you will, because they never sought or claimed the honor, and it isn’t even just about "The Good War" because they would be the first to tell you there is no such animal. Brady at Normandy and Gerald on Guadalcanal saw exactly what war is, and it wasn’t good.
And it isn’t about World War II because, believe it or not, there are still a precious few World War I veterans around us, though Hooper McGirr was the last one I knew and spoke to, and that’s been a few years.
Recently, the oldest World War I vets from both sides of the Western Front trenches got together, combined age of the two: 219. Henry Allingham, 110 of Great Britain's Royal Navy, and Robert Meier, 109 of Witten, Germany met to dedicate a memorial in advance of the November 11 anniversary of Armistice Day, when on the eleventh day of the eleventh month the guns went silent at the eleventh hour.
It should be noted, if only in passing, that Allingham attributes his longevity to 'Cigarettes, whisky, and wild, wild women,' while Meier puts his down to 'sport, a healthy diet, especially plenty of fish ... and the odd glass of schnapps.’
We now call Nov. 11 not Armistice Day (except for a few of us odd ducks) but Veteran’s Day, and as such we have a chance to salute those who have served their nation in uniform. Whatever the conflict or era, however their service was worked out: aircraft maintenance, mortar operator, infantry, truck driver, chaplain, pilot, stoker, quartermaster’s mate.
We can’t thank Brady and Gerald personally anymore, because they died in recent weeks. But there are still millions of vets from 1939 to 1946 still with us, though moving slowly. And the decades since have added perhaps too many to their ranks, but whether draftee or volunteer, enlisted or officer, Coast Guard or Marine, elderly or just back from overseas, we have a thin red line that weaves through our hometowns and communities, a thread that ties training camps and battlefields and faraway and the monument in your town together.
In May we focus on those who have died for their country. With Veteran’s Day, let’s make sure to thank someone who lives among us, who took on the task of defending our freedoms with their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor." Look around, you’ll find one nearby.
And don’t wait until they’re gone to acknowledge the gratitude you feel. You’ll miss out on the gift you receive in seeing how much it means to them.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and he offers a "Semper Fi" to the Corps on Nov. 10, too; share a story with him through knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Brady Johnson and Gerald Patton were not men to want special treatment, or to be singled out.
Which is why I want to do just that for a moment.
Forget "Greatest Generation" if you will, because they never sought or claimed the honor, and it isn’t even just about "The Good War" because they would be the first to tell you there is no such animal. Brady at Normandy and Gerald on Guadalcanal saw exactly what war is, and it wasn’t good.
And it isn’t about World War II because, believe it or not, there are still a precious few World War I veterans around us, though Hooper McGirr was the last one I knew and spoke to, and that’s been a few years.
Recently, the oldest World War I vets from both sides of the Western Front trenches got together, combined age of the two: 219. Henry Allingham, 110 of Great Britain's Royal Navy, and Robert Meier, 109 of Witten, Germany met to dedicate a memorial in advance of the November 11 anniversary of Armistice Day, when on the eleventh day of the eleventh month the guns went silent at the eleventh hour.
It should be noted, if only in passing, that Allingham attributes his longevity to 'Cigarettes, whisky, and wild, wild women,' while Meier puts his down to 'sport, a healthy diet, especially plenty of fish ... and the odd glass of schnapps.’
We now call Nov. 11 not Armistice Day (except for a few of us odd ducks) but Veteran’s Day, and as such we have a chance to salute those who have served their nation in uniform. Whatever the conflict or era, however their service was worked out: aircraft maintenance, mortar operator, infantry, truck driver, chaplain, pilot, stoker, quartermaster’s mate.
We can’t thank Brady and Gerald personally anymore, because they died in recent weeks. But there are still millions of vets from 1939 to 1946 still with us, though moving slowly. And the decades since have added perhaps too many to their ranks, but whether draftee or volunteer, enlisted or officer, Coast Guard or Marine, elderly or just back from overseas, we have a thin red line that weaves through our hometowns and communities, a thread that ties training camps and battlefields and faraway and the monument in your town together.
In May we focus on those who have died for their country. With Veteran’s Day, let’s make sure to thank someone who lives among us, who took on the task of defending our freedoms with their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor." Look around, you’ll find one nearby.
And don’t wait until they’re gone to acknowledge the gratitude you feel. You’ll miss out on the gift you receive in seeing how much it means to them.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and he offers a "Semper Fi" to the Corps on Nov. 10, too; share a story with him through knapsack77@gmail.com.
Faith Works 10-28-06
Jeff Gill
A Promise Kept and a Memory Shared
Since I promised last week to briefly outline the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam, you’ll get that further on.
But first, a TV program snuck up on me that you still have four more weeks to watch, at 10:00 pm Sundays on TLC.
"The Monastery" sounds like another reality show, fish-out-of-water, cameras everywhere extravaganza. Which it is. Five guys go to a Benedictine monastery for 40 days to live under monastic guidelines, and talk to an in-room "confessional cam" from time to time about how they feel about the whole experience.
They’ve got a Marine who lost a leg in combat, a former Satanist, a fellow who did hard time in prison. The prison guy came from mean streets and saw his brother die in front of him, but observes in the first week that "in prison they didn’t make you get up at 3:40 in the *bleep* morning.
But what they’ve really got is the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, at the end of thirteen bone-jarring, kidney-punching dirt miles off the isolated blacktop highway, by the banks of the Chama River in northern New Mexico.
The Lovely Wife and I have been there twice, and the stole presented me at my ordination, which I still use, was hand woven by a monk named Phillip . . . who I now see is the Abbot. We were last there in 1989, and from the aerial shots the complex has grown considerably.
If you know of Saint Anthony or Abba Poemen and the other ancient Desert Fathers of the early Christian church, this is the landscape you always imagined them in. Thomas Merton (Fr. Louis) visited on his fateful way to Bangkok where he died, but he wrote an essay from a previous stay which is found in their print materials and on their, um, website.
Yes, monks have websites, and in fact well before most of us had heard of the internet, christdesert.org was up and running. Knowing that in their desolate stretch of the Chama Valley they couldn’t make and sell cheese or fruitcakes or any of the other creative ways monks find to support themselves, they developed one of the very first web design and support businesses with a donated server and a bunch of solar panels. Sun, they have plenty of if nothing else. So the modern world has no perils for these followers of the Rule of Saint Benedict, written 1500 years ago.
I may have more to say later, but give it a watch, wouldja? We’ll talk . . .
OK, as promised: "Sunna" means "traditions" in Arabic. Sunni Islam are those who hold to the traditions of Mohammed, the Koran of course, and the Hadith, or oral traditions, and the schools of interpretation that stem from them.
"Shia" is a contraction of the Arabic for "the party of Ali," a son-in-law who was to claim religious authority after the Prophet’s death. A smaller group within Islam as a whole, they are a majority in Iran, central Iraq, and parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. They number over 200 million, while a billion and more would be called Sunni from Morocco to Indonesia.
Among Shia, the Imams with black turbans (think Moqtada al-Sadr, the fiery wild card in Baghdad politics today) indicate they are descended from the Prophet Mohammed’s family.
Jeff Gill
A Promise Kept and a Memory Shared
Since I promised last week to briefly outline the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam, you’ll get that further on.
But first, a TV program snuck up on me that you still have four more weeks to watch, at 10:00 pm Sundays on TLC.
"The Monastery" sounds like another reality show, fish-out-of-water, cameras everywhere extravaganza. Which it is. Five guys go to a Benedictine monastery for 40 days to live under monastic guidelines, and talk to an in-room "confessional cam" from time to time about how they feel about the whole experience.
They’ve got a Marine who lost a leg in combat, a former Satanist, a fellow who did hard time in prison. The prison guy came from mean streets and saw his brother die in front of him, but observes in the first week that "in prison they didn’t make you get up at 3:40 in the *bleep* morning.
But what they’ve really got is the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, at the end of thirteen bone-jarring, kidney-punching dirt miles off the isolated blacktop highway, by the banks of the Chama River in northern New Mexico.
The Lovely Wife and I have been there twice, and the stole presented me at my ordination, which I still use, was hand woven by a monk named Phillip . . . who I now see is the Abbot. We were last there in 1989, and from the aerial shots the complex has grown considerably.
If you know of Saint Anthony or Abba Poemen and the other ancient Desert Fathers of the early Christian church, this is the landscape you always imagined them in. Thomas Merton (Fr. Louis) visited on his fateful way to Bangkok where he died, but he wrote an essay from a previous stay which is found in their print materials and on their, um, website.
Yes, monks have websites, and in fact well before most of us had heard of the internet, christdesert.org was up and running. Knowing that in their desolate stretch of the Chama Valley they couldn’t make and sell cheese or fruitcakes or any of the other creative ways monks find to support themselves, they developed one of the very first web design and support businesses with a donated server and a bunch of solar panels. Sun, they have plenty of if nothing else. So the modern world has no perils for these followers of the Rule of Saint Benedict, written 1500 years ago.
I may have more to say later, but give it a watch, wouldja? We’ll talk . . .
OK, as promised: "Sunna" means "traditions" in Arabic. Sunni Islam are those who hold to the traditions of Mohammed, the Koran of course, and the Hadith, or oral traditions, and the schools of interpretation that stem from them.
"Shia" is a contraction of the Arabic for "the party of Ali," a son-in-law who was to claim religious authority after the Prophet’s death. A smaller group within Islam as a whole, they are a majority in Iran, central Iraq, and parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. They number over 200 million, while a billion and more would be called Sunni from Morocco to Indonesia.
Among Shia, the Imams with black turbans (think Moqtada al-Sadr, the fiery wild card in Baghdad politics today) indicate they are descended from the Prophet Mohammed’s family.
Notes From My Knapsack 10-29-06
Jeff Gill
Teach Your Children Well
With a week and change to the election on Tuesday, Nov. 7, I promised last week after saying a good word about the open space levies to offer a thought on education.
Here goes.
I could live with every education levy and bond issue getting voted down if it meant the Ohio electorate rose up with one voice and said "NO" to Issue 3.
What I worry about is that the combination of the negativity around the voter-turnout depression campaign theme this year, and the need to clearly articulate the need to vote not just "no," but "Heck, NO" on special interest constitutional amendments, will combine to make people vote "no, no, no, no, and no" right down their ballot.
We need some voter forethought, preparation, and conversation, as we always do in a democratic republic. But this Issue 3 shell game (gaming monopolies that pretend they’ll help higher education) is so incredibly toxic and dishonest that I’m actually willing to run the risk of pushing more people to vote lots of indiscriminate "no’s" to ensure its failure.
(Side thought: if I were really paranoid, I might wonder if there are interests pushing Ohio constitutional amendments that are so awesomely bad because they don’t want them to win, just to get the few who still have the stomach to vote to vote "no" down the line and keep property taxes lower. If I were really parnoid.)
"A lot of good will come of this." First off, I need to point out that my sainted seventh and eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Froberg, loathed "a lot," "alot," and the lot of them. It wasn’t good English, and she sought to evoke a similar distaste in all her students. With me, she largely succeeded.
Those who have done their homework on this faux-educational issue know that for at least the next decade and more, only the top 5% of graduating classes get money, and only if they go to in-state public schools. Malone or Cedarville? Forget it. Purdue or Cornell? Not a dime. And did I mention only the top 5% of graduating students?
Having been caught at this, the Issue 3 gang now are saying "it will help everyone." You have to burrow deep in their website to see how: they claim that these dollars will free up other dollars, making more financial aid available for all.
Aside from the fact that their math makes no sense to me in terms of numbers or especially process, get this. Here’s the second most appalling part of the deal with Issue 3 – for their numbers to work, it isn’t just about their claims about Ohio dollars being gambled out of state and getting them "home," but that as I read it, they need two and THREE times as much gambling to take place to make their figures figure.
Is there anyone who thinks, for whatever social purpose, we need three times as many Ohioans gambling than we have right now? And if you do, are you delusional?
But I claimed that’s the second worst part. For once, George Voinovich and I are on the exact same page about something. The senator observes that the fact that we’re amending the constitution of the state to give nine places and five businesses a monopoly on the most addictive form of gambling is reason enough to be against it.
He said that standing next to noted conservative (insert irony here) Michael Coleman, mayor of Columbus, nearly Democratic candidate for governor, who was nodding his head in the affirmative, vigorously.
Folks, I think most of the school levies I know about in Licking County deserve passing, and I plan to vote for my own. But to pass Issue 3 will not only saddle the state of Ohio with a load of stupid we will regret for decades, but it will teach our children something truly sad and tragic that all our best teachers won’t be able to overcome.
And that’s the lesson that we’re casual and indifferent enough to the electoral process that we can be bought with enough misleading ads on TV.
Vote No on Issue 3, please. It’s really important. A lot. (Sorry, Mrs. Froberg.)
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; toss him your opinion, not ticking, to knapsack77@gmail.com
Jeff Gill
Teach Your Children Well
With a week and change to the election on Tuesday, Nov. 7, I promised last week after saying a good word about the open space levies to offer a thought on education.
Here goes.
I could live with every education levy and bond issue getting voted down if it meant the Ohio electorate rose up with one voice and said "NO" to Issue 3.
What I worry about is that the combination of the negativity around the voter-turnout depression campaign theme this year, and the need to clearly articulate the need to vote not just "no," but "Heck, NO" on special interest constitutional amendments, will combine to make people vote "no, no, no, no, and no" right down their ballot.
We need some voter forethought, preparation, and conversation, as we always do in a democratic republic. But this Issue 3 shell game (gaming monopolies that pretend they’ll help higher education) is so incredibly toxic and dishonest that I’m actually willing to run the risk of pushing more people to vote lots of indiscriminate "no’s" to ensure its failure.
(Side thought: if I were really paranoid, I might wonder if there are interests pushing Ohio constitutional amendments that are so awesomely bad because they don’t want them to win, just to get the few who still have the stomach to vote to vote "no" down the line and keep property taxes lower. If I were really parnoid.)
"A lot of good will come of this." First off, I need to point out that my sainted seventh and eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Froberg, loathed "a lot," "alot," and the lot of them. It wasn’t good English, and she sought to evoke a similar distaste in all her students. With me, she largely succeeded.
Those who have done their homework on this faux-educational issue know that for at least the next decade and more, only the top 5% of graduating classes get money, and only if they go to in-state public schools. Malone or Cedarville? Forget it. Purdue or Cornell? Not a dime. And did I mention only the top 5% of graduating students?
Having been caught at this, the Issue 3 gang now are saying "it will help everyone." You have to burrow deep in their website to see how: they claim that these dollars will free up other dollars, making more financial aid available for all.
Aside from the fact that their math makes no sense to me in terms of numbers or especially process, get this. Here’s the second most appalling part of the deal with Issue 3 – for their numbers to work, it isn’t just about their claims about Ohio dollars being gambled out of state and getting them "home," but that as I read it, they need two and THREE times as much gambling to take place to make their figures figure.
Is there anyone who thinks, for whatever social purpose, we need three times as many Ohioans gambling than we have right now? And if you do, are you delusional?
But I claimed that’s the second worst part. For once, George Voinovich and I are on the exact same page about something. The senator observes that the fact that we’re amending the constitution of the state to give nine places and five businesses a monopoly on the most addictive form of gambling is reason enough to be against it.
He said that standing next to noted conservative (insert irony here) Michael Coleman, mayor of Columbus, nearly Democratic candidate for governor, who was nodding his head in the affirmative, vigorously.
Folks, I think most of the school levies I know about in Licking County deserve passing, and I plan to vote for my own. But to pass Issue 3 will not only saddle the state of Ohio with a load of stupid we will regret for decades, but it will teach our children something truly sad and tragic that all our best teachers won’t be able to overcome.
And that’s the lesson that we’re casual and indifferent enough to the electoral process that we can be bought with enough misleading ads on TV.
Vote No on Issue 3, please. It’s really important. A lot. (Sorry, Mrs. Froberg.)
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; toss him your opinion, not ticking, to knapsack77@gmail.com
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Faith Works 10-21-06
Jeff Gill
Can You Explain the Differences…
Next Sunday, Oct. 29, at 3:00 pm in the Midland Theater on Newark’s Courthouse Square, there’s a free movie.
For some of us, that’s all we need to hear. No charge to enter one of Licking County’s most attractive public spaces, and a movie to boot: we’re there.
Others might want to know "what movie?" Fair enough. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is inviting everybody – i.e., not just Lutherans – to come watch the movie "Luther." This was a theatrical release not long ago, and stars Joseph Fiennes, the fellow who had the title role in "Shakespeare in Love," and cameos Alfred Molina, Spiderman’s nemesis Doctor Octopus, as Luther’s nemesis Tetzel.
Lots of period atmosphere, if you like the period 1517, some gorgeous location shooting, and a slice of history not too terribly off kilter.
But you may ask, "Jeff, I’m not Lutheran, and I’ve seen the Midland, and I’m not so cheap as to jump at just any old free movie. Why would I go and spend a couple hours in this story?"
A fair rejoinder, and there’s a direct response. What Martin Luther set loose in 1517 shaped the Western World right down to the present day, and not just in denominational divisions. The path toward the Enlightenment, modern nation states, and global discovery was set by how the Lutheran Reformation set the pace.
The Roman Catholic Church was spurred to Counter-reformation, the Council of Trent, and changes in the institution of the papacy that still marks the role Pope Benedict XVI holds today.
From the Bible in common tongues (German for Luther, English for us today) to congregational hymn singing (even if Martin didn’t write most of the ones we credit him with), Luther is a pivotal figure in world history, whether you are Protestant or Catholic, American or Asian, northern hemisphere or southern.
This is particularly on my mind after reading a recent piece by a Washington DC reporter who covers defense and intelligence issues. He interviews a number of key congressional and Pentagon players regularly, and recently he started dropping a final follow-up into his interviews.
"What’s the difference between Sunni and Shiite?"
Don’t panic. I’m not saying every American ought to know this, but I’m right with the reporter who felt that people making decisions on our national policy in Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan ought to have some sense of the split that runs through the Arab-Moslem world.
Like Protestant and Catholic are not the totality of Christendom, there are a few other sects and branches, and even Sunni and Shiite (like P’s and C’s) are not monolithic in and of themselves. But broadly speaking, you can probably summarize the difference between the Vatican and the independent church down the street. Shouldn’t our policy folk be able to do that in the Middle East? They know, don’t they, which one is predominant in Iran, or Saudi Arabia, and among al-Quaeda?
Yep, that’s right – they don’t. Hardly any of them even had a clue. Which tells me this: they are decent, hardworking people for the most part, who review masses of data everyday about the situation in the Moslem world. But they come out of a context, OURS, with an almost criminal lack of curiosity about how other people think, choose, and make decisions about their lives.
An Iraqi farmer is not a midwestern soybean farmer with a headdress in place of the Pioneer seed corn cap. They are human and feel and live and love just like any of us, but they do view the world through a different set of propositions. If you haven’t even tried to figure out what they are, I’m betting it’s because it hasn’t occurred to you that they’re different to start with.
So let’s start here and now. Come watch "Luther," reflect with us about how some major worldviews make us distinctive in America, and then get curious about other patches of this world we’re together on. Like Sunni and Shiite, whether interpretation of tradition and sacred writings can develop over time, or is held by a central body of religious leaders, will affect how you look at more than just your faith.
And if I’ve made you want to read more in this space about what sets Shiites and Sunnis apart, great, and see you next week!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; ask him about something that’s puzzled you for years in the faith dept. by e-mailing knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Can You Explain the Differences…
Next Sunday, Oct. 29, at 3:00 pm in the Midland Theater on Newark’s Courthouse Square, there’s a free movie.
For some of us, that’s all we need to hear. No charge to enter one of Licking County’s most attractive public spaces, and a movie to boot: we’re there.
Others might want to know "what movie?" Fair enough. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is inviting everybody – i.e., not just Lutherans – to come watch the movie "Luther." This was a theatrical release not long ago, and stars Joseph Fiennes, the fellow who had the title role in "Shakespeare in Love," and cameos Alfred Molina, Spiderman’s nemesis Doctor Octopus, as Luther’s nemesis Tetzel.
Lots of period atmosphere, if you like the period 1517, some gorgeous location shooting, and a slice of history not too terribly off kilter.
But you may ask, "Jeff, I’m not Lutheran, and I’ve seen the Midland, and I’m not so cheap as to jump at just any old free movie. Why would I go and spend a couple hours in this story?"
A fair rejoinder, and there’s a direct response. What Martin Luther set loose in 1517 shaped the Western World right down to the present day, and not just in denominational divisions. The path toward the Enlightenment, modern nation states, and global discovery was set by how the Lutheran Reformation set the pace.
The Roman Catholic Church was spurred to Counter-reformation, the Council of Trent, and changes in the institution of the papacy that still marks the role Pope Benedict XVI holds today.
From the Bible in common tongues (German for Luther, English for us today) to congregational hymn singing (even if Martin didn’t write most of the ones we credit him with), Luther is a pivotal figure in world history, whether you are Protestant or Catholic, American or Asian, northern hemisphere or southern.
This is particularly on my mind after reading a recent piece by a Washington DC reporter who covers defense and intelligence issues. He interviews a number of key congressional and Pentagon players regularly, and recently he started dropping a final follow-up into his interviews.
"What’s the difference between Sunni and Shiite?"
Don’t panic. I’m not saying every American ought to know this, but I’m right with the reporter who felt that people making decisions on our national policy in Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan ought to have some sense of the split that runs through the Arab-Moslem world.
Like Protestant and Catholic are not the totality of Christendom, there are a few other sects and branches, and even Sunni and Shiite (like P’s and C’s) are not monolithic in and of themselves. But broadly speaking, you can probably summarize the difference between the Vatican and the independent church down the street. Shouldn’t our policy folk be able to do that in the Middle East? They know, don’t they, which one is predominant in Iran, or Saudi Arabia, and among al-Quaeda?
Yep, that’s right – they don’t. Hardly any of them even had a clue. Which tells me this: they are decent, hardworking people for the most part, who review masses of data everyday about the situation in the Moslem world. But they come out of a context, OURS, with an almost criminal lack of curiosity about how other people think, choose, and make decisions about their lives.
An Iraqi farmer is not a midwestern soybean farmer with a headdress in place of the Pioneer seed corn cap. They are human and feel and live and love just like any of us, but they do view the world through a different set of propositions. If you haven’t even tried to figure out what they are, I’m betting it’s because it hasn’t occurred to you that they’re different to start with.
So let’s start here and now. Come watch "Luther," reflect with us about how some major worldviews make us distinctive in America, and then get curious about other patches of this world we’re together on. Like Sunni and Shiite, whether interpretation of tradition and sacred writings can develop over time, or is held by a central body of religious leaders, will affect how you look at more than just your faith.
And if I’ve made you want to read more in this space about what sets Shiites and Sunnis apart, great, and see you next week!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; ask him about something that’s puzzled you for years in the faith dept. by e-mailing knapsack77@gmail.com.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Notes From My Knapsack 10-22-06
Jeff Gill
Making Room Amid the Clutter
As the weather gets fouler, the Little Guy spends more time indoors, and his stuff spends more time on the living room floor.
This works well enough until we decide we want to, oh, walk across the room or find the carpet. Then the cry goes out from the sofa, "Time to tidy!" Books, papers, small toys, atlases, pencil boxes, household objects used for non-intended purposes, the stray ibex or emu: they all have to go into their proper folder, closet, or shelf space.
Over time, the cumulative weight of school handouts, church fliers, and Star Wars figurines threatens to crack the foundation, shift Earth’s gravitational field, or at least crowd we the humans out of the house. Which is not true, of course. Too much stuff, maybe, but a little of Tidy Time ™ and the house is cleared for strolling, or at least pacing.
In the same sense, there’s been a variety of odd reactions to the Tuesday observance-celebration-hysteria over the United States hitting 300,000,000. I learned in school 220,000,000, have been used to writing in stuff like, oh, columns, that our nation has 260,000,000 souls, but we’ll all mentally adjust to a nice handy round 300 million and use it for years, even if the National Population Clock says 314,268,752 when we type it next.
300,000,000 is a large and quite frankly unimaginable number; by the same token, India has 1 billion plus another set of 300 million and China continues to dwarf us both (note to self: learn Mandarin). Depending on where you drive, you may feel that you share the road with a major portion of that population explosion, or see the houses going up for most of them.
We do live in Licking County in one of Ohio’s few growth zones, and while growth is a double-edged sword, the fact of the matter is that many of Ohio’s problems have less to do with Emily Kreider’s non-payment of student loans (and shame on her, but still) or whether Mike DeWine occasionally sends out form letters to constituent inquiries, contrary to the current crop o’ ads, but to the fact that our state is shrinking. Population, youth, jobs, locally owned pharmacies – all shrinking.
Which is why I’ll be voting for our local open space purchase levy, and for the Licking County Parks. Before the accessible, non-agricultural, recreationally and environmentally inviting space is all snapped up, we need to give our public servants, of which we have many good ones in this county (along with a few, very few, dunderheads), the latitude and resources to purchase some well placed parcels.
Especially to my conservative friends I would say: This is not one of the areas we let the free market run unfettered. No private interest really wants to provide free, general public green space, but it is a public need and the common good. Plus, we vote for these and the use of eminent domain is pushed to the far margins of public policy where it belongs.
Licking County has a cost-effective park system with a priority on families and wise use of natural resources; they hope to be empowered to enter the market while some tracts in the western half of the county can still be selected to maintain natural areas, recreational use in helpful locations, and keep our area looking and feeling like a good place to live. Townships like Licking, Union, and Granville (to name ones I keep up with, but by no means all) have trustees and employees who are trying their best to balance a healthy environment and citizens’ interest.
There are no boondoggles for the powerful and well-placed here, and our community has quite a few people who use their wealth to advance this agenda as well. But gifts of land and cash here and there can’t replace a secure funding source.
As for school levies, let’s talk about that next week, but green space and open land purchases are a public service we can and should empower.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your favorite hike or stroll in Licking County at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Making Room Amid the Clutter
As the weather gets fouler, the Little Guy spends more time indoors, and his stuff spends more time on the living room floor.
This works well enough until we decide we want to, oh, walk across the room or find the carpet. Then the cry goes out from the sofa, "Time to tidy!" Books, papers, small toys, atlases, pencil boxes, household objects used for non-intended purposes, the stray ibex or emu: they all have to go into their proper folder, closet, or shelf space.
Over time, the cumulative weight of school handouts, church fliers, and Star Wars figurines threatens to crack the foundation, shift Earth’s gravitational field, or at least crowd we the humans out of the house. Which is not true, of course. Too much stuff, maybe, but a little of Tidy Time ™ and the house is cleared for strolling, or at least pacing.
In the same sense, there’s been a variety of odd reactions to the Tuesday observance-celebration-hysteria over the United States hitting 300,000,000. I learned in school 220,000,000, have been used to writing in stuff like, oh, columns, that our nation has 260,000,000 souls, but we’ll all mentally adjust to a nice handy round 300 million and use it for years, even if the National Population Clock says 314,268,752 when we type it next.
300,000,000 is a large and quite frankly unimaginable number; by the same token, India has 1 billion plus another set of 300 million and China continues to dwarf us both (note to self: learn Mandarin). Depending on where you drive, you may feel that you share the road with a major portion of that population explosion, or see the houses going up for most of them.
We do live in Licking County in one of Ohio’s few growth zones, and while growth is a double-edged sword, the fact of the matter is that many of Ohio’s problems have less to do with Emily Kreider’s non-payment of student loans (and shame on her, but still) or whether Mike DeWine occasionally sends out form letters to constituent inquiries, contrary to the current crop o’ ads, but to the fact that our state is shrinking. Population, youth, jobs, locally owned pharmacies – all shrinking.
Which is why I’ll be voting for our local open space purchase levy, and for the Licking County Parks. Before the accessible, non-agricultural, recreationally and environmentally inviting space is all snapped up, we need to give our public servants, of which we have many good ones in this county (along with a few, very few, dunderheads), the latitude and resources to purchase some well placed parcels.
Especially to my conservative friends I would say: This is not one of the areas we let the free market run unfettered. No private interest really wants to provide free, general public green space, but it is a public need and the common good. Plus, we vote for these and the use of eminent domain is pushed to the far margins of public policy where it belongs.
Licking County has a cost-effective park system with a priority on families and wise use of natural resources; they hope to be empowered to enter the market while some tracts in the western half of the county can still be selected to maintain natural areas, recreational use in helpful locations, and keep our area looking and feeling like a good place to live. Townships like Licking, Union, and Granville (to name ones I keep up with, but by no means all) have trustees and employees who are trying their best to balance a healthy environment and citizens’ interest.
There are no boondoggles for the powerful and well-placed here, and our community has quite a few people who use their wealth to advance this agenda as well. But gifts of land and cash here and there can’t replace a secure funding source.
As for school levies, let’s talk about that next week, but green space and open land purchases are a public service we can and should empower.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your favorite hike or stroll in Licking County at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Faith Works 10-14-06
Jeff Gill
Casseroles, Compassion, and Incomprehension
Head up to Utica and turn right, and before long you can expect to find yourself tailgating an Amish buggy if you aren’t careful, and you should be careful.
The yellow diamond signs with a black outline of a horsedrawn vehicle are not a tourist directional indicator, but a warning to fast-moving moderns. There are people living around here who move at a different pace, by other means – make adjustments, please.
But if you zoom around with a kick to the accelerator, and spray gravel into their horses’ faces, they will forgive you. They may even feel sorry for the forces which you let drive your life, and lead you to drive that way. Poor English, they may think, and likely say a prayer for you.
Aside from pumpkin pies and spiced candles, what has us thinking about the Amish these days is the tragedy in a one-room schoolhouse almost two weeks back now. And the forgiveness.
Many of us can relate to the scene of a warm casserole in hand, standing at a door where grief has visited. We’ve made those dishes, and stood in the doorway, offering condolences, and not a few of us have been the ones opening the door, saying thank you for your sorrow.
What many of us marvel at is the idea that before the day was done, there were people, people who had lost a child or grandchild themselves, standing casserole in hand at the door of the widow of the killer, offering their sorrow for her plight. We hear, we acknowledge, but we think "I could not do that."
And the fact is that most of us could not. It is too much of a stretch to forgive at that extension of self, to sincerely grieve along with the family of those who did us grievous wrong, and offer our broken heart for their sorrow along with our own.
We could not, because we have not practiced forgiveness, just as few of us could lift 500 pounds. But someone who often bench presses 250, and has done 450 recently: when that person raises 500 off the ground, we nod approvingly.
In forgiveness, most of us avoid the gym. The practice in daily life of forgiveness, the exercise of the muscles of compassion, is a discipline few of us maintain.
The Amish, on the other hand, for all their other particularities, if not peculiarities, are seasoned veterans at forgiveness. The odd stares, the passing cars, even rocks thrown for no reason out of the night at a peaceful buggy: Amish folk forgive us, called by most of them "English," most every day for our impatience, our pushiness, our rudeness.
The acts of the Amish community in Nickle Mines, PA are remarkable and worth our praise and reflection, but they are part and parcel of their everyday life as Christians. They read their New Testament, they see certain expectations God has of us in this life, and they practice that understanding as best as they are able. Modern American society helped to put another 50 pounds on the bar, but they lifted the extra weight without hardly a hitch. They’d been training for such a day all their lives.
The Amish are not exceptional people, really, but they are everyday people who have followed an exceptional discipline for nearly 400 years. What can we learn, aside from mashed potatoes and bigger slices of pie, from their example?
It will come step by step, slowly, plodding even, like the pace of a buggy on a blacktop road.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a tale through knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Casseroles, Compassion, and Incomprehension
Head up to Utica and turn right, and before long you can expect to find yourself tailgating an Amish buggy if you aren’t careful, and you should be careful.
The yellow diamond signs with a black outline of a horsedrawn vehicle are not a tourist directional indicator, but a warning to fast-moving moderns. There are people living around here who move at a different pace, by other means – make adjustments, please.
But if you zoom around with a kick to the accelerator, and spray gravel into their horses’ faces, they will forgive you. They may even feel sorry for the forces which you let drive your life, and lead you to drive that way. Poor English, they may think, and likely say a prayer for you.
Aside from pumpkin pies and spiced candles, what has us thinking about the Amish these days is the tragedy in a one-room schoolhouse almost two weeks back now. And the forgiveness.
Many of us can relate to the scene of a warm casserole in hand, standing at a door where grief has visited. We’ve made those dishes, and stood in the doorway, offering condolences, and not a few of us have been the ones opening the door, saying thank you for your sorrow.
What many of us marvel at is the idea that before the day was done, there were people, people who had lost a child or grandchild themselves, standing casserole in hand at the door of the widow of the killer, offering their sorrow for her plight. We hear, we acknowledge, but we think "I could not do that."
And the fact is that most of us could not. It is too much of a stretch to forgive at that extension of self, to sincerely grieve along with the family of those who did us grievous wrong, and offer our broken heart for their sorrow along with our own.
We could not, because we have not practiced forgiveness, just as few of us could lift 500 pounds. But someone who often bench presses 250, and has done 450 recently: when that person raises 500 off the ground, we nod approvingly.
In forgiveness, most of us avoid the gym. The practice in daily life of forgiveness, the exercise of the muscles of compassion, is a discipline few of us maintain.
The Amish, on the other hand, for all their other particularities, if not peculiarities, are seasoned veterans at forgiveness. The odd stares, the passing cars, even rocks thrown for no reason out of the night at a peaceful buggy: Amish folk forgive us, called by most of them "English," most every day for our impatience, our pushiness, our rudeness.
The acts of the Amish community in Nickle Mines, PA are remarkable and worth our praise and reflection, but they are part and parcel of their everyday life as Christians. They read their New Testament, they see certain expectations God has of us in this life, and they practice that understanding as best as they are able. Modern American society helped to put another 50 pounds on the bar, but they lifted the extra weight without hardly a hitch. They’d been training for such a day all their lives.
The Amish are not exceptional people, really, but they are everyday people who have followed an exceptional discipline for nearly 400 years. What can we learn, aside from mashed potatoes and bigger slices of pie, from their example?
It will come step by step, slowly, plodding even, like the pace of a buggy on a blacktop road.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a tale through knapsack77@gmail.com.
Notes From My Knapsack 10-15-06
Jeff Gill
What Would You Carry Along?
Walking through the museums of Roscoe Village and Granville recently, a number of objects made me think about the hands that carried them.
For the first European pioneers into this area two hundred years ago and more, there were choices to be made. Whether in Conestoga wagons or earlier buckboards pulled by oxen across Raccoon Creek or the Tuscarawas River, there was only so much room, so many pounds that could go. A piano? Not likely. A millstone? Better find one there at the destination, but let’s bring the metal gears, and the steel tools to make an axle and belt system a millwheel could turn.
Wooden buckets could be assembled at the other end of the journey, but you may bring some iron bands to hammer around the oaken staves. A brass bucket? You could cook in it, carry water, or flip it over for a stool: throw it in the wagon.
Books? A Bible yes, novels maybe later. But a printing press to typeset a newspaper is tops on the order list when the cabins get set up.
Then there’s the bassoon. A bassoon? That went on the "can’t live without it" list? For someone in 1805, it came instead of a second jug of molasses or a spare wheel hub. A bassoon? What songs do you sing to a bassoon?
It turns out that in the days before organs, church music was usually – when it wasn’t a cappella, voice only – a violin, a viola, a trumpet for accents, and . . . a bassoon. Instead of the left hand on the piano, the "oompa-oompa-boom-pah" of a bassoon rhythm set the tempo.
Still, I wonder about the thoughts that led to that vital decision, a choice that couldn’t be reversed around Bedford, PA. "Music is important, I have a place in the worship service, and we might have a dance or two after the cornhusking, so I guess I’d better bring the bassoon." Did someone else say, "What on earth are you thinking? In the space that yard and a half of ebony and brass takes up you could carry the whole next winter’s worth of candles! We can wait a few years before we get a bassoon shipped over to us."
In 2006, with the days shorter and the trees turning, while the temperatures drop and even a few wisps of snow haunt the fringes of the sky, I think about being somewhere between the Ohio River at Fort Henry and the Pataskala valley, bumping along a blazed trail, marks in tree bark with horse-high hatchet chops all I have to see my path.
I think about the blankets and grain and preserves bundled up between my family members shivering in the back of the wagon, and then I remember my bassoon. Does that sign of civilization and culture warm my heart just a bit, or do I think: "Why didn’t I bring more socks?"
The presence of that bassoon here in Ohio, two centuries later, tells me that the place of music wasn’t just entertainment or diversion. It was life itself, along with matches and food and clay jars. They didn’t have CDs or iPods or radio stations to tune in, but their music was all the more important for how they made it themselves.
Give ear to that thought the next time you hear a tune you like, and imagine not only enjoying it, but being fed by it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who is lucky to play the radio successfully; sing him your song of musical significance at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
What Would You Carry Along?
Walking through the museums of Roscoe Village and Granville recently, a number of objects made me think about the hands that carried them.
For the first European pioneers into this area two hundred years ago and more, there were choices to be made. Whether in Conestoga wagons or earlier buckboards pulled by oxen across Raccoon Creek or the Tuscarawas River, there was only so much room, so many pounds that could go. A piano? Not likely. A millstone? Better find one there at the destination, but let’s bring the metal gears, and the steel tools to make an axle and belt system a millwheel could turn.
Wooden buckets could be assembled at the other end of the journey, but you may bring some iron bands to hammer around the oaken staves. A brass bucket? You could cook in it, carry water, or flip it over for a stool: throw it in the wagon.
Books? A Bible yes, novels maybe later. But a printing press to typeset a newspaper is tops on the order list when the cabins get set up.
Then there’s the bassoon. A bassoon? That went on the "can’t live without it" list? For someone in 1805, it came instead of a second jug of molasses or a spare wheel hub. A bassoon? What songs do you sing to a bassoon?
It turns out that in the days before organs, church music was usually – when it wasn’t a cappella, voice only – a violin, a viola, a trumpet for accents, and . . . a bassoon. Instead of the left hand on the piano, the "oompa-oompa-boom-pah" of a bassoon rhythm set the tempo.
Still, I wonder about the thoughts that led to that vital decision, a choice that couldn’t be reversed around Bedford, PA. "Music is important, I have a place in the worship service, and we might have a dance or two after the cornhusking, so I guess I’d better bring the bassoon." Did someone else say, "What on earth are you thinking? In the space that yard and a half of ebony and brass takes up you could carry the whole next winter’s worth of candles! We can wait a few years before we get a bassoon shipped over to us."
In 2006, with the days shorter and the trees turning, while the temperatures drop and even a few wisps of snow haunt the fringes of the sky, I think about being somewhere between the Ohio River at Fort Henry and the Pataskala valley, bumping along a blazed trail, marks in tree bark with horse-high hatchet chops all I have to see my path.
I think about the blankets and grain and preserves bundled up between my family members shivering in the back of the wagon, and then I remember my bassoon. Does that sign of civilization and culture warm my heart just a bit, or do I think: "Why didn’t I bring more socks?"
The presence of that bassoon here in Ohio, two centuries later, tells me that the place of music wasn’t just entertainment or diversion. It was life itself, along with matches and food and clay jars. They didn’t have CDs or iPods or radio stations to tune in, but their music was all the more important for how they made it themselves.
Give ear to that thought the next time you hear a tune you like, and imagine not only enjoying it, but being fed by it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who is lucky to play the radio successfully; sing him your song of musical significance at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Faith Works 10-7-06
Jeff Gill
Church, State, People, and Identity
We have the head of state of a sovereign nation visiting Licking County next weekend, and a religious leader. Actually, a co-head, since the Creek Nation of Oklahoma traditionally has two.
This translates fairly well into the western European perspective, since Rome, like the Creek, has twins at the heart of their myth and symbols of their founding: think Romulus and Remus, and co-consuls of the Roman Republic.
Some Americans have trouble understanding how Indian tribes can be sovereign nations, but that’s what many of our ancestors set up when they made treaties with some of the now 500 Native American groups found around this country, some in reservation-based arrangements, others living in a more geographically dispersed pattern.
As Vine Deloria liked to point out to Anglo audiences, "you said these rights would be ours as long as the grass grew and the water flowed. Then you put us in places where no grass grew and no water flows." Deloria’s father and grandfather might have been Lutheran ministers, but their Lakota roots never left the soil they drew strength from, no matter how dry the ground.
The Honorable Alfred Berryhill is coming from The Mound, Oklahoma, to be one of a day full of guest speakers at OSU-N for "Newark Earthworks Day" on Saturday, October 14. Beginning with a Native American style procession into the Reese Center on campus at 9:00 am, local speakers and visitors from Illinois, Indiana, and of course Oklahoma will share perspectives on our 2,000 year old wonders of the world. Indians, archaeologists, astronomers, schoolteachers, and even a local columnist (as the MC) will fill out the day until 5:00 pm. The day will close with a Native feast in Hopewell Hall cafeteria which is $10 for adults and free to children under 12; the day itself is free and open to the public thanks to the work of OSU-N’s Newark Earthworks Center.
I am particularly interested in hearing Mr. Berryhill, as we’ve learned in recent years that the Creek and Ho-Chunk (aka Winnebago) Indians still build mounds as part of their ceremonial year. Much of their tradition and practice is not for all eyes or public description, but elements are intended for an interested public, Native and non-Native, and we hope to learn and share much in that respect.
There are still many stereotypes and images we have to overcome in communicating between cultures in this world, and my own involvement with the "moonrise efforts" over the last few years has taught me much, about how my own assumptions deserve challenging, and how to respectfully challenge the pre-conceptions of others.
For instance, some ask me "Jeff, what’s the right manner of address here? Indian is OK? Or should I say American Indian? And some say Native American…" Well, you can see in this piece I’ve used all three: the fact is, you have to do what you’d do with any new friend or acquaintance. Ask them what they would like to be called. Some have strong opinions as to which "label," while others prefer only tribal affiliation, such as "Dine" or "Cherokee." A few just say "Call me Bob." But you need to ask, and respect their choice.
And as for assumptions . . . that two chief thing? I asked if that signified "war chief and peace chief" or some other distinction. I wasn’t expecting the answer I got.
Turns out that, after some debate and discussion a hundred years ago, the current understanding among the Creek is that one chief is always Baptist, and the other is . . . Methodist. The Honorable Alfred Berryhill is a second generation Methodist pastor, who is honored for having collected hymns in his native language together for congregational use. And he builds mounds with his people.
I can’t wait to hear what he has to say, and to simply listen.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s been known to emcee and event or two, too. Check www.octagonmoonrise.org for details about Newark Earthworks Day and the speakers, or e-mail Jeff at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Church, State, People, and Identity
We have the head of state of a sovereign nation visiting Licking County next weekend, and a religious leader. Actually, a co-head, since the Creek Nation of Oklahoma traditionally has two.
This translates fairly well into the western European perspective, since Rome, like the Creek, has twins at the heart of their myth and symbols of their founding: think Romulus and Remus, and co-consuls of the Roman Republic.
Some Americans have trouble understanding how Indian tribes can be sovereign nations, but that’s what many of our ancestors set up when they made treaties with some of the now 500 Native American groups found around this country, some in reservation-based arrangements, others living in a more geographically dispersed pattern.
As Vine Deloria liked to point out to Anglo audiences, "you said these rights would be ours as long as the grass grew and the water flowed. Then you put us in places where no grass grew and no water flows." Deloria’s father and grandfather might have been Lutheran ministers, but their Lakota roots never left the soil they drew strength from, no matter how dry the ground.
The Honorable Alfred Berryhill is coming from The Mound, Oklahoma, to be one of a day full of guest speakers at OSU-N for "Newark Earthworks Day" on Saturday, October 14. Beginning with a Native American style procession into the Reese Center on campus at 9:00 am, local speakers and visitors from Illinois, Indiana, and of course Oklahoma will share perspectives on our 2,000 year old wonders of the world. Indians, archaeologists, astronomers, schoolteachers, and even a local columnist (as the MC) will fill out the day until 5:00 pm. The day will close with a Native feast in Hopewell Hall cafeteria which is $10 for adults and free to children under 12; the day itself is free and open to the public thanks to the work of OSU-N’s Newark Earthworks Center.
I am particularly interested in hearing Mr. Berryhill, as we’ve learned in recent years that the Creek and Ho-Chunk (aka Winnebago) Indians still build mounds as part of their ceremonial year. Much of their tradition and practice is not for all eyes or public description, but elements are intended for an interested public, Native and non-Native, and we hope to learn and share much in that respect.
There are still many stereotypes and images we have to overcome in communicating between cultures in this world, and my own involvement with the "moonrise efforts" over the last few years has taught me much, about how my own assumptions deserve challenging, and how to respectfully challenge the pre-conceptions of others.
For instance, some ask me "Jeff, what’s the right manner of address here? Indian is OK? Or should I say American Indian? And some say Native American…" Well, you can see in this piece I’ve used all three: the fact is, you have to do what you’d do with any new friend or acquaintance. Ask them what they would like to be called. Some have strong opinions as to which "label," while others prefer only tribal affiliation, such as "Dine" or "Cherokee." A few just say "Call me Bob." But you need to ask, and respect their choice.
And as for assumptions . . . that two chief thing? I asked if that signified "war chief and peace chief" or some other distinction. I wasn’t expecting the answer I got.
Turns out that, after some debate and discussion a hundred years ago, the current understanding among the Creek is that one chief is always Baptist, and the other is . . . Methodist. The Honorable Alfred Berryhill is a second generation Methodist pastor, who is honored for having collected hymns in his native language together for congregational use. And he builds mounds with his people.
I can’t wait to hear what he has to say, and to simply listen.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s been known to emcee and event or two, too. Check www.octagonmoonrise.org for details about Newark Earthworks Day and the speakers, or e-mail Jeff at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Notes From My Knapsack 10-8-06
Jeff Gill
After the Moonrise
Sir Isaac Newton, inventor of calculus and one of the smartest people in recorded history, famously said, "The only mathematical problem which ever gave me a headache was calculating the movements of the moon." And he invented calculus, which has given many of us headaches.
Those irregular, hard-to-predict movements, were mastered by the inhabitants of these valleys around Newark 2,000 years ago. The evidence is encoded in the massive, landscape embracing earthworks shaped as an octagon and circle at the end of 33rd St. and behind Licking Memorial Hospital.
Our fellow citizens, in 1892, voted to tax themselves a bit more to buy and preserve these mounds, the "Great Circle" already in semi-public hands as the county fairground, now Newark Earthworks State Memorial on Rt. 79 by Heath. Octagon Mound, owned along with the Great Circle by the Ohio Historical Society, is leased to Moundbuilders Country Club since their founding in 1911.
If you check out www.moundbuilderscc.com, the folks at the club are working with the hospital to allow the public to come out this Wednesday and see one of the very last "close approximations" of the moonrise along the main axis of the circle and octagon structure, marking the peak of an oscillating 18.6 year cycle. After 9:00 pm, you may walk onto the grounds and join a group that will be escorted to a viewing area for the moonrise which will be visible, weather co-operating, sometime not long after 10:00 pm.
Of course, this being Ohio, weather may not co-operate; for those of us in the community who have been learning about and presenting this story and opportunity to the public, we see why the near-northernmost moonrises had to be as important as the absolute peak of the cycle. Fog, as well as rain or just socked-in cloud cover, means that you need a series of cycles stepping in and the movements walking away to help bracket the precision that allowed these earthen arrangements to work so well.
Some of us have been reading wistfully the last few months about a similar site in the desert southwest of the US, which is a thousand years younger (and so, I’d say, only half as cool as our Newark Earthworks), where the US Forest Service and a community group have hosted moonrise viewings and visitors from around the globe. We hope to do a bit better in 2025!
Many thanks to Moundbuilders Country Club for their invitation this week to see a remarkable sight, and follow the other local media for word of any weather related complications.
If you are intrigued by all this, then you can come to the OSU-Newark campus on Saturday, October 14, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm where a free program at a civil hour is open to all for "Newark Earthworks Day." The Reese Center hosts informational booths, vendors, and guest speakers from around the country on subjects relating to Native American history and activity today (including mound building!), archaeologists and astronomers, and local teachers on a panel about "teaching the earthworks."
An opening procession following Native American practice will open the day, with a moment to honor the now-fifth graders from Miller Elementary when fourth graders who got the Newark Earthworks named the official state pre-historic monument, introduced by Sen. Jay Hottinger. You can come at any point through the day and hear and see what you can.
After the daytime programs a Native feast is offered following 5:00 pm, asking $10 for adults and free to children under 12.
If you want details of the program, click www.octagonmoonrise.org; your faithful scribe will be the MC for the speakers, and I’d love to see you all there!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s been known to MC an event or two as well. Tell him about your interesting local event at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
After the Moonrise
Sir Isaac Newton, inventor of calculus and one of the smartest people in recorded history, famously said, "The only mathematical problem which ever gave me a headache was calculating the movements of the moon." And he invented calculus, which has given many of us headaches.
Those irregular, hard-to-predict movements, were mastered by the inhabitants of these valleys around Newark 2,000 years ago. The evidence is encoded in the massive, landscape embracing earthworks shaped as an octagon and circle at the end of 33rd St. and behind Licking Memorial Hospital.
Our fellow citizens, in 1892, voted to tax themselves a bit more to buy and preserve these mounds, the "Great Circle" already in semi-public hands as the county fairground, now Newark Earthworks State Memorial on Rt. 79 by Heath. Octagon Mound, owned along with the Great Circle by the Ohio Historical Society, is leased to Moundbuilders Country Club since their founding in 1911.
If you check out www.moundbuilderscc.com, the folks at the club are working with the hospital to allow the public to come out this Wednesday and see one of the very last "close approximations" of the moonrise along the main axis of the circle and octagon structure, marking the peak of an oscillating 18.6 year cycle. After 9:00 pm, you may walk onto the grounds and join a group that will be escorted to a viewing area for the moonrise which will be visible, weather co-operating, sometime not long after 10:00 pm.
Of course, this being Ohio, weather may not co-operate; for those of us in the community who have been learning about and presenting this story and opportunity to the public, we see why the near-northernmost moonrises had to be as important as the absolute peak of the cycle. Fog, as well as rain or just socked-in cloud cover, means that you need a series of cycles stepping in and the movements walking away to help bracket the precision that allowed these earthen arrangements to work so well.
Some of us have been reading wistfully the last few months about a similar site in the desert southwest of the US, which is a thousand years younger (and so, I’d say, only half as cool as our Newark Earthworks), where the US Forest Service and a community group have hosted moonrise viewings and visitors from around the globe. We hope to do a bit better in 2025!
Many thanks to Moundbuilders Country Club for their invitation this week to see a remarkable sight, and follow the other local media for word of any weather related complications.
If you are intrigued by all this, then you can come to the OSU-Newark campus on Saturday, October 14, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm where a free program at a civil hour is open to all for "Newark Earthworks Day." The Reese Center hosts informational booths, vendors, and guest speakers from around the country on subjects relating to Native American history and activity today (including mound building!), archaeologists and astronomers, and local teachers on a panel about "teaching the earthworks."
An opening procession following Native American practice will open the day, with a moment to honor the now-fifth graders from Miller Elementary when fourth graders who got the Newark Earthworks named the official state pre-historic monument, introduced by Sen. Jay Hottinger. You can come at any point through the day and hear and see what you can.
After the daytime programs a Native feast is offered following 5:00 pm, asking $10 for adults and free to children under 12.
If you want details of the program, click www.octagonmoonrise.org; your faithful scribe will be the MC for the speakers, and I’d love to see you all there!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s been known to MC an event or two as well. Tell him about your interesting local event at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Notes From My Knapsack 10-1-06
Jeff Gill
Here’s a Frightening Statistic
"Statistics don’t lie, but liars use statistics." True words about lying numbers, indeed.
An internet company says they’re "the fastest growing." Are they lying? Well, not quite: if you go from 5,000 users to 10,000 users, you’re growing at a 100% rate; if you go from 3,000,000 to 3,500,000, your growth rate is just over 15%, but I’m thinking you want to stick with number two, lacking other data.
The Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts are beginning their popcorn sales this weekend around central Ohio – their version of the Girl Scouts’ famous cookie sales. Parents ask: "Is it safe for my child to sell this door-to-door?"
A fair question, and hard to answer. The official stance of Scouting is that no one should sell alone, but with a buddy, and there should be an adult shadowing them from a nearby car or sidewalk.
In the late 1960’s and 70’s, I sold popcorn and football chocolate up hill and down dale, with the one family rule "you can’t sell on Sunday." No one went with me; if my folks’ protective side showed at all in the process, it was in "what time will you get home?" after which, my name, complete with full middle name, would be shouted from the back porch. Loudly.
I really wanted to be home when I said I would.
But was I in danger? The statistics are hard to interpret. Is there more child molestation reported and in the courts? Yes, but people are less willing today to settle for going down the street, beating up a stranger and telling them they had a week to leave the area, and going home to tell the child involved: "We will never speak of this again."
So you can say the statistics are up, but is the actual frequency on the rise? It depends on who you ask. If you ask me, out of years of pastoral counseling (not to mention Scouting), I think we had about as many people with pedophilia disorder fifty years ago (and more) than we do today, but there’s no way to prove any of us right or wrong on that supposition.
So are we over-reacting today? I really don’t think so. Where I grew up, we had the whole "never lock doors, keys in the ignition, kids play outside until the street lights go on" mindset, but looking back . . .
There were stories of kids who disappeared back then, and women who came home to find someone took their purse off the counter, and cars taken on "joyrides." We just got less comfortable with allowing that opportunity.
I remember vividly riding, next to my dad, standing with my feet planted on the bench seat of the Ford Galaxy, hands on the dashboard. If I did that with the Little Guy today (well, now he’s too big anyhow), I’d be pulled over and arrested for criminal stupidity.
So was my dad wrong? Not in 1966 he wasn’t. but we have car seats and shoulder restraints (my grandmother hated those when they came in, and she was the most cautious member of our entire family) and bike helmets now.
Nothing bad ever happened to me when I walked the streets selling Scout popcorn, but I can remember some really odd characters who left me feeling the creeps as I backed away from the porch. A bit more vulnerability on my part, a little more opportunity on their part, and who knows?
There are some problem today that we face more honestly, and that can’t ever be a bad thing. The buddy system was a good idea at swim time, and now we know it’s a good idea out on the sales trail, too.
What we don’t want to do is let a new sense of precaution and prevention give us a false sense of threat and danger all around. Avoid scary situations and give yourself a margin for safety (like a buddy), and you can still find the world is generally a welcoming, wonderful place.
And I close these thoughts with a salute to Susan Verkest, who died very unexpectedly last week. She was passionate about seeing the Newark area look honestly at the problems we do have, but taking meaningful action so children and families can enjoy a community that really is basically safe and fun.
Godspeed, Susan.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him what your youth activity is selling through knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Here’s a Frightening Statistic
"Statistics don’t lie, but liars use statistics." True words about lying numbers, indeed.
An internet company says they’re "the fastest growing." Are they lying? Well, not quite: if you go from 5,000 users to 10,000 users, you’re growing at a 100% rate; if you go from 3,000,000 to 3,500,000, your growth rate is just over 15%, but I’m thinking you want to stick with number two, lacking other data.
The Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts are beginning their popcorn sales this weekend around central Ohio – their version of the Girl Scouts’ famous cookie sales. Parents ask: "Is it safe for my child to sell this door-to-door?"
A fair question, and hard to answer. The official stance of Scouting is that no one should sell alone, but with a buddy, and there should be an adult shadowing them from a nearby car or sidewalk.
In the late 1960’s and 70’s, I sold popcorn and football chocolate up hill and down dale, with the one family rule "you can’t sell on Sunday." No one went with me; if my folks’ protective side showed at all in the process, it was in "what time will you get home?" after which, my name, complete with full middle name, would be shouted from the back porch. Loudly.
I really wanted to be home when I said I would.
But was I in danger? The statistics are hard to interpret. Is there more child molestation reported and in the courts? Yes, but people are less willing today to settle for going down the street, beating up a stranger and telling them they had a week to leave the area, and going home to tell the child involved: "We will never speak of this again."
So you can say the statistics are up, but is the actual frequency on the rise? It depends on who you ask. If you ask me, out of years of pastoral counseling (not to mention Scouting), I think we had about as many people with pedophilia disorder fifty years ago (and more) than we do today, but there’s no way to prove any of us right or wrong on that supposition.
So are we over-reacting today? I really don’t think so. Where I grew up, we had the whole "never lock doors, keys in the ignition, kids play outside until the street lights go on" mindset, but looking back . . .
There were stories of kids who disappeared back then, and women who came home to find someone took their purse off the counter, and cars taken on "joyrides." We just got less comfortable with allowing that opportunity.
I remember vividly riding, next to my dad, standing with my feet planted on the bench seat of the Ford Galaxy, hands on the dashboard. If I did that with the Little Guy today (well, now he’s too big anyhow), I’d be pulled over and arrested for criminal stupidity.
So was my dad wrong? Not in 1966 he wasn’t. but we have car seats and shoulder restraints (my grandmother hated those when they came in, and she was the most cautious member of our entire family) and bike helmets now.
Nothing bad ever happened to me when I walked the streets selling Scout popcorn, but I can remember some really odd characters who left me feeling the creeps as I backed away from the porch. A bit more vulnerability on my part, a little more opportunity on their part, and who knows?
There are some problem today that we face more honestly, and that can’t ever be a bad thing. The buddy system was a good idea at swim time, and now we know it’s a good idea out on the sales trail, too.
What we don’t want to do is let a new sense of precaution and prevention give us a false sense of threat and danger all around. Avoid scary situations and give yourself a margin for safety (like a buddy), and you can still find the world is generally a welcoming, wonderful place.
And I close these thoughts with a salute to Susan Verkest, who died very unexpectedly last week. She was passionate about seeing the Newark area look honestly at the problems we do have, but taking meaningful action so children and families can enjoy a community that really is basically safe and fun.
Godspeed, Susan.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him what your youth activity is selling through knapsack77@gmail.com.
Faith Works 9-30-06
Jeff Gill
From a Different Angle
"Days of Awe" is the traditional Jewish term for the ten days we are in right now.
Between last week’s Rosh Hashanah, the "head of the year" 5767, and tomorrow’s eve of Yom Kippur, the "day of atonement," these are special days.
The idea is that the gates of heaven are open wide, prayers are particularly welcome, especially those to make up for our faults of the year behind us as the books of heaven are closed. Then the great, solemn observance in synagogue of Yom Kippur seals the year now past, and sets us on the path of righteousness for the year ahead.
In this part of the country, you don’t have to be a mensch to know that something is special about these days, which are indeed touched with awe and wonder.
Everyone notices the color and swirl of falling leaves, but there’s a practical side to all our enlivened sightseeing. In the heart of summer, the sun is high and bright, overlighting the scenery; when winter comes, the sun squats down on the horizon, with grey and barren treetrunks squeezing long, angular, awkward shadows out of the sky.
Autumn is an angle of the sun somewhere in between, making the "golden hour" after sunrise and before dusk shine all the brighter. Add to that astronomical fact the meteorology of this time of year, when the balance between warm air masses and cold surges from the north clutter the sky with cloud formations like no other time of year, and our eyes and minds and hearts are engaged even when we’re not looking. "Days of Awe."
While Judaism offers this up as a special season of repentance, in Islam we’re well into the month of Ramadan, the sliver of new moon announcing 28 days of fasting by day and feasting in the evening, helping to focus the believer’s heart on submission to the will of God, in Arabic, Allah. With family and at Friday prayers, the Moslem believer is turned to God in a disciplined way for these four weeks.
Out in Oklahoma, an evangelical Christian pastor of a large, free-church style congregation has started a website. Called "www.mysecret.tv," Life Church decided to give modern young seekers a chance to confess their sins in the format they know best – on-line, and in anonymity. The response has startled even the folks who started it, with tens of thousands from far beyond Edmond, OK (where Life Church is based) clicking in and logging on and typing up their regrets and new intentions.
Of course, a TV reporter had to gin up a controversy, announcing breathlessly that "the Catholic Church is opposed to this." Nope. It just isn’t how they do confession, and even the evangelical folks with Life Church insist they’ve never seen the website as an end in itself, but a step towards opening the door. Kind of like having "Days of Awe," to remind people that the gates of heaven are always open.
In Catholic Christianity, they hold that confessing your sins doesn’t get much done for you, with you, or in you until someone outside yourself assures you that "your sins are forgiven." Pointing you towards steps to not return down that road of regret is part of the package, too. Oppose? They just want to show you a better way.
This is a good time of year in many ways, for many people, to reassess most of their lives. Something’s in the air that, more than January 1, tends us all to a review of the last year, of our decisions, of our future and what it holds. Your faith tradition probably has some tools to help with that, and it never hurts to try them out on a little interior renovation project.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tradition’s renewal practices at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
From a Different Angle
"Days of Awe" is the traditional Jewish term for the ten days we are in right now.
Between last week’s Rosh Hashanah, the "head of the year" 5767, and tomorrow’s eve of Yom Kippur, the "day of atonement," these are special days.
The idea is that the gates of heaven are open wide, prayers are particularly welcome, especially those to make up for our faults of the year behind us as the books of heaven are closed. Then the great, solemn observance in synagogue of Yom Kippur seals the year now past, and sets us on the path of righteousness for the year ahead.
In this part of the country, you don’t have to be a mensch to know that something is special about these days, which are indeed touched with awe and wonder.
Everyone notices the color and swirl of falling leaves, but there’s a practical side to all our enlivened sightseeing. In the heart of summer, the sun is high and bright, overlighting the scenery; when winter comes, the sun squats down on the horizon, with grey and barren treetrunks squeezing long, angular, awkward shadows out of the sky.
Autumn is an angle of the sun somewhere in between, making the "golden hour" after sunrise and before dusk shine all the brighter. Add to that astronomical fact the meteorology of this time of year, when the balance between warm air masses and cold surges from the north clutter the sky with cloud formations like no other time of year, and our eyes and minds and hearts are engaged even when we’re not looking. "Days of Awe."
While Judaism offers this up as a special season of repentance, in Islam we’re well into the month of Ramadan, the sliver of new moon announcing 28 days of fasting by day and feasting in the evening, helping to focus the believer’s heart on submission to the will of God, in Arabic, Allah. With family and at Friday prayers, the Moslem believer is turned to God in a disciplined way for these four weeks.
Out in Oklahoma, an evangelical Christian pastor of a large, free-church style congregation has started a website. Called "www.mysecret.tv," Life Church decided to give modern young seekers a chance to confess their sins in the format they know best – on-line, and in anonymity. The response has startled even the folks who started it, with tens of thousands from far beyond Edmond, OK (where Life Church is based) clicking in and logging on and typing up their regrets and new intentions.
Of course, a TV reporter had to gin up a controversy, announcing breathlessly that "the Catholic Church is opposed to this." Nope. It just isn’t how they do confession, and even the evangelical folks with Life Church insist they’ve never seen the website as an end in itself, but a step towards opening the door. Kind of like having "Days of Awe," to remind people that the gates of heaven are always open.
In Catholic Christianity, they hold that confessing your sins doesn’t get much done for you, with you, or in you until someone outside yourself assures you that "your sins are forgiven." Pointing you towards steps to not return down that road of regret is part of the package, too. Oppose? They just want to show you a better way.
This is a good time of year in many ways, for many people, to reassess most of their lives. Something’s in the air that, more than January 1, tends us all to a review of the last year, of our decisions, of our future and what it holds. Your faith tradition probably has some tools to help with that, and it never hurts to try them out on a little interior renovation project.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tradition’s renewal practices at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Faith Works 9-23-06
Jeff Gill
A Lively Night Among the Dead
Next Friday evening, Sept. 29 at 6:00 pm, drop by one of Licking County’s great historic documents, artistic achievements, and path-breaking social innovations.
That would be Cedar Hill Cemetery, out Rt. 79 going north on Newark’s edge.
Founded here just after 1850, the national "rural cemetery" movement began less than twenty years before with Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston, the absolute epicenter of art and culture for America in those days. The idea of an idyllic, attractive setting for meditation and strolling among the monuments and mausoleums of the departed gave birth to parks in cities like Central Park in New York, the national park movement, and pretty much all of what we now call landscape architecture.
Our local story nicely echoes the national account. Newark had a cemetery just west of downtown, past Fourth St. north of Main. The city grew and the burials were relocated to Sixth St., where the Licking County Historical Society now has a home, our hosts for next Friday.
Only a mound marks this spot, which received committals from around 1812 to 1850. Once again, the growing city meant it was time to move the necropolis, and longtime civic leader Israel Dille, who had promoted the development of Courthouse Square as a "botanical garden," can be seen maneuvering to press Newark to try something grand.
Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Baltimore: all had tried the arcadian experiment. Sculpted grounds along with stately sculpture in a secluded, peaceful spot were a rest from the bustle of the newly industrialized cities, and a tonic for reflection and prayer. Could Newark create such a spot, and get the citizenry behind it as a central, civic cemetery?
Well, Israel Dille had helped create our modern courthouse area, our first arboretum, and the pioneer public school board, so this was but a small challenge. Going bankrupt trying to bring the first railroads through town did keep him from investing personally in the project, but his likely role is confirmed by the fact that he was given the largest lot at the top of the highest spot on Cedar Hill.
If you’ve been there, and don’t recall a large, imposing Dille marker, don’t worry. You’re not going blind. He has no stone, no inscription.
Would you like to know why? Come join us on Friday where your faithful scrivener will portray . . . oh, you’d figured that out already, hadn’t you?
The Licking County Historical Society asks visitors to arrive at the Gothic Chapel inside the gates at 6:00 pm, where a brief talk will precede a hike (dress accordingly!) to meet a few of the permanent residents, dramatically portrayed, near their places of repose. Guests are asked to contribute $5.00, and society members are free; you may call 345-4898 for more info.
We promise you’ll leave knowing a bit more about life and faith and death and more, and we also promise . . . that you’ll get to leave!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share your tales of memorials and cemeteries to knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
A Lively Night Among the Dead
Next Friday evening, Sept. 29 at 6:00 pm, drop by one of Licking County’s great historic documents, artistic achievements, and path-breaking social innovations.
That would be Cedar Hill Cemetery, out Rt. 79 going north on Newark’s edge.
Founded here just after 1850, the national "rural cemetery" movement began less than twenty years before with Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston, the absolute epicenter of art and culture for America in those days. The idea of an idyllic, attractive setting for meditation and strolling among the monuments and mausoleums of the departed gave birth to parks in cities like Central Park in New York, the national park movement, and pretty much all of what we now call landscape architecture.
Our local story nicely echoes the national account. Newark had a cemetery just west of downtown, past Fourth St. north of Main. The city grew and the burials were relocated to Sixth St., where the Licking County Historical Society now has a home, our hosts for next Friday.
Only a mound marks this spot, which received committals from around 1812 to 1850. Once again, the growing city meant it was time to move the necropolis, and longtime civic leader Israel Dille, who had promoted the development of Courthouse Square as a "botanical garden," can be seen maneuvering to press Newark to try something grand.
Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Baltimore: all had tried the arcadian experiment. Sculpted grounds along with stately sculpture in a secluded, peaceful spot were a rest from the bustle of the newly industrialized cities, and a tonic for reflection and prayer. Could Newark create such a spot, and get the citizenry behind it as a central, civic cemetery?
Well, Israel Dille had helped create our modern courthouse area, our first arboretum, and the pioneer public school board, so this was but a small challenge. Going bankrupt trying to bring the first railroads through town did keep him from investing personally in the project, but his likely role is confirmed by the fact that he was given the largest lot at the top of the highest spot on Cedar Hill.
If you’ve been there, and don’t recall a large, imposing Dille marker, don’t worry. You’re not going blind. He has no stone, no inscription.
Would you like to know why? Come join us on Friday where your faithful scrivener will portray . . . oh, you’d figured that out already, hadn’t you?
The Licking County Historical Society asks visitors to arrive at the Gothic Chapel inside the gates at 6:00 pm, where a brief talk will precede a hike (dress accordingly!) to meet a few of the permanent residents, dramatically portrayed, near their places of repose. Guests are asked to contribute $5.00, and society members are free; you may call 345-4898 for more info.
We promise you’ll leave knowing a bit more about life and faith and death and more, and we also promise . . . that you’ll get to leave!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share your tales of memorials and cemeteries to knapsack77@gmail.com.
Notes From My Knapsack 9-24-06
Jeff Gill
Nothing Can Compare To a Teacher
Adjusting for inflation is a tricky question, especially over long periods of time. Fluctuations in the value of currency, the money supply, and commodity values mean that there is no one percentage per annum you can tidily apply.
People who write historical fiction, and journalists of many sorts use a web site you can go fiddle with yourself, at "www.westegg.com/inflation." See what you think.
I bring up this web site because I used it for an interesting comparison recently, checking a dollar amount from 150 years ago and more and asking what that sum would be in today’s dollars. The result was a surprise even when I expected it.
My comments last week brought some email chiding me for supporting our "unbearable" taxes in Ohio today, and commenting that teachers in the public school system are very highly paid – the implication being, overpaid.
As to the first point, may I point back (and my mom always said that was rude, but oh well) that the oft cited "Ohio has the third worst tax climate" is from a foundation that, aside from opposition to pretty much any tax whatsoever as far as I can tell from their website (look at the fine print on Blackwell’s ads to find it), has made a qualitative claim sound quantitative.
In other words, they did a survey asking businesses how they felt about how sales taxes were collected, and Ohio firms think they have to remit more often than other states, and we were the third most complained about. Are we the third most taxed state? Nope, not even close; we’re about in the middle by most measures.
Medicaid and other growing governmental obligations cannot grow much more as a percent of the state budget, and I hope Ted Strickland has the vertebrae to address that concern. We shouldn’t pay much more as a percent of our total income in taxes than we do. This household, the Lovely Wife tells me, is pushing 35% when you add local, property, state, sales, and federal income taxes together and divide by our gross income.
But this household will still vote for the Licking Park District levy because we need to nail down some green space purchases while we still can, and Rich Niccum and the gang with LPD does miracles on a miniscule budget, and I trust them to use the levy proceeds the way they promise.
As for teacher salary, if you’ve read me over the years, you know my next point. I grabbed the records for our first official school board, Newark City Schools (God bless Israel Dille!), and looked at their early years.
First, may I point out a regular gripe this scribe throws out: we educate many more, much more, of our total population of children than we used to. There were throwaway kids in the so-called "good ol’ days," and there aren’t any more. That creates certain challenges, and they cost money those challenges do, but don’t tell me we should go back to educating the easy half of all children.
In 1855, they estimated that Newark had 1,000 kids. They were very pleased that they had 820 enrolled, and that 540 of them made it to class any given day. That’s nearly a one-half attendance average. Yep, good ol’ days.
Too far back? In1865, 1,400 kids counted in the district, but still only 1,178 on the books, and a mere 629 average in class each day. 1875? 2,927 souls about, but only 1,563 names on the register, and 1,037 was an average day in the classroom. And1880 took Newark to 3,379 youth noted in the census, but 1,812 checked into the school system and 1,213 made it to school most days. That’s getting close to only a third in school.
In each of those years, the number of weeks in session were comparable to today, the class size was only a bit larger at 30 . . . and remember, only the more biddable third were sitting there.
But here’s the remarkable fact. If you plug the average teacher salary for1849 of $2,057 into the westegg.com/inflation calculator webpage – it gives you the result of $43,887.14 in 2005 dollars.
That’s right: the average teacher salary back when we started doing state mandated public schooling in Ohio is basically the same today. If you keep comparing through 1900, we actually are paying our teachers less in 2005 than we paid them then, and that’s to educate over 94% (the state mandated minimum attendance average).
And that’s why we have so many adults even now in Licking County without a high school degree. I’m glad we’re trying to give a basic education to everyone today, but we just can’t punish teachers and administrators for not getting that task done on less money. It just doesn’t add up.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he obviously has a thing for teachers and rangers, which is probably why he married someone who’s been both. Counter his statistics with a data dump to knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Nothing Can Compare To a Teacher
Adjusting for inflation is a tricky question, especially over long periods of time. Fluctuations in the value of currency, the money supply, and commodity values mean that there is no one percentage per annum you can tidily apply.
People who write historical fiction, and journalists of many sorts use a web site you can go fiddle with yourself, at "www.westegg.com/inflation." See what you think.
I bring up this web site because I used it for an interesting comparison recently, checking a dollar amount from 150 years ago and more and asking what that sum would be in today’s dollars. The result was a surprise even when I expected it.
My comments last week brought some email chiding me for supporting our "unbearable" taxes in Ohio today, and commenting that teachers in the public school system are very highly paid – the implication being, overpaid.
As to the first point, may I point back (and my mom always said that was rude, but oh well) that the oft cited "Ohio has the third worst tax climate" is from a foundation that, aside from opposition to pretty much any tax whatsoever as far as I can tell from their website (look at the fine print on Blackwell’s ads to find it), has made a qualitative claim sound quantitative.
In other words, they did a survey asking businesses how they felt about how sales taxes were collected, and Ohio firms think they have to remit more often than other states, and we were the third most complained about. Are we the third most taxed state? Nope, not even close; we’re about in the middle by most measures.
Medicaid and other growing governmental obligations cannot grow much more as a percent of the state budget, and I hope Ted Strickland has the vertebrae to address that concern. We shouldn’t pay much more as a percent of our total income in taxes than we do. This household, the Lovely Wife tells me, is pushing 35% when you add local, property, state, sales, and federal income taxes together and divide by our gross income.
But this household will still vote for the Licking Park District levy because we need to nail down some green space purchases while we still can, and Rich Niccum and the gang with LPD does miracles on a miniscule budget, and I trust them to use the levy proceeds the way they promise.
As for teacher salary, if you’ve read me over the years, you know my next point. I grabbed the records for our first official school board, Newark City Schools (God bless Israel Dille!), and looked at their early years.
First, may I point out a regular gripe this scribe throws out: we educate many more, much more, of our total population of children than we used to. There were throwaway kids in the so-called "good ol’ days," and there aren’t any more. That creates certain challenges, and they cost money those challenges do, but don’t tell me we should go back to educating the easy half of all children.
In 1855, they estimated that Newark had 1,000 kids. They were very pleased that they had 820 enrolled, and that 540 of them made it to class any given day. That’s nearly a one-half attendance average. Yep, good ol’ days.
Too far back? In1865, 1,400 kids counted in the district, but still only 1,178 on the books, and a mere 629 average in class each day. 1875? 2,927 souls about, but only 1,563 names on the register, and 1,037 was an average day in the classroom. And1880 took Newark to 3,379 youth noted in the census, but 1,812 checked into the school system and 1,213 made it to school most days. That’s getting close to only a third in school.
In each of those years, the number of weeks in session were comparable to today, the class size was only a bit larger at 30 . . . and remember, only the more biddable third were sitting there.
But here’s the remarkable fact. If you plug the average teacher salary for1849 of $2,057 into the westegg.com/inflation calculator webpage – it gives you the result of $43,887.14 in 2005 dollars.
That’s right: the average teacher salary back when we started doing state mandated public schooling in Ohio is basically the same today. If you keep comparing through 1900, we actually are paying our teachers less in 2005 than we paid them then, and that’s to educate over 94% (the state mandated minimum attendance average).
And that’s why we have so many adults even now in Licking County without a high school degree. I’m glad we’re trying to give a basic education to everyone today, but we just can’t punish teachers and administrators for not getting that task done on less money. It just doesn’t add up.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he obviously has a thing for teachers and rangers, which is probably why he married someone who’s been both. Counter his statistics with a data dump to knapsack77@gmail.com.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Faith Works 9-16-06
Jeff Gill
Starting With Now
So you have some questions.
Your faith isn’t what you think it should be (or what you think others think you should think), and you don’t know where to start, or where to go.
Maybe you’ve bought a book – someone’s purchasing the bazillions of self-help, personal affirmation, "seeking the truth through more fiber in your diet" kind of books that clog the book stores and pile on the remainder tables at the door two weeks after they come out.
Didn’t do much for you, did it?
Actually, most of us don’t finish them anyhow, so maybe they could help. But a book on the nightstand or a stack of them on the side table in the living room only works for some. A relatively few some, in fact.
What you need to do is go to church.
Right, right, someone is already thinking of emailing me to say "your way ain’t my way, fella, so don’t go pushing me into your church." So let me rephrase just a bit.
Get out of the house, and go somewhere and be there with other people who have some of the same concerns, questions, and hopes. It might be an AA meeting, could be a small support group, it could be in a building with a cross on the steeple or not.
I will affirm my personal beliefs this far without qualification: I do believe that you can start just about anywhere, because if you are sincerely seeking a truth beyond your self and are open to God’s call, you will end up in the right place. It may not be where you first went, but you will get there. Christians call that "discernment," and it is available to anyone, but some are better at it ("gifted") than others.
But if you just stay inside your own head, you will start to hear the echoes answering back to you. If you just use the entire weekend to pursue personal preferences, whether golf, flea markets, or TV, the questions will remain and nibble at you.
Get out into a church – because that’s what most of you in Licking County are likely to do – and you will find strange traditions that no one can explain to you because they don’t even know they have them, like when to stand and sit. You will find aggravating people (kind of like you) and folks who have some pretty amazing ways of looking at world (kind of like you) and some who want to be part of something of lasting meaning (very much like you). They will not always sing songs you like, or have the exact activities you hoped would lead you to a clearer picture of the world and your place in it.
OK.
So if you can’t find a sense of place there after a few weeks, quietly move on. If you find yourself doing that three times in a year, stop and ask yourself, or ask someone you respect, how you are making yourself uncomfortable, but this is America. You can go wherever you want to worship.
And once you get settled in, speak up and listen closely. Ask questions, share your perspective, invite others to tell you their story and pay attention.
This is the time of year most places of worship of all sorts see the most visitors who are looking for a home for their faith. More visitors at Christmas or Easter don’t often mean they’re there to think about getting involved, although that can happen.
But Fall and school starting up and the days getting shorter is the season when people all around you start to think "should I be attending to my soul as well as I do my cholesterol?"
Churches of all sorts should be aware of that, as well. How do you welcome visitors? Not just when they come through the door, but when they come down the steps to the basement or go back into the ed building or whathaveyou. Is the whole fellowship attuned to the challenging work of welcoming new attenders into the life of the community?
The leaves are turning, and hearts are turning toward home in many ways. Watch the faces around you with the same interest you turn to the changing colors of nature.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him how you found a faith and fellowship to support it at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Starting With Now
So you have some questions.
Your faith isn’t what you think it should be (or what you think others think you should think), and you don’t know where to start, or where to go.
Maybe you’ve bought a book – someone’s purchasing the bazillions of self-help, personal affirmation, "seeking the truth through more fiber in your diet" kind of books that clog the book stores and pile on the remainder tables at the door two weeks after they come out.
Didn’t do much for you, did it?
Actually, most of us don’t finish them anyhow, so maybe they could help. But a book on the nightstand or a stack of them on the side table in the living room only works for some. A relatively few some, in fact.
What you need to do is go to church.
Right, right, someone is already thinking of emailing me to say "your way ain’t my way, fella, so don’t go pushing me into your church." So let me rephrase just a bit.
Get out of the house, and go somewhere and be there with other people who have some of the same concerns, questions, and hopes. It might be an AA meeting, could be a small support group, it could be in a building with a cross on the steeple or not.
I will affirm my personal beliefs this far without qualification: I do believe that you can start just about anywhere, because if you are sincerely seeking a truth beyond your self and are open to God’s call, you will end up in the right place. It may not be where you first went, but you will get there. Christians call that "discernment," and it is available to anyone, but some are better at it ("gifted") than others.
But if you just stay inside your own head, you will start to hear the echoes answering back to you. If you just use the entire weekend to pursue personal preferences, whether golf, flea markets, or TV, the questions will remain and nibble at you.
Get out into a church – because that’s what most of you in Licking County are likely to do – and you will find strange traditions that no one can explain to you because they don’t even know they have them, like when to stand and sit. You will find aggravating people (kind of like you) and folks who have some pretty amazing ways of looking at world (kind of like you) and some who want to be part of something of lasting meaning (very much like you). They will not always sing songs you like, or have the exact activities you hoped would lead you to a clearer picture of the world and your place in it.
OK.
So if you can’t find a sense of place there after a few weeks, quietly move on. If you find yourself doing that three times in a year, stop and ask yourself, or ask someone you respect, how you are making yourself uncomfortable, but this is America. You can go wherever you want to worship.
And once you get settled in, speak up and listen closely. Ask questions, share your perspective, invite others to tell you their story and pay attention.
This is the time of year most places of worship of all sorts see the most visitors who are looking for a home for their faith. More visitors at Christmas or Easter don’t often mean they’re there to think about getting involved, although that can happen.
But Fall and school starting up and the days getting shorter is the season when people all around you start to think "should I be attending to my soul as well as I do my cholesterol?"
Churches of all sorts should be aware of that, as well. How do you welcome visitors? Not just when they come through the door, but when they come down the steps to the basement or go back into the ed building or whathaveyou. Is the whole fellowship attuned to the challenging work of welcoming new attenders into the life of the community?
The leaves are turning, and hearts are turning toward home in many ways. Watch the faces around you with the same interest you turn to the changing colors of nature.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him how you found a faith and fellowship to support it at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Notes From My Knapsack 9-17-06
Jeff Gill
Get the Wideblade Shovels Out
Every election season there are certain constants.
Fall color, which is coming out on tree tops and forest edges, in soybean fields going yellow north to south, is also showing in yard signs for candidates and issues. Their red, white, and blue motifs, or focus group tested swirls of more exotic colors, clash a bit with the sweetgum leaves turning a more muted rainbow, but they are a sign of the times.
Another indicator is the BS output factor going on setting "high" from all kinds of candidates, state and local.
Writing for the papers, one is expected to avoid using the words "lie" or "lying," so any of us who try to scribble down something for print have to dance around words like prevarication, unsubstantiated, patently untrue, and so on.
Our Ohio governor’s race is pushing my good will to the absolute limit. Frankly, Ted Strickland has hardly said a word to make me want to vote for him, but he can rest easy on my account. Ken Blackwell has done a masterful job of making me want to crawl over ground glass lit on fire with kerosene to vote against him. No, I’m not holding back.
First we get the TEL amendment, which aside from any other dishonest statements made about how it will impact local government, Blackwell has made a sudden post-primary about-face and says, with Emily Litella, "Never mind."
But this utterly disingenuous education funding plan makes my blood boil, or at least causes a neck vein to throb. Aside from the demonization of administrators – and aren’t we all getting pretty tired of this one? – his plan will pass no additional dollars to the budgets of local school districts, but he’s skating on the thinnest ice of truth when he claims it will.
Like so many state funding of education tricks (see entry under "lottery dollars, no net gain from"), he proposes to give with one hand and take away with the other.
Because, you see, and trust me, Mr. Blackwell knows this quite well, the money he’s not giving to what his campaign calls administration, so he can give "more" (coff, hack, arrrgh) to the classroom, is required by both state and federal to be spent. It includes special education and special needs programs that delivers or provides education to kids we didn’t used to even try to teach. All those dollars that are spent on aides and health care support and special instructors and program support: the Blackwell plan calls "adminsitration."
There’s more like that, but you get the idea. And if we are required to offer this – which is a great thing, by the way, as opposed to warehousing the disabled and handicapped – and the state is "giving" us those dollars for the classroom (as they define it) only, where do the missing dollars come from?
Need I tell you?
So if this benighted plan were to be implemented, there would just be that much more pressure on passing local levies at higher millage. Which is their point. Make the funding process so byzantine and opaque, and on purpose (why do we have to pass 5.99 mills to get 1.7? It takes a powerpoint and thirty minutes to explain, but it’s all mandated by state law), so local voters get mad at their school boards and, here they are again in the bucket, the administrators.
And Blackwell isn’t even the worst of it. We’re treated to yet another round of skillfully misdirectional ads about "Ohio Learn and Earn," with the tagline "A lot of good will come of this." My Aunt Sadie. This is effort number 27 from the gaming industry (did you hear the words "slot machines" in their ad, at a lower sound volume and in a rush of words, otherwise carefully stated) to con us into giving them, well, OK, we’ll settle for 70% of the profits this time. But you poor saps get 30% for yer kids scholarships, so vote already!
No good will come of this, and when they trot out the line that sulky horse racing folk are really small family farmers who need our support in their tourism related business, I want to gag.
Am I making endorsements here? Sadly, there isn’t much to endorse in Ohio politics right now. But I can see what could actually be worse than the status quo, and that’s what we’re looking at this November.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he isn’t too happy about state-supported lotteries, either. Argue with him and make your points at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Get the Wideblade Shovels Out
Every election season there are certain constants.
Fall color, which is coming out on tree tops and forest edges, in soybean fields going yellow north to south, is also showing in yard signs for candidates and issues. Their red, white, and blue motifs, or focus group tested swirls of more exotic colors, clash a bit with the sweetgum leaves turning a more muted rainbow, but they are a sign of the times.
Another indicator is the BS output factor going on setting "high" from all kinds of candidates, state and local.
Writing for the papers, one is expected to avoid using the words "lie" or "lying," so any of us who try to scribble down something for print have to dance around words like prevarication, unsubstantiated, patently untrue, and so on.
Our Ohio governor’s race is pushing my good will to the absolute limit. Frankly, Ted Strickland has hardly said a word to make me want to vote for him, but he can rest easy on my account. Ken Blackwell has done a masterful job of making me want to crawl over ground glass lit on fire with kerosene to vote against him. No, I’m not holding back.
First we get the TEL amendment, which aside from any other dishonest statements made about how it will impact local government, Blackwell has made a sudden post-primary about-face and says, with Emily Litella, "Never mind."
But this utterly disingenuous education funding plan makes my blood boil, or at least causes a neck vein to throb. Aside from the demonization of administrators – and aren’t we all getting pretty tired of this one? – his plan will pass no additional dollars to the budgets of local school districts, but he’s skating on the thinnest ice of truth when he claims it will.
Like so many state funding of education tricks (see entry under "lottery dollars, no net gain from"), he proposes to give with one hand and take away with the other.
Because, you see, and trust me, Mr. Blackwell knows this quite well, the money he’s not giving to what his campaign calls administration, so he can give "more" (coff, hack, arrrgh) to the classroom, is required by both state and federal to be spent. It includes special education and special needs programs that delivers or provides education to kids we didn’t used to even try to teach. All those dollars that are spent on aides and health care support and special instructors and program support: the Blackwell plan calls "adminsitration."
There’s more like that, but you get the idea. And if we are required to offer this – which is a great thing, by the way, as opposed to warehousing the disabled and handicapped – and the state is "giving" us those dollars for the classroom (as they define it) only, where do the missing dollars come from?
Need I tell you?
So if this benighted plan were to be implemented, there would just be that much more pressure on passing local levies at higher millage. Which is their point. Make the funding process so byzantine and opaque, and on purpose (why do we have to pass 5.99 mills to get 1.7? It takes a powerpoint and thirty minutes to explain, but it’s all mandated by state law), so local voters get mad at their school boards and, here they are again in the bucket, the administrators.
And Blackwell isn’t even the worst of it. We’re treated to yet another round of skillfully misdirectional ads about "Ohio Learn and Earn," with the tagline "A lot of good will come of this." My Aunt Sadie. This is effort number 27 from the gaming industry (did you hear the words "slot machines" in their ad, at a lower sound volume and in a rush of words, otherwise carefully stated) to con us into giving them, well, OK, we’ll settle for 70% of the profits this time. But you poor saps get 30% for yer kids scholarships, so vote already!
No good will come of this, and when they trot out the line that sulky horse racing folk are really small family farmers who need our support in their tourism related business, I want to gag.
Am I making endorsements here? Sadly, there isn’t much to endorse in Ohio politics right now. But I can see what could actually be worse than the status quo, and that’s what we’re looking at this November.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he isn’t too happy about state-supported lotteries, either. Argue with him and make your points at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Faith Works 9-9-06
Jeff Gill
Sept. 9 – 2006, or 2001?
Five years later, and what is different?
For those who have been to Iraq or Afghanistan, and especially for those who have had those they love go and not return, much has changed. For the rest of us, I wonder. I really do.
A few weeks ago, five years ago, I was driving back from my last church camp responsibility of the summer, and listening to the one station that I could get on that stretch of road. The host was talking, on and on and on, about Chandra Levy and the congressman suspected in her disappearance. As I wondered if he had absolutely nothing else to talk about, he went on to discuss the dating travails of either Jenniston or Jlo or Beyond-saying. I forget.
At any rate, it was a beautiful day, and Columbus area stations began to come in with music I liked. Then I got home, and shuffled through a pile of papers and magazines, most of which had cover stories on shark attacks. "Could You Be At Risk?" shouted the headlines, and I hope I wasn’t too casual about the miseries of others when thinking, "not in Licking County, I’ll bet."
Last night, this year, a host on cable TV sternly asked me, in regard to stingray barbs, "Could you be at risk?"
George Barna is a leading pollster in the Christian community, having worked for years on market research for a little bizness called Disney. He did a specific survey which was announced last week, telling many of us what we already knew. "9-11 had no appreciable impact on faith for Americans."
I was wrong five years ago. I really thought that we would see a new seriousness, a healthy seriousness in this land, and in churches, about our calling to respond to crisis today with timeless teaching, our need to promote better understanding of a complex world and where a simple faith can change it.
Yes, I thought it would get a few more people to church, too, not that any pastor saw that as a good or God-sent thing, but a situation that God could craft good out from. What pretty much every church I know saw was two weeks of attendance spike, and then a soft "whooshing" sound as the bubble deflated.
Barna’s data says that was nationwide, the two week up-down thing. If it promoted any further reflection on why God would allow evil acts to play out on the earthly stage, or what my role in confronting anger and destructive vengeance would be, it doesn’t show up in the polling data. Apparently some individual responses, like Pat Tillman or Oliver Stone, were the exception and not the rule.
And no one has to tell you about the pictures of Baby Suri, do they?
When the planes hit, I was in a meeting, at a church, working on a co-operative ministry project. When I first heard what was going on, I was in my car on Rt. 16 heading to a meeting with the chaplain at Denison. After we got together, and huddled around a TV with many others, and watched the first tower collapse, we hurried to a gathering of clergy where we began to plan what a prayer service for that evening would look like. Then I left them to their details, and drove back to my (then) church and opened the doors, where people began showing up looking for a place to pray within minutes.
That night, hundreds showed up from five or six churches and some from none, but we prayed and reflected together on what God asked of us in a situation like this. Most of us left still rattled and worried, but a bit more hopeful.
Looking back, at lest for me, the church as a whole and my faith was doing what it should have been about on 9-11, in 2001.
Maybe we didn’t need much to change from five years ago, looking back on that night, so much as we needed something to grow. A wider vision, and a more solid hope based on a broader community. We still need that to happen, and we still can be part of that growth.
And we don’t need Hollywood baby pictures, unless they’re your grandkids. Then you can just show them to me in person, and not on TV. They grow up fast, don’t they?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; offer him your perspective at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Sept. 9 – 2006, or 2001?
Five years later, and what is different?
For those who have been to Iraq or Afghanistan, and especially for those who have had those they love go and not return, much has changed. For the rest of us, I wonder. I really do.
A few weeks ago, five years ago, I was driving back from my last church camp responsibility of the summer, and listening to the one station that I could get on that stretch of road. The host was talking, on and on and on, about Chandra Levy and the congressman suspected in her disappearance. As I wondered if he had absolutely nothing else to talk about, he went on to discuss the dating travails of either Jenniston or Jlo or Beyond-saying. I forget.
At any rate, it was a beautiful day, and Columbus area stations began to come in with music I liked. Then I got home, and shuffled through a pile of papers and magazines, most of which had cover stories on shark attacks. "Could You Be At Risk?" shouted the headlines, and I hope I wasn’t too casual about the miseries of others when thinking, "not in Licking County, I’ll bet."
Last night, this year, a host on cable TV sternly asked me, in regard to stingray barbs, "Could you be at risk?"
George Barna is a leading pollster in the Christian community, having worked for years on market research for a little bizness called Disney. He did a specific survey which was announced last week, telling many of us what we already knew. "9-11 had no appreciable impact on faith for Americans."
I was wrong five years ago. I really thought that we would see a new seriousness, a healthy seriousness in this land, and in churches, about our calling to respond to crisis today with timeless teaching, our need to promote better understanding of a complex world and where a simple faith can change it.
Yes, I thought it would get a few more people to church, too, not that any pastor saw that as a good or God-sent thing, but a situation that God could craft good out from. What pretty much every church I know saw was two weeks of attendance spike, and then a soft "whooshing" sound as the bubble deflated.
Barna’s data says that was nationwide, the two week up-down thing. If it promoted any further reflection on why God would allow evil acts to play out on the earthly stage, or what my role in confronting anger and destructive vengeance would be, it doesn’t show up in the polling data. Apparently some individual responses, like Pat Tillman or Oliver Stone, were the exception and not the rule.
And no one has to tell you about the pictures of Baby Suri, do they?
When the planes hit, I was in a meeting, at a church, working on a co-operative ministry project. When I first heard what was going on, I was in my car on Rt. 16 heading to a meeting with the chaplain at Denison. After we got together, and huddled around a TV with many others, and watched the first tower collapse, we hurried to a gathering of clergy where we began to plan what a prayer service for that evening would look like. Then I left them to their details, and drove back to my (then) church and opened the doors, where people began showing up looking for a place to pray within minutes.
That night, hundreds showed up from five or six churches and some from none, but we prayed and reflected together on what God asked of us in a situation like this. Most of us left still rattled and worried, but a bit more hopeful.
Looking back, at lest for me, the church as a whole and my faith was doing what it should have been about on 9-11, in 2001.
Maybe we didn’t need much to change from five years ago, looking back on that night, so much as we needed something to grow. A wider vision, and a more solid hope based on a broader community. We still need that to happen, and we still can be part of that growth.
And we don’t need Hollywood baby pictures, unless they’re your grandkids. Then you can just show them to me in person, and not on TV. They grow up fast, don’t they?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; offer him your perspective at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Notes From My Knapsack 9-10-06
Jeff Gill
In a Missing Shadow
Five years on. Hard to believe, in so many ways. Anyone over the age of 10 recalls that day, the experience of watching TV, talking to neighbors, going to church that night as houses of worship and clergy all over threw open the doors and put together a service of prayer and searching.
Searching for . . . well, answers, understanding, sense: about the motives of the action (still not really understood), the roots of the effort (rarely discussed, even now), the nature of God and the place of evil (resolution still pending).
Looking back, I think about a group of young men, gathered around a charismatic, shadowy leader, who mustered anger. Anger at the presence of foreigners in their land, at exploitation of natural resources and the spectre of privilege in the wealth of these alien interlopers, coalesced around a resentment at their strange religion, making inroads through their homeland.
Even with the out of scale hostility, all this can make a measure of sense, until it erupts in senseless slaughter of men, women, and even children; worse when you look closely at their ideology’s activity in their own lands and realize how many of their own people they have killed.
You know this kind of cruelty and rage must be faced, named, and not allowed to spread, but observe with unease how the swift, massive multinational effort to put down this movement generates a new and different level of resentment that has the capacity to spread far beyond the grievances of the original brutal terrorists.
Which is my way of describing the Boxer Rebellion, an uprising a hundred years before 9-11 slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
The "Righteous Harmony Society" had a martial arts element to their group exercises that led to the English nickname "Boxers." In Peking, China, by 1899, diplomats, businessfolk, and missionaries saw the Boxers grow, but labeled them as a threat more to the Imperial House of China than to themselves.
They were tragically wrong.
The Boxers would have happily flown planes into buildings in London or Berlin or New York, if there were planes then, or if they could have even imagined the other side of the world. Instead, they seized and decapitated all the westerners they could, children included, and did their worst to Chinese Christians and any others who associated with the buyers and sellers from across the ocean.
Eight nations, America, England, Germany, Russia, and Japan among them, joined forces to invade and rescue the occupants of western embassies, including many who had taken refuge there other than diplomats. This multinational effort, in hindsight, needed a United Nations, taking a long time to co-ordinate simple processes to get to where they were going. Individual contingents went off on their own national agendas – German soldiers first gained the nickname "Huns" from their British cousins for their treatment of innocent civilians as instructed by the Kaiser.
The Boxers were crushed, some executed, and China returned (briefly) to Imperial control. Popular distaste for the government’s involvement with foreign powers led to civil wars for decades, only ending with Chairman Mao. Russian adventurism and Japanese expansionism, fueled by the Boxer events, set the stage for the Russo-Japanese War, the prelude to the disastrous symphony of 1914 to 1945.
What we are of necessity doing in response to 9-11 has many potentially unnecessary outcomes. National choices today are directly shaping future events ten, twenty, even fifty years and more down the path. Do we know what kind of world we are trying to create? How are the actions we take now forming those future possibilities?
It can take a while to get perspective on such questions, but time doesn’t always give the clearest point of view. In recent years, Oberlin College to our north has had a problem on graduation day. Since 1903, a Memorial Arch has stood near the center of campus, remembering 19 alumni and their children who were killed by the Boxers, missionaries trained at that school. The commencement procession marches through the arch and colonnade on their way to their diplomas.
The problem is that a number of today’s students have decided that they cannot walk through this arch, out of disagreement with Christian evangelism or American imperialism or a lack of mention of Chinese victims on the plaques. So they break from the procession and run around the wings of the Memorial Arch, rejoining their fellows on the other side.
History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; toss him a tale through knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
In a Missing Shadow
Five years on. Hard to believe, in so many ways. Anyone over the age of 10 recalls that day, the experience of watching TV, talking to neighbors, going to church that night as houses of worship and clergy all over threw open the doors and put together a service of prayer and searching.
Searching for . . . well, answers, understanding, sense: about the motives of the action (still not really understood), the roots of the effort (rarely discussed, even now), the nature of God and the place of evil (resolution still pending).
Looking back, I think about a group of young men, gathered around a charismatic, shadowy leader, who mustered anger. Anger at the presence of foreigners in their land, at exploitation of natural resources and the spectre of privilege in the wealth of these alien interlopers, coalesced around a resentment at their strange religion, making inroads through their homeland.
Even with the out of scale hostility, all this can make a measure of sense, until it erupts in senseless slaughter of men, women, and even children; worse when you look closely at their ideology’s activity in their own lands and realize how many of their own people they have killed.
You know this kind of cruelty and rage must be faced, named, and not allowed to spread, but observe with unease how the swift, massive multinational effort to put down this movement generates a new and different level of resentment that has the capacity to spread far beyond the grievances of the original brutal terrorists.
Which is my way of describing the Boxer Rebellion, an uprising a hundred years before 9-11 slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
The "Righteous Harmony Society" had a martial arts element to their group exercises that led to the English nickname "Boxers." In Peking, China, by 1899, diplomats, businessfolk, and missionaries saw the Boxers grow, but labeled them as a threat more to the Imperial House of China than to themselves.
They were tragically wrong.
The Boxers would have happily flown planes into buildings in London or Berlin or New York, if there were planes then, or if they could have even imagined the other side of the world. Instead, they seized and decapitated all the westerners they could, children included, and did their worst to Chinese Christians and any others who associated with the buyers and sellers from across the ocean.
Eight nations, America, England, Germany, Russia, and Japan among them, joined forces to invade and rescue the occupants of western embassies, including many who had taken refuge there other than diplomats. This multinational effort, in hindsight, needed a United Nations, taking a long time to co-ordinate simple processes to get to where they were going. Individual contingents went off on their own national agendas – German soldiers first gained the nickname "Huns" from their British cousins for their treatment of innocent civilians as instructed by the Kaiser.
The Boxers were crushed, some executed, and China returned (briefly) to Imperial control. Popular distaste for the government’s involvement with foreign powers led to civil wars for decades, only ending with Chairman Mao. Russian adventurism and Japanese expansionism, fueled by the Boxer events, set the stage for the Russo-Japanese War, the prelude to the disastrous symphony of 1914 to 1945.
What we are of necessity doing in response to 9-11 has many potentially unnecessary outcomes. National choices today are directly shaping future events ten, twenty, even fifty years and more down the path. Do we know what kind of world we are trying to create? How are the actions we take now forming those future possibilities?
It can take a while to get perspective on such questions, but time doesn’t always give the clearest point of view. In recent years, Oberlin College to our north has had a problem on graduation day. Since 1903, a Memorial Arch has stood near the center of campus, remembering 19 alumni and their children who were killed by the Boxers, missionaries trained at that school. The commencement procession marches through the arch and colonnade on their way to their diplomas.
The problem is that a number of today’s students have decided that they cannot walk through this arch, out of disagreement with Christian evangelism or American imperialism or a lack of mention of Chinese victims on the plaques. So they break from the procession and run around the wings of the Memorial Arch, rejoining their fellows on the other side.
History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; toss him a tale through knapsack77@gmail.com.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Faith Works 9-2-06
Jeff Gill
Free Exercise of Religion, and Freedom of the Press
The page you’re reading right now represents an interesting intersection of two elements in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
That’s it, that’s the First Amendment, so often cited piecemeal or selectively.
My thought is that this statement is meant as a whole, one entire thought expressed in 45 words.
These words were written almost 220 years ago. Just 35 years after that, Benjamin Briggs founded the newspaper we still call the "Newark Advocate." (We don’t know if they pronounced it "Ad-vo-kate" or "Ad-vuh-kit" back then.)
For 185 years, people have both expressed their sentiments through the pages of this paper, and expressed their frustration with the opinions expressed by others in this paper. Hill’s 1881 history of Licking County recounts the ire of Granville citizens over slights they perceived coming from the county seat in the early days of the paper, and records:
"Shortly after a number of subscribers took produce of various kinds to Newark to pay their subscriptions and stop the paper. Briggs published in his next issue an article in regard to the matter, attempting to ridicule the people, and there the matter ended; but the Advocate, after that time, never had much circulation there while he conducted it."
Sereno Wright began "The Wanderer" in response, but that paper lasted only a couple years, and irregularly at that.
But it wasn’t closed by government action or any other reason than that it couldn’t pay the bills. Meanwhile, one way or another (maybe he took the produce to the farmer’s market and cashed it in), Mr. Briggs kept the paper going. He sold it in later life, having served in Congress and other public offices, and the community institution many still call "The Aggravate" has passed through many hands, now owned by the Gannett Corporation and with a significant internet presence.
Likewise our churches are free to thrive, or close, independent of any legal pressure or support. Times change, and many of the houses of worship lovingly depicted in 1800’s histories are both closed and forgotten. Newark’s "New Jerusalem Church" once had a vital congregation and many civic officials in her pews, and by 1890 their building site was a brewery.
Freedom of religion, and freedom of the press. Both are freedoms to close up shop as well as to open new branches, a marketplace of ideas seeking support from the public. A.J. Liebling famously noted that "freedom of the press is limited to those that own one," but the internet has made it possible for all sort of purveyors of news and information to provide their service and seek compensation in new and unexpected ways, even without a printing press and all that messy ink in the basement.
Freedom of religion is expressed both by those choosing to opt out of joining a church altogether, and by the right to open up a church in one’s living room or nearby storefront. Licking County has her share of both.
I appreciate the opportunity this newspaper gives to engage freedom of expression and freedom of religion on this page and in my column, and I really can’t express how engaging it is, for me personally, to try to communicate the breadth of how those freedoms are lived out around our area.
185 years later, I think Benj. Briggs would approve, and offer me a tomato, only slightly bruised.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he has plenty of tomatoes. Exercise your freedom of expression by writing him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Free Exercise of Religion, and Freedom of the Press
The page you’re reading right now represents an interesting intersection of two elements in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
That’s it, that’s the First Amendment, so often cited piecemeal or selectively.
My thought is that this statement is meant as a whole, one entire thought expressed in 45 words.
These words were written almost 220 years ago. Just 35 years after that, Benjamin Briggs founded the newspaper we still call the "Newark Advocate." (We don’t know if they pronounced it "Ad-vo-kate" or "Ad-vuh-kit" back then.)
For 185 years, people have both expressed their sentiments through the pages of this paper, and expressed their frustration with the opinions expressed by others in this paper. Hill’s 1881 history of Licking County recounts the ire of Granville citizens over slights they perceived coming from the county seat in the early days of the paper, and records:
"Shortly after a number of subscribers took produce of various kinds to Newark to pay their subscriptions and stop the paper. Briggs published in his next issue an article in regard to the matter, attempting to ridicule the people, and there the matter ended; but the Advocate, after that time, never had much circulation there while he conducted it."
Sereno Wright began "The Wanderer" in response, but that paper lasted only a couple years, and irregularly at that.
But it wasn’t closed by government action or any other reason than that it couldn’t pay the bills. Meanwhile, one way or another (maybe he took the produce to the farmer’s market and cashed it in), Mr. Briggs kept the paper going. He sold it in later life, having served in Congress and other public offices, and the community institution many still call "The Aggravate" has passed through many hands, now owned by the Gannett Corporation and with a significant internet presence.
Likewise our churches are free to thrive, or close, independent of any legal pressure or support. Times change, and many of the houses of worship lovingly depicted in 1800’s histories are both closed and forgotten. Newark’s "New Jerusalem Church" once had a vital congregation and many civic officials in her pews, and by 1890 their building site was a brewery.
Freedom of religion, and freedom of the press. Both are freedoms to close up shop as well as to open new branches, a marketplace of ideas seeking support from the public. A.J. Liebling famously noted that "freedom of the press is limited to those that own one," but the internet has made it possible for all sort of purveyors of news and information to provide their service and seek compensation in new and unexpected ways, even without a printing press and all that messy ink in the basement.
Freedom of religion is expressed both by those choosing to opt out of joining a church altogether, and by the right to open up a church in one’s living room or nearby storefront. Licking County has her share of both.
I appreciate the opportunity this newspaper gives to engage freedom of expression and freedom of religion on this page and in my column, and I really can’t express how engaging it is, for me personally, to try to communicate the breadth of how those freedoms are lived out around our area.
185 years later, I think Benj. Briggs would approve, and offer me a tomato, only slightly bruised.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he has plenty of tomatoes. Exercise your freedom of expression by writing him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Notes From My Knapsack 9-3-06
Jeff Gill
Pestofest 2006 Draws To a Close
Three basil plants on the Gill acreage (OK, maybe 50 square feet) are still pushing out the foliage, but the stalk is getting woody and the lower leaves yellow.
The cicadas are in the thirtieth day of their infernal racket, which may be the sound of romantic murmurings by Julio to certain female insects, but sounds to me like the singing of Hasselhoff. Folk wisdom sayeth forty-five days after the cicada chorus begins, the first frost wins, so we’re two days from our initial morning dusting of white.
I could eat pesto and tear up basil leaves over food all year long (except raisin bran), but they are a taste of late summer at heart, with the season cheating pleasure of some pesto from the freezer in October.
My colleague Trish elsewhere in these pages said, last week, that her pesto recipe uses walnuts. I’m gonna have to try that; we both know the canonical ingredient is pine nuts, which can be found nowadays in this area, but before that became common I got into the habit of making it with almonds. I even used macadamia nuts once when I was out of almonds and didn’t know it until I had started food processing the leaves of basil, garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice.
She also recommends adding parmesan cheese to frozen pesto only after you thaw, which makes sense. Probably would keep it less clumpy, which doesn’t bother me much, but helps in serving.
Trish has well-explained recipes in her column, which I can never do, because, well, here’s why. Another seasonal favorite of mine is a Tuscan salad, which I make this way: take a bunch of onions from the garden, and some big handfuls of basil, including the budding tops of nested crowns which are where the plant gets its name ("basilea," or kingdom in Greek). Chop ‘em up, and then find some tomatoes from friends who don’t live in a deer browsing zone and chop them up. Mince a few cloves of garlic, and toss it all up with them and a few dashes of balsamic vinegar. Take a big hunk of mozarella cheese and cube it up, toss in not long before serving. Serves lots.
You can see why I don’t write a recipe column.
What I do like to write and talk and even preach about is the value of eating food you raised, even in modest amounts, or at least food grown locally, or at least making sure of putting some emphasis on eating seasonally.
There’s a fine line, and one I probably cross, between tooting your own horn and letting people know "hey, this is food I grew or was grown by people I know down the road." There was a study done recently looking at some average Iowa families and their dinner tables. Turns out that while they were primarily eating food that could be grown and raised in their county, let alone their state, they were actually consuming mostly food from California, Oregon, and other countries.
Start with the fuel costs (and pollution) of getting that food down the highway to them, add chemicals and processes needed to ship foodstuffs that kind of distance and under those pressures of packaging – oh, and the environmental cost of packaging – and don’t forget the health aspects of all that plus the still studied issue of what eating food out of your own ecosystem does for you, and it looks crazy, doesn’t it?
When I’ve defended Wal-Mart in the past (and I will again, probably), what I’m thinking we should be concerned about is the model that creates illusory, or at least very short-term cost savings. Cheap energy makes it look like radishes from Ecuador cost less, but that simply isn’t true in a global sense. Beef from five states away and even sweet corn from the other side of the Mississippi is costing the global system somewhere, even when we think we’re getting a deal.
So promoting the concept of eating locally is important to me. I’m not a fundamentalist in religion, politics, or the environment, so I’m not a vegetarian and I don’t throw a fit (in front of company) over fisheries degradation when swordfish is served. It just makes sense to grab the local gusto or pesto when it comes by, and if more people did a bit more of that some more of the time, we’d live more lightly on this lovely planet filled with so much food and so many hungry people.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s a bit of a gardener, too. Send recipes or rants to knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Pestofest 2006 Draws To a Close
Three basil plants on the Gill acreage (OK, maybe 50 square feet) are still pushing out the foliage, but the stalk is getting woody and the lower leaves yellow.
The cicadas are in the thirtieth day of their infernal racket, which may be the sound of romantic murmurings by Julio to certain female insects, but sounds to me like the singing of Hasselhoff. Folk wisdom sayeth forty-five days after the cicada chorus begins, the first frost wins, so we’re two days from our initial morning dusting of white.
I could eat pesto and tear up basil leaves over food all year long (except raisin bran), but they are a taste of late summer at heart, with the season cheating pleasure of some pesto from the freezer in October.
My colleague Trish elsewhere in these pages said, last week, that her pesto recipe uses walnuts. I’m gonna have to try that; we both know the canonical ingredient is pine nuts, which can be found nowadays in this area, but before that became common I got into the habit of making it with almonds. I even used macadamia nuts once when I was out of almonds and didn’t know it until I had started food processing the leaves of basil, garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice.
She also recommends adding parmesan cheese to frozen pesto only after you thaw, which makes sense. Probably would keep it less clumpy, which doesn’t bother me much, but helps in serving.
Trish has well-explained recipes in her column, which I can never do, because, well, here’s why. Another seasonal favorite of mine is a Tuscan salad, which I make this way: take a bunch of onions from the garden, and some big handfuls of basil, including the budding tops of nested crowns which are where the plant gets its name ("basilea," or kingdom in Greek). Chop ‘em up, and then find some tomatoes from friends who don’t live in a deer browsing zone and chop them up. Mince a few cloves of garlic, and toss it all up with them and a few dashes of balsamic vinegar. Take a big hunk of mozarella cheese and cube it up, toss in not long before serving. Serves lots.
You can see why I don’t write a recipe column.
What I do like to write and talk and even preach about is the value of eating food you raised, even in modest amounts, or at least food grown locally, or at least making sure of putting some emphasis on eating seasonally.
There’s a fine line, and one I probably cross, between tooting your own horn and letting people know "hey, this is food I grew or was grown by people I know down the road." There was a study done recently looking at some average Iowa families and their dinner tables. Turns out that while they were primarily eating food that could be grown and raised in their county, let alone their state, they were actually consuming mostly food from California, Oregon, and other countries.
Start with the fuel costs (and pollution) of getting that food down the highway to them, add chemicals and processes needed to ship foodstuffs that kind of distance and under those pressures of packaging – oh, and the environmental cost of packaging – and don’t forget the health aspects of all that plus the still studied issue of what eating food out of your own ecosystem does for you, and it looks crazy, doesn’t it?
When I’ve defended Wal-Mart in the past (and I will again, probably), what I’m thinking we should be concerned about is the model that creates illusory, or at least very short-term cost savings. Cheap energy makes it look like radishes from Ecuador cost less, but that simply isn’t true in a global sense. Beef from five states away and even sweet corn from the other side of the Mississippi is costing the global system somewhere, even when we think we’re getting a deal.
So promoting the concept of eating locally is important to me. I’m not a fundamentalist in religion, politics, or the environment, so I’m not a vegetarian and I don’t throw a fit (in front of company) over fisheries degradation when swordfish is served. It just makes sense to grab the local gusto or pesto when it comes by, and if more people did a bit more of that some more of the time, we’d live more lightly on this lovely planet filled with so much food and so many hungry people.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s a bit of a gardener, too. Send recipes or rants to knapsack77@gmail.com.
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