For Easter weekend, here's someone worth getting to know --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulos_Faraj_Rahho
May his flock grieve his loss, remember his life, and keep his faith!
Friday, March 21, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Notes From My Knapsack 3-23-08
Jeff Gill
A Bit of Life, Everlasting
Snow on Easter morning is by no means unusual in central Ohio.
It can make you feel like spring will never arrive, but the brevity and transience of it usually just makes a new season seem all the more certain.
Spring by the celestial calendar just took a bow, day and night being equal. The sun rises at the same spot it did last September and will, God willing, next September, these being autumn and vernal equinoxes.
Now the days start to stretch out, and the sun’s angle warms the earth deeper and longer, triggering all kinds of root action and sprouting, both your perennials and the perennial weeds. Bulbs shoot up first, their store of energy gathered up last year, just waiting for the subsoil temperatures to set off the green fuse.
Trees are starting to circulate their sweetest sap, drawn from moisture below the earth and cycling sugars born high above the forest floor in last year’s leaves. You can see taps and hooded buckets, the implements of syrup production, hanging from the trunks of maples all over Licking County, not the least of which are The Dawes Arboretum’s high tech pouch and tube collection system.
And the grass is thinking very seriously about growing.
For the celebration of Easter, so early on this year’s calendar, the tradition in Western Christendom is to follow the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which is to say, this weekend.
Judaism uses a truly lunar calendar, so Passover, one of the roots of the Passion narrative at the heart of Christian observances, is some weeks off. Eastern Orthodoxy chose centuries ago to stay with the echo of the Hebrew calendar, so your Orthodox friends just finished the second week of Lent (and a rigorous, no meat or dairy Lenten fast it is), and their Easter celebration is yet a ways off.
This season is still closely bound for everyone in reflections on new life, new hope, new birth. Lambing and planting and first fruits and mower maintenance are all wound around resurrection and renewal from mud and grit and decayed plants, turning swiftly into tender blossomings and wild revivals of life, often where you neither expect or want it.
But there it is.
Catholic Christians and other liturgical traditions have a history around ending Holy Saturday with an Easter Vigil, a series of readings that echo the lessons and carols of Christmas Eve, and erupting at midnight with a blaze of flame and light in the heart of darkness. Processions around the church with the new light are part of that vigil both East and West, Orthodox and Catholic, and even a riotous ringing of bells depending on your neighbors.
Protestant Christians, having only begun to reappropriate special services for Easter week in the last few decades (Lutherans and Anglicans having never left them), took the Easter Vigil and did a typically Protestant thing with it – they weren’t going to stay up late, but they would get up early.
So the sunrise service was born.
In our area, there are many more sunrise or “Son-rise Services” than Easter Vigils, though the students at Denison are renewing the tradition in their own way late on Saturday at Swasey Chapel, high above Raccoon Creek’s valley. Unsurprisingly, college students aren’t too fased by the idea of staying up late.
Many folks who don’t attend much or any worship of any sort are willing to stagger out into the Sunday pre-dawn dark and find their way to the Midland Theater for the Newark community sunrise service, as long as a good breakfast follows (donations for the Jail Ministry program).
If you are part of a sunrise service at Dawes or a vigil bonfire behind your church or just wait for the main service where you can show off a new outfit on your toddler, may your Easter usher in a season of new life and new hope . . . and may the old saw be broken that there’s three snows after the forsythia blooms!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about new life in your neck of the woods at knapsack77@gmail.com.
* * *
Faith Works 3-22-08
Jeff Gill
A Pastor’s Heart, A Shepherd’s Love
“Death Comes For the Archbishop” is a novel published in 1927 by Willa Cather. The cleric so named was Latour in the book, but he was based on the very real Jean Baptiste Lamy, founding pastor of St. Francis de Sales in Newark.
In pre-Civil War era Licking County, this Frenchman came as the result of a missionary call from his homeland, to serve a bishop based in Cincinnati who had put out a call for priests. So Father Lamy crossed the ocean, half a continent, and came to a still wild land, planting parishes in Danville, Mount Vernon, and right here in Newark.
He was effective enough in this challenging work that he was, to Lamy’s own surprise, named the first bishop of New Mexico in 1850, even before he had ever been there. Cather’s novel begins, sadly for us, with his journey starting in Cincinnati heading west, and ends, after building churches and chapels and a cathedral, with his death, and burial beneath the floor of the nave, where Archbishop Lamy rests today.
You might visit Santa Fe someday, founded 200 years before Licking County was founded (that’s right, as we have a bicentennial, they will observe a quadricentennial, the oldest capital city in the US, established as such in 1610, about two years after the settlement was founded). Near the central plaza is the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, finished in 1868. In front of the Romanesque church, with French details, is a statue of Archbishop Lamy.
Or you can drive out Granville Street from downtown Newark, and look up at the second floor window of the Lamy Center of St. Francis’ parish, and see a statue of him there.
“Death Comes For the Archbishop” was the headline in many papers a few weeks back, with the discovery of the body of the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Iraq.
Paulos Faraj Rahho lived in Mosul, near the site of Biblical “Ninevah” of Jonah’s story, for most of his 65 years. A priest, and part of the long-standing but now dwindling Christian community of Iraq, his eastern tradition of Catholicism is recognized by the Vatican, and his last trip out of Iraq was to attend Pope John Paul II’s funeral.
Archbishop, or “Mar” Paulos did not leave his people much or for long, though he was offered shelter and protection in the west as his life was threatened over and over again by radical Islamist groups. Moslem clerics in Mosul offered Mar Rahho their own bodyguards to aid him, such was the respect he held throughout the community as leader of his small but faithful Chaldean Christians (about 20,000 out of 2 million).
That respect was no doubt part of why he was targeted, and finally kidnapped last month, in a flurry of gunfire that killed his bodyguards, ending with the archbishop being thrown into a car trunk and taken away.
But this pastor was not done caring for his flock, even in imminent danger of death. He still had a cell phone in a pocket of his robe, and he called his office from the trunk, telling them urgently not to negotiate with terrorists and especially to refuse to pay any ransom for his safe return.
According to Asia News, his grieving staff said after Mar Paulos’ body was found in a shallow grave outside of the city, “He believed this money would not be paid for good works and would be used for killing and more evil actions.”
Just three months earlier, Mar Paulos said this: “We, Christians of Mesopotamia, are used to religious persecution and pressures by those in power. After Constantine, persecution ended only for Western Christians, whereas in the East threats continued. Even today we continue to be a Church of martyrs.”
On this Holy Saturday, as many of us anticipate the joy of Easter morning here in “the West,” remember in your prayers of celebration all those around the world who still must cautiously proclaim “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed.”
And be thankful that we can say it out loud, with a smile and a song, inside the church building, and walking down the street.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; sing your song of joy for him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
A Bit of Life, Everlasting
Snow on Easter morning is by no means unusual in central Ohio.
It can make you feel like spring will never arrive, but the brevity and transience of it usually just makes a new season seem all the more certain.
Spring by the celestial calendar just took a bow, day and night being equal. The sun rises at the same spot it did last September and will, God willing, next September, these being autumn and vernal equinoxes.
Now the days start to stretch out, and the sun’s angle warms the earth deeper and longer, triggering all kinds of root action and sprouting, both your perennials and the perennial weeds. Bulbs shoot up first, their store of energy gathered up last year, just waiting for the subsoil temperatures to set off the green fuse.
Trees are starting to circulate their sweetest sap, drawn from moisture below the earth and cycling sugars born high above the forest floor in last year’s leaves. You can see taps and hooded buckets, the implements of syrup production, hanging from the trunks of maples all over Licking County, not the least of which are The Dawes Arboretum’s high tech pouch and tube collection system.
And the grass is thinking very seriously about growing.
For the celebration of Easter, so early on this year’s calendar, the tradition in Western Christendom is to follow the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which is to say, this weekend.
Judaism uses a truly lunar calendar, so Passover, one of the roots of the Passion narrative at the heart of Christian observances, is some weeks off. Eastern Orthodoxy chose centuries ago to stay with the echo of the Hebrew calendar, so your Orthodox friends just finished the second week of Lent (and a rigorous, no meat or dairy Lenten fast it is), and their Easter celebration is yet a ways off.
This season is still closely bound for everyone in reflections on new life, new hope, new birth. Lambing and planting and first fruits and mower maintenance are all wound around resurrection and renewal from mud and grit and decayed plants, turning swiftly into tender blossomings and wild revivals of life, often where you neither expect or want it.
But there it is.
Catholic Christians and other liturgical traditions have a history around ending Holy Saturday with an Easter Vigil, a series of readings that echo the lessons and carols of Christmas Eve, and erupting at midnight with a blaze of flame and light in the heart of darkness. Processions around the church with the new light are part of that vigil both East and West, Orthodox and Catholic, and even a riotous ringing of bells depending on your neighbors.
Protestant Christians, having only begun to reappropriate special services for Easter week in the last few decades (Lutherans and Anglicans having never left them), took the Easter Vigil and did a typically Protestant thing with it – they weren’t going to stay up late, but they would get up early.
So the sunrise service was born.
In our area, there are many more sunrise or “Son-rise Services” than Easter Vigils, though the students at Denison are renewing the tradition in their own way late on Saturday at Swasey Chapel, high above Raccoon Creek’s valley. Unsurprisingly, college students aren’t too fased by the idea of staying up late.
Many folks who don’t attend much or any worship of any sort are willing to stagger out into the Sunday pre-dawn dark and find their way to the Midland Theater for the Newark community sunrise service, as long as a good breakfast follows (donations for the Jail Ministry program).
If you are part of a sunrise service at Dawes or a vigil bonfire behind your church or just wait for the main service where you can show off a new outfit on your toddler, may your Easter usher in a season of new life and new hope . . . and may the old saw be broken that there’s three snows after the forsythia blooms!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about new life in your neck of the woods at knapsack77@gmail.com.
* * *
Faith Works 3-22-08
Jeff Gill
A Pastor’s Heart, A Shepherd’s Love
“Death Comes For the Archbishop” is a novel published in 1927 by Willa Cather. The cleric so named was Latour in the book, but he was based on the very real Jean Baptiste Lamy, founding pastor of St. Francis de Sales in Newark.
In pre-Civil War era Licking County, this Frenchman came as the result of a missionary call from his homeland, to serve a bishop based in Cincinnati who had put out a call for priests. So Father Lamy crossed the ocean, half a continent, and came to a still wild land, planting parishes in Danville, Mount Vernon, and right here in Newark.
He was effective enough in this challenging work that he was, to Lamy’s own surprise, named the first bishop of New Mexico in 1850, even before he had ever been there. Cather’s novel begins, sadly for us, with his journey starting in Cincinnati heading west, and ends, after building churches and chapels and a cathedral, with his death, and burial beneath the floor of the nave, where Archbishop Lamy rests today.
You might visit Santa Fe someday, founded 200 years before Licking County was founded (that’s right, as we have a bicentennial, they will observe a quadricentennial, the oldest capital city in the US, established as such in 1610, about two years after the settlement was founded). Near the central plaza is the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, finished in 1868. In front of the Romanesque church, with French details, is a statue of Archbishop Lamy.
Or you can drive out Granville Street from downtown Newark, and look up at the second floor window of the Lamy Center of St. Francis’ parish, and see a statue of him there.
“Death Comes For the Archbishop” was the headline in many papers a few weeks back, with the discovery of the body of the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Iraq.
Paulos Faraj Rahho lived in Mosul, near the site of Biblical “Ninevah” of Jonah’s story, for most of his 65 years. A priest, and part of the long-standing but now dwindling Christian community of Iraq, his eastern tradition of Catholicism is recognized by the Vatican, and his last trip out of Iraq was to attend Pope John Paul II’s funeral.
Archbishop, or “Mar” Paulos did not leave his people much or for long, though he was offered shelter and protection in the west as his life was threatened over and over again by radical Islamist groups. Moslem clerics in Mosul offered Mar Rahho their own bodyguards to aid him, such was the respect he held throughout the community as leader of his small but faithful Chaldean Christians (about 20,000 out of 2 million).
That respect was no doubt part of why he was targeted, and finally kidnapped last month, in a flurry of gunfire that killed his bodyguards, ending with the archbishop being thrown into a car trunk and taken away.
But this pastor was not done caring for his flock, even in imminent danger of death. He still had a cell phone in a pocket of his robe, and he called his office from the trunk, telling them urgently not to negotiate with terrorists and especially to refuse to pay any ransom for his safe return.
According to Asia News, his grieving staff said after Mar Paulos’ body was found in a shallow grave outside of the city, “He believed this money would not be paid for good works and would be used for killing and more evil actions.”
Just three months earlier, Mar Paulos said this: “We, Christians of Mesopotamia, are used to religious persecution and pressures by those in power. After Constantine, persecution ended only for Western Christians, whereas in the East threats continued. Even today we continue to be a Church of martyrs.”
On this Holy Saturday, as many of us anticipate the joy of Easter morning here in “the West,” remember in your prayers of celebration all those around the world who still must cautiously proclaim “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed.”
And be thankful that we can say it out loud, with a smile and a song, inside the church building, and walking down the street.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; sing your song of joy for him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Faith Works 3-15-08
Jeff Gill
Don’t Skip the Middle Part
“Unseen heavenly storehouses laden with snow . . .”
That’s a line easily brought to mind these days, a piece of Chris Tomlin’s song “Indescribable.” The image is directly, like so much of contemporary Christian music, from the Bible, out of the Book of Job.
In the final climactic revelation of God from the whirlwind to Job himself, the string of questions with which God answers Job’s question about the meaning of human suffering includes “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?” (Job 38: 22, NIV)
Many of us have read the start and finish of Job’s tale, set among “the writings,” the “Ketuvim” right before Psalms and Proverbs. 42 chapters long, even those who say they know the story likely only have read chapters 1 and 2, and skipped to 38 through the concluding and very short close in chapter 42.
What about chapters 3 through 37?
Holy Week, which begins with Palm Sunday tomorrow, would be a good time to read those pages hidden in plain sight. Just as Christians can tend to want to jump from the high place of Jesus’ triumphal procession into Jerusalem, and kids waving greenie things in church, right to Easter and resurrection and kids hunting eggs, we skip from chapter 2 to 38, or even straight to 42.
The in-between, though, is where we live most of the time, and what holds Holy Week together in the Christian narrative. And the Book of Job wouldn’t have the lasting impact it does without the three friends, and the angry young man (yes, the original angry young man).
For an angry young man, we have Elihu, who steps in about chapter 32, having listened courteously to his elders, the three friends of Job named Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar (you can see why these names didn’t catch on like Benjamin, Levi, and Nathan did).
They each have tried to explain to Job why he must have deserved his suffering in some way, and dealt kindly with his response to each one, with Job growing more passionate in his confidence in God’s justice, but his equal certainty that the pain and misery he is in can have nothing to do with his actions or intentions.
Elihu’s tirade is interesting because he is specifically described as angry at Job for not accepting responsibility, and the older men for not being able to defend and maintain God’s innocence as to this injustice (which we know, from chapters 1 & 2, is actually very much in question – God does specifically allow this to happen, through no fault of Job’s).
When I read the discourses of Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar and Elihu, I hear things I’ve said myself, about social ills, civic problems, personal situations, even in response to pain and suffering. And when I hear in my mind’s amphitheater the words of Job, sitting on his dunghill, covered with boils, his tongue thick and dry, struggling to make clear his faith and confidence in an ultimate justice which he cannot account for, I hear words I’ve said myself, in private prayer, and occasionally in argument with others.
The “Why” of cruelty and senseless accidents does not go away in the light of eternity. Job affirms, in one of the best known passages plucked out of this little known stretch of Scripture, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” (19: 25-27 RSV)
This is seen by many as a powerful witness to Jesus Christ, a prophecy of what the human condition cries out for in the heart of life, and a description of what God promises to provide.
But you don’t, I maintain, get the full force of this statement of faith without immersing yourself in the debate that goes before, to which these words are a direct, connected response.
Just as you can’t really taste the joy of Easter if you skip from palm branches to chocolate eggs. Take the journey, step by step, and take Job along with you.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him the story of your journey at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Don’t Skip the Middle Part
“Unseen heavenly storehouses laden with snow . . .”
That’s a line easily brought to mind these days, a piece of Chris Tomlin’s song “Indescribable.” The image is directly, like so much of contemporary Christian music, from the Bible, out of the Book of Job.
In the final climactic revelation of God from the whirlwind to Job himself, the string of questions with which God answers Job’s question about the meaning of human suffering includes “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?” (Job 38: 22, NIV)
Many of us have read the start and finish of Job’s tale, set among “the writings,” the “Ketuvim” right before Psalms and Proverbs. 42 chapters long, even those who say they know the story likely only have read chapters 1 and 2, and skipped to 38 through the concluding and very short close in chapter 42.
What about chapters 3 through 37?
Holy Week, which begins with Palm Sunday tomorrow, would be a good time to read those pages hidden in plain sight. Just as Christians can tend to want to jump from the high place of Jesus’ triumphal procession into Jerusalem, and kids waving greenie things in church, right to Easter and resurrection and kids hunting eggs, we skip from chapter 2 to 38, or even straight to 42.
The in-between, though, is where we live most of the time, and what holds Holy Week together in the Christian narrative. And the Book of Job wouldn’t have the lasting impact it does without the three friends, and the angry young man (yes, the original angry young man).
For an angry young man, we have Elihu, who steps in about chapter 32, having listened courteously to his elders, the three friends of Job named Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar (you can see why these names didn’t catch on like Benjamin, Levi, and Nathan did).
They each have tried to explain to Job why he must have deserved his suffering in some way, and dealt kindly with his response to each one, with Job growing more passionate in his confidence in God’s justice, but his equal certainty that the pain and misery he is in can have nothing to do with his actions or intentions.
Elihu’s tirade is interesting because he is specifically described as angry at Job for not accepting responsibility, and the older men for not being able to defend and maintain God’s innocence as to this injustice (which we know, from chapters 1 & 2, is actually very much in question – God does specifically allow this to happen, through no fault of Job’s).
When I read the discourses of Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar and Elihu, I hear things I’ve said myself, about social ills, civic problems, personal situations, even in response to pain and suffering. And when I hear in my mind’s amphitheater the words of Job, sitting on his dunghill, covered with boils, his tongue thick and dry, struggling to make clear his faith and confidence in an ultimate justice which he cannot account for, I hear words I’ve said myself, in private prayer, and occasionally in argument with others.
The “Why” of cruelty and senseless accidents does not go away in the light of eternity. Job affirms, in one of the best known passages plucked out of this little known stretch of Scripture, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” (19: 25-27 RSV)
This is seen by many as a powerful witness to Jesus Christ, a prophecy of what the human condition cries out for in the heart of life, and a description of what God promises to provide.
But you don’t, I maintain, get the full force of this statement of faith without immersing yourself in the debate that goes before, to which these words are a direct, connected response.
Just as you can’t really taste the joy of Easter if you skip from palm branches to chocolate eggs. Take the journey, step by step, and take Job along with you.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him the story of your journey at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Monday, March 10, 2008
[a poem by William Stafford, read today by Garrison Keillor on "Writer's Almanac" - jbg]
Home Town
Peace on my little town, a speck in the safe,
comforting, impersonal immensity of Kansas.
Benevolence like a gentle haze on its courthouse
(the model of Greek pillars to me)
on its quiet little bombshell of a library,
on its continuous, hidden, efficient sewer system.
Sharp, amazed, steadfast regard on its more upright citizenry,
my nosy, incredible, delicious neighbors.
Haunting invasion of a train whistle to my friends,
moon-gilding, regular breaths of the old memories to them-
the old whispers, old attempts, old beauties, ever new.
Peace on my little town, haze-blessed, sun-friended,
dreaming sleepy days under the world-champion sky.
Lawrence, Kansas
c. Fall 1941
out of "Another World Instead"
Home Town
Peace on my little town, a speck in the safe,
comforting, impersonal immensity of Kansas.
Benevolence like a gentle haze on its courthouse
(the model of Greek pillars to me)
on its quiet little bombshell of a library,
on its continuous, hidden, efficient sewer system.
Sharp, amazed, steadfast regard on its more upright citizenry,
my nosy, incredible, delicious neighbors.
Haunting invasion of a train whistle to my friends,
moon-gilding, regular breaths of the old memories to them-
the old whispers, old attempts, old beauties, ever new.
Peace on my little town, haze-blessed, sun-friended,
dreaming sleepy days under the world-champion sky.
Lawrence, Kansas
c. Fall 1941
out of "Another World Instead"
Notes From My Knapsack 3-16-08
Jeff Gill
Is Your Street a Fjord?
From the seat of a basket-laden old bike, the streets of my paper route looked like fjords this time of year.
The high walls of plowed snow started calving off bergs in the late afternoon onto the shiny blacktop of the street, almost looking like dark still water. March snows work against the higher sun angle, meaning that the roads would clear, but freeze quickly in a glare of ice as soon as the sun’s direct light dropped even before dark fell.
Growing up further north and off of Lake Michigan, the snow of Christmas tended to form a base which ebbed and grew, but never vanished until past St. Patrick’s Day. Shoveling took extra oomph to toss over the ever higher embankments.
What I loved about that time of year was flying my Ford Trimotor with Bernt Balchen towards the South Pole, where I’d meet Paul Siple, the Eagle Scout who won a contest to go with Admiral Byrd on an expedition.
Yes, just try to imagine that happening today – it would be an on-line competition and the winner would get a live uplink for their classroom, but to go with them? Ha.
No, I didn’t go myself, but in the 60’s and 70’s I got interested in all the Shackelton, Scott, Amundsen tales of polar adventure, right down to the story of the submarine Nautilus running right under the North Pole.
Where my imagination ran more amok than usual was in making my bike a plane, and the necessary landscape of street and sidewalks a geography of adventure, with each driveway the bumpy landing zone marked out for my craft, where there were no runways, and vivid since many driveways weren’t shoveled, either. That would be when the dads got back from their shift at the steel mill, after the sun went down.
Sometimes I was Noel Wien, flying a Misso Standard or even a Curtis Jenny through the Alaskan bush, looking for a starving camp of prospectors. Most often I was flying along with Balchen or Bennett over the poles in a Trimotor, the plane which I’d actually seen up close at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.
Books like “The Sledge Patrol” by David Howatch, set in Greeland’s fjords, or “Snow Treasure” by Marie McSwigan about the Norwegian kids who helped smuggle gold past the Nazis on their sleds to a waiting ship in a real, honest-to-Norway fjord: these were the context for my paper-delivering reveries. “Snow Treasure” didn’t have a plane in it, and there’s only a brief sighting overhead in “The Sledge Patrol,” but I had no trouble extending an aviation component to my internal versions.
I learned later that the events in “Snow Treasure” probably didn’t happen, but on the other hand I learned that Paul Siple, Eagle in the Antarctic, went on to get a Ph.D. and invented “wind chill” and the original scale for measuring it.
The point wasn’t the history as much as the immersion I could feel, gliding on my path between grey-blue walls of snow and ice, bumping to a skidding stop, and making a delivery. The Gary Post-Tribune wasn’t sulfa drugs or emergency rations, but it was my job to get it through the snow, and I took pride in keeping on my bike when other route carriers gave up and slogged on foot through the snow. (Purely pompous paperboy note: those other ones also went door to door direct, and I stayed on sidewalks. Which always helped at Christmas tip time, since many folks didn’t like you walking right past the front windows and squishing onto their porches. You saved time, but like I said, it paid off at Christmas, along with getting the screen door latched after delivery.)
Then you turned in the runway, got moving, gear up, and into the air – onto the street – and circled to find your point of entry through the mountain ranges to the next bush camp or science base or hidden military installation, and then swooping past the glacier’s face to a narrow landing zone, marked (in my mind’s eye) with smoke grenades laid by grateful troops down below.
Spring was almost a disappointment after a few months of that.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell your story about stories to him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Is Your Street a Fjord?
From the seat of a basket-laden old bike, the streets of my paper route looked like fjords this time of year.
The high walls of plowed snow started calving off bergs in the late afternoon onto the shiny blacktop of the street, almost looking like dark still water. March snows work against the higher sun angle, meaning that the roads would clear, but freeze quickly in a glare of ice as soon as the sun’s direct light dropped even before dark fell.
Growing up further north and off of Lake Michigan, the snow of Christmas tended to form a base which ebbed and grew, but never vanished until past St. Patrick’s Day. Shoveling took extra oomph to toss over the ever higher embankments.
What I loved about that time of year was flying my Ford Trimotor with Bernt Balchen towards the South Pole, where I’d meet Paul Siple, the Eagle Scout who won a contest to go with Admiral Byrd on an expedition.
Yes, just try to imagine that happening today – it would be an on-line competition and the winner would get a live uplink for their classroom, but to go with them? Ha.
No, I didn’t go myself, but in the 60’s and 70’s I got interested in all the Shackelton, Scott, Amundsen tales of polar adventure, right down to the story of the submarine Nautilus running right under the North Pole.
Where my imagination ran more amok than usual was in making my bike a plane, and the necessary landscape of street and sidewalks a geography of adventure, with each driveway the bumpy landing zone marked out for my craft, where there were no runways, and vivid since many driveways weren’t shoveled, either. That would be when the dads got back from their shift at the steel mill, after the sun went down.
Sometimes I was Noel Wien, flying a Misso Standard or even a Curtis Jenny through the Alaskan bush, looking for a starving camp of prospectors. Most often I was flying along with Balchen or Bennett over the poles in a Trimotor, the plane which I’d actually seen up close at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.
Books like “The Sledge Patrol” by David Howatch, set in Greeland’s fjords, or “Snow Treasure” by Marie McSwigan about the Norwegian kids who helped smuggle gold past the Nazis on their sleds to a waiting ship in a real, honest-to-Norway fjord: these were the context for my paper-delivering reveries. “Snow Treasure” didn’t have a plane in it, and there’s only a brief sighting overhead in “The Sledge Patrol,” but I had no trouble extending an aviation component to my internal versions.
I learned later that the events in “Snow Treasure” probably didn’t happen, but on the other hand I learned that Paul Siple, Eagle in the Antarctic, went on to get a Ph.D. and invented “wind chill” and the original scale for measuring it.
The point wasn’t the history as much as the immersion I could feel, gliding on my path between grey-blue walls of snow and ice, bumping to a skidding stop, and making a delivery. The Gary Post-Tribune wasn’t sulfa drugs or emergency rations, but it was my job to get it through the snow, and I took pride in keeping on my bike when other route carriers gave up and slogged on foot through the snow. (Purely pompous paperboy note: those other ones also went door to door direct, and I stayed on sidewalks. Which always helped at Christmas tip time, since many folks didn’t like you walking right past the front windows and squishing onto their porches. You saved time, but like I said, it paid off at Christmas, along with getting the screen door latched after delivery.)
Then you turned in the runway, got moving, gear up, and into the air – onto the street – and circled to find your point of entry through the mountain ranges to the next bush camp or science base or hidden military installation, and then swooping past the glacier’s face to a narrow landing zone, marked (in my mind’s eye) with smoke grenades laid by grateful troops down below.
Spring was almost a disappointment after a few months of that.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell your story about stories to him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Friday, March 07, 2008
Not to be confused with an endorsment, but what a nice and fully informed advocate for her mom . . . I can only imagine dinner table conversation as she grew up:
Chelsea Clinton, standing with a couple of happy Republicans -- the Little Guy said she was smart (true) and she did her best to defend the Democrat stance on federalism (didn't sell me, but a good effort)
Chelsea Clinton, standing with a couple of happy Republicans -- the Little Guy said she was smart (true) and she did her best to defend the Democrat stance on federalism (didn't sell me, but a good effort)
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Faith Works 2-8-08
Jeff Gill
Striding Across the Sky, Among the Stars
When the melted snow of daylight hours is freezing to a glaze below your feet, and a wind creaks the young oak in the front yard, it may not be a prayerful time to be outdoors.
A few nights back, I was caught looking up, not quite frozen, but feeling a still moment that brought a memory of warmth to the nighttime.
Directly overhead in the southern sky was Orion, the Hunter. One of the winter sky’s most recognizable constellations; three stars for a belt, a dangled scabbard of two more angled back, a jaunty red Betelgeuse as cap, arm outstretched towards the bull’s horns of Taurus, aiming for the heart made of the Pleiades, the seven star cluster hanging to the west.
I’ve looked at and pointed out this sight many times, on Scout campouts and collecting for my paper route and going from car to meeting and out again later to head home. When the winter evening is far gone, Orion is now chasing his prey past the height of the sky and down the far slope, Sirius chasing his master with all the enthusiasm of a dog on the hunt.
Those longer ago recollections of looking up and seeing this great figure striding across the sky, shrouded by my own breath misting up into the night, are now mingled with a very particular time of this ancient sight.
Fifteen years ago last week, I stood on the end of a dock at Kibbutz Nof Ginosaur, stretching into the Harp-shaped Sea, Har-Kinnereth, the Sea of Galilee. Thanks to the kindness of John and Marguerite Jones, may they rest in joyful peace, I was at the last night of ten spent in Israel, with a caravan of clergy that had landed at Tel Aviv and was now about to round the bend of Caesarea the next day and return to Lod airport where late the next night we would take flight back home.
We had been out on these waters the day before in a fisherman’s boat, reading just what you’d expect a bunch of Christians to read from the Gospels in a moment like that. The outlet into the Jordan River we had crossed, and rolled up through Tiberias to this guesthouse in an Israeli kibbutz.
Night fell, my roommate was watching (no, really) “Tango and Cash” dubbed into Hebrew on the TV, and I walked out to the dock, and to the end. It was warm, though the Israelis thought it a cool March night, so I was alone.
At the end of the dock, I saw Orion standing on his head in the still water, and then looked up to see this vast figure in his usual posture, walking out of myth into my awareness. Hebrew myth had him a giant, a fool, who challenged God and was bound to the heavens as punishment; Greek myth wavered between Orion and Adonis; the Babylonians saw a shepherd, while Norse mythology a goddess weaving, either Frigg or Freya.
Jesus saw this constellation, on a cool spring night. This I knew more certainly than I was sure of any other site or object that I had been shown the last ten days. Jesus looked up from his journey and saw just this, as had the boy I was knocking on doors years ago, as my loved ones were, a bit lower in the sky, right now – well, not right now, but would in about five or six hours, but these stars, this sky.
I looked at Orion, and saw Him. And I see Jesus still, not in the shape of the stars, but as one looking on them, perhaps now from the other side. To see the stars over Kinnereth’s lake, to see their reflection in those waters, is one of my more permanent memories.
Somehow Jerusalem became a bit more real in that moment, and the cross, and the empty tomb (or tombs, we saw a few). Not the items or objects, but the reality of the event, and the connection to my life, and all our lives.
How’s your Lent going? And don’t forget to spring your clocks forward, ready to rise . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your star-strewn story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Striding Across the Sky, Among the Stars
When the melted snow of daylight hours is freezing to a glaze below your feet, and a wind creaks the young oak in the front yard, it may not be a prayerful time to be outdoors.
A few nights back, I was caught looking up, not quite frozen, but feeling a still moment that brought a memory of warmth to the nighttime.
Directly overhead in the southern sky was Orion, the Hunter. One of the winter sky’s most recognizable constellations; three stars for a belt, a dangled scabbard of two more angled back, a jaunty red Betelgeuse as cap, arm outstretched towards the bull’s horns of Taurus, aiming for the heart made of the Pleiades, the seven star cluster hanging to the west.
I’ve looked at and pointed out this sight many times, on Scout campouts and collecting for my paper route and going from car to meeting and out again later to head home. When the winter evening is far gone, Orion is now chasing his prey past the height of the sky and down the far slope, Sirius chasing his master with all the enthusiasm of a dog on the hunt.
Those longer ago recollections of looking up and seeing this great figure striding across the sky, shrouded by my own breath misting up into the night, are now mingled with a very particular time of this ancient sight.
Fifteen years ago last week, I stood on the end of a dock at Kibbutz Nof Ginosaur, stretching into the Harp-shaped Sea, Har-Kinnereth, the Sea of Galilee. Thanks to the kindness of John and Marguerite Jones, may they rest in joyful peace, I was at the last night of ten spent in Israel, with a caravan of clergy that had landed at Tel Aviv and was now about to round the bend of Caesarea the next day and return to Lod airport where late the next night we would take flight back home.
We had been out on these waters the day before in a fisherman’s boat, reading just what you’d expect a bunch of Christians to read from the Gospels in a moment like that. The outlet into the Jordan River we had crossed, and rolled up through Tiberias to this guesthouse in an Israeli kibbutz.
Night fell, my roommate was watching (no, really) “Tango and Cash” dubbed into Hebrew on the TV, and I walked out to the dock, and to the end. It was warm, though the Israelis thought it a cool March night, so I was alone.
At the end of the dock, I saw Orion standing on his head in the still water, and then looked up to see this vast figure in his usual posture, walking out of myth into my awareness. Hebrew myth had him a giant, a fool, who challenged God and was bound to the heavens as punishment; Greek myth wavered between Orion and Adonis; the Babylonians saw a shepherd, while Norse mythology a goddess weaving, either Frigg or Freya.
Jesus saw this constellation, on a cool spring night. This I knew more certainly than I was sure of any other site or object that I had been shown the last ten days. Jesus looked up from his journey and saw just this, as had the boy I was knocking on doors years ago, as my loved ones were, a bit lower in the sky, right now – well, not right now, but would in about five or six hours, but these stars, this sky.
I looked at Orion, and saw Him. And I see Jesus still, not in the shape of the stars, but as one looking on them, perhaps now from the other side. To see the stars over Kinnereth’s lake, to see their reflection in those waters, is one of my more permanent memories.
Somehow Jerusalem became a bit more real in that moment, and the cross, and the empty tomb (or tombs, we saw a few). Not the items or objects, but the reality of the event, and the connection to my life, and all our lives.
How’s your Lent going? And don’t forget to spring your clocks forward, ready to rise . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your star-strewn story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Notes From My Knapsack 3-8-08
Jeff Gill
No Doubt Who Wrote This
Larry Fugate and I share at least this one quality – our writing is not likely to be confused for each others’ or much of anyone else’s.
For those of you who enjoy our commentary and columnizing, thanks for your patronage! In the newspaper business, from the days of “Benj. Franklin, printer” to the present internet-ified era, we’ve never been quite sure if you want the ads and put up with the content, or want a heaping helping of fresh, informative text and sift through the ads to find it.
A healthy balance is probably what we all benefit from, advertisers not the least.
I’ve written for publications in a wide variety of venues, and worked alongside quite a few journalists, freelance writers, and others who make part or all of their living in the salt mines of prose construction.
Some of us write better than others, a few write easily, while not a few are just prolific. Some of us write better on some days than others, others can handle deadlines while they leave many distraught -- but we all know that writing creatively when the Muse is not in residence can be worse than shoveling sand.
Writing columns is a uniquely rewarding task, but I’ve watched a number of folks over the years dive into the work with enthusiasm, and then suddenly hit a wall a few weeks or months in. They realize “I have no good ideas today, and not only do I need to come up with one, but I’ll have to next week, and the week after that, and . . .”
And they quit. No shame in that – like knitting or welding, it isn’t for everyone. Especially if it isn’t a required task for your job, though clergy know this sort of dilemma when it comes to preaching (plus, for many, a regular newsletter column). Clergy, and writers who have to keep writing columns or personal essays or what have you for their work, learn how to deal with “a season of dryness” and push through, or they find a new field of work.
When you’re writing columns for no pay, no job requirement, and no reason other than to see your name in print, you usually can just wait for lightning to strike. Which is what makes the tale of Tim Goeglein so odd.
Mr. Goeglein was personally hired by Karl Rove to work in the White House Office of Public Liason, co-ordinating Bush administration initiatives with faith-based and religious conservative groups. He’s from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and while he’s been in Washington, D.C. he’s semi-regularly sent “guest columns” on a variety of subjects back to his hometown paper. The frequency of them has increased the last few months, no doubt to prepare the way for a return home to run for elected office in Indiana.
This is where I feel both sad and angry. There’s a blog written by a former columnist in Fort Wayne, who now lives in Detroit, called www.nancynall.com, and I often comment there myself, having been referred to Nancy’s work by a friend years ago. Nancy and others of us were throwing comments around in the wake of William F. Buckley’s death last week, and I looked right away to see what Tim Goeglein had written, since – to be perfectly candid – his writing style was so odd as to make us all enjoy making fun of it.
Nancy looked further the next evening, and read, or felt a bit more oddness than usual, and did a simple Google-check of a phrase.
Between the end of that sentence and a week later is the revelation that the fellow had stolen vast swaths of other people’s writing, in (as of this writing) 20 of his last 38 columns, in some cases almost the whole length of the piece.
He even plagiarized the pope.
And you can imagine that, once this was all out and started to echo around the internet, Tim Goeglein was humiliated and finally turned in his quickly accepted resignation. I’m thinking running for governor is out, too.
Plagiarism is paradoxically easier to catch, and more common today, than perhaps at any point in history. Ask a teacher in high school or college, let alone an editor, how they feel about plagiarism. For that reason alone, as a chastening example, the job loss seems fair. Crooks on “Law & Order” don’t seem to understand that cops can pull cell phone records, and writers should know that Google goes both ways.
I’ve often come to the end of a column thinking “I wish I wrote that better.” Trust me when I say that worry has never caused me to then think “so, let’s see who else said it better, and print that as my words.” Why a White House official would do so may be the story that is yet to be told.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he doesn’t much like any form of theft, including plagiarism. Tell your original story to him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
No Doubt Who Wrote This
Larry Fugate and I share at least this one quality – our writing is not likely to be confused for each others’ or much of anyone else’s.
For those of you who enjoy our commentary and columnizing, thanks for your patronage! In the newspaper business, from the days of “Benj. Franklin, printer” to the present internet-ified era, we’ve never been quite sure if you want the ads and put up with the content, or want a heaping helping of fresh, informative text and sift through the ads to find it.
A healthy balance is probably what we all benefit from, advertisers not the least.
I’ve written for publications in a wide variety of venues, and worked alongside quite a few journalists, freelance writers, and others who make part or all of their living in the salt mines of prose construction.
Some of us write better than others, a few write easily, while not a few are just prolific. Some of us write better on some days than others, others can handle deadlines while they leave many distraught -- but we all know that writing creatively when the Muse is not in residence can be worse than shoveling sand.
Writing columns is a uniquely rewarding task, but I’ve watched a number of folks over the years dive into the work with enthusiasm, and then suddenly hit a wall a few weeks or months in. They realize “I have no good ideas today, and not only do I need to come up with one, but I’ll have to next week, and the week after that, and . . .”
And they quit. No shame in that – like knitting or welding, it isn’t for everyone. Especially if it isn’t a required task for your job, though clergy know this sort of dilemma when it comes to preaching (plus, for many, a regular newsletter column). Clergy, and writers who have to keep writing columns or personal essays or what have you for their work, learn how to deal with “a season of dryness” and push through, or they find a new field of work.
When you’re writing columns for no pay, no job requirement, and no reason other than to see your name in print, you usually can just wait for lightning to strike. Which is what makes the tale of Tim Goeglein so odd.
Mr. Goeglein was personally hired by Karl Rove to work in the White House Office of Public Liason, co-ordinating Bush administration initiatives with faith-based and religious conservative groups. He’s from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and while he’s been in Washington, D.C. he’s semi-regularly sent “guest columns” on a variety of subjects back to his hometown paper. The frequency of them has increased the last few months, no doubt to prepare the way for a return home to run for elected office in Indiana.
This is where I feel both sad and angry. There’s a blog written by a former columnist in Fort Wayne, who now lives in Detroit, called www.nancynall.com, and I often comment there myself, having been referred to Nancy’s work by a friend years ago. Nancy and others of us were throwing comments around in the wake of William F. Buckley’s death last week, and I looked right away to see what Tim Goeglein had written, since – to be perfectly candid – his writing style was so odd as to make us all enjoy making fun of it.
Nancy looked further the next evening, and read, or felt a bit more oddness than usual, and did a simple Google-check of a phrase.
Between the end of that sentence and a week later is the revelation that the fellow had stolen vast swaths of other people’s writing, in (as of this writing) 20 of his last 38 columns, in some cases almost the whole length of the piece.
He even plagiarized the pope.
And you can imagine that, once this was all out and started to echo around the internet, Tim Goeglein was humiliated and finally turned in his quickly accepted resignation. I’m thinking running for governor is out, too.
Plagiarism is paradoxically easier to catch, and more common today, than perhaps at any point in history. Ask a teacher in high school or college, let alone an editor, how they feel about plagiarism. For that reason alone, as a chastening example, the job loss seems fair. Crooks on “Law & Order” don’t seem to understand that cops can pull cell phone records, and writers should know that Google goes both ways.
I’ve often come to the end of a column thinking “I wish I wrote that better.” Trust me when I say that worry has never caused me to then think “so, let’s see who else said it better, and print that as my words.” Why a White House official would do so may be the story that is yet to be told.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he doesn’t much like any form of theft, including plagiarism. Tell your original story to him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Words fail me in describing what went on yesterday at Nancy Nall's blog -- http://nancynall.com/2008/02/29/copycat/#comments -- and i'm both proud and saddened to have played a small constructive role in the whole bizarre thing (see the last couple days before "Copycat" to see how this came about). The "resignation" is now front of the Nytimes.com and WashingtonPost.com, but will soon fade. The puzzle of why someone would do something so stupidly public and easily catchable will linger.
Anyhow, i'm sure we've all helped set a Nancy Nall record in the comment box: 278 when last i looked. This was truly a team effort led by a sharp journalist who happens to have a regular blog . . . or is that a regular blogger who happens to be a sharp journalist?
Anyhow, i'm sure we've all helped set a Nancy Nall record in the comment box: 278 when last i looked. This was truly a team effort led by a sharp journalist who happens to have a regular blog . . . or is that a regular blogger who happens to be a sharp journalist?
Friday, February 29, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Faith Works 3-1-08
Jeff Gill
Marching Into a Sea of Numbers
Christians aren’t exactly known for their math skills.
Maybe “be fruitful and multiply” and “they divided his garments,” but generally the practice of adding one to one to one and getting not three, but one – well, that makes you an unlikely candidate for treasurer.
There is one math problem that gets frequent discussion around Christian circles, and that’s how to calculate ten percent (hint: divide by ten).
The Biblical tithe gets a fair amount of discussion and debate, with some arguing that the storehouse tithe spoken firmly of in Malachi is still binding on believers today, and others looking at tithing from one set of qualifications or another.
Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, hold to a firm tithe on the gross that is used for what the storehouse tithe was intended to do, which was feeding the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the sojourner. The “Bishop’s storehouse” is meant to provide for member needs, so that they can count on the faith community for support and not a governmental entity, but is often used for general relief as well.
Islamic folk have a smaller percentage that goes to the poor and needy, but the “zakat” is also for them a firm number, easily calculated. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll call it 2.5% of your gross income, beyond the amount of your income needed for basic subsistence.
What bothers me as a Christian pastor is that so many believers and couples don’t know what 100% is, which puts every other percentage into play.
What’s 100%, and why do I care?
Well, if you don’t know what you make a year, then you can’t honestly make plans for the year in giving or saving or anything else by percent or even in round numbers. So many people only know what they make an hour, or a week, maybe what they bring in per month.
If I were to suggest to such a person that the monthly figure could be put times twelve, there might be an angry “sure, I knew that” coming back at me. OK, fine.
But you need to know what your personal or household gross, or total income is before any other percentage has any meaning, from giving to savings to taxes.
A for instance – many households see their tax refund as “magic money,” a kind of bonus that shows up to brighten their springtime.
But the reality is that the refund is your money, withheld beyond what you owed in taxes, returned with no benefit from savings or investment. You earned it, pay period by pay period, but if you enjoy general ignorance of what you’re making, you won’t be bothered by what is or isn’t coming home.
This is why I’d say, before anyone gets out in the weeds of debating what constitutes a proper modern-day tithe, they need to know a) how much does this household bring, in total, from our paid efforts per year, and b) add up all the federal, state, local, property, and calculated sales taxes, and divide b) by a) and multiply times 100. That will tell you what percent of your gross income goes to care for today’s poor and needy, maintain education, and other functions once provided by religious bodies.
Some folks get all rhetorical and think “I pay half my income in taxes,” and others have no idea how big the number is, never having considered the question. I’ll tip y’all off that most of you will come up with a number somewhere between 18% and 40%, with a third most common.
Is doing that math a religious duty? Nope, but if you think your faith calls you to be responsible and accountable for your overall stewardship, I’d think that this is a necessary first step towards your religious duty.
So, if you’re entirely average, you’re now looking at a bit more than 75% of what you earn in total. What will you do with that? Set aside ten percent for the work of your faith community?
That’s fine, except if you think doing so means you can do whatever you want with the stuff that’s left over, I’ll hazard a guess that God would rather you kept your money, although the church treasurer would have different opinions in all likelihood.
The point of tithing, however defined, is to remind us that the money we receive is a gift, no matter how hard we worked for the paycheck. We give so that we learn how all our income is a blessing, which is from God, and all that we have will be God’s again, if not into a landfill. Our giving is where we come to understand what the true nature of what we “have” can be, and starts the process of looking at everything from a different, eternal point of view.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him how your church deals with stewardship and giving at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Marching Into a Sea of Numbers
Christians aren’t exactly known for their math skills.
Maybe “be fruitful and multiply” and “they divided his garments,” but generally the practice of adding one to one to one and getting not three, but one – well, that makes you an unlikely candidate for treasurer.
There is one math problem that gets frequent discussion around Christian circles, and that’s how to calculate ten percent (hint: divide by ten).
The Biblical tithe gets a fair amount of discussion and debate, with some arguing that the storehouse tithe spoken firmly of in Malachi is still binding on believers today, and others looking at tithing from one set of qualifications or another.
Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, hold to a firm tithe on the gross that is used for what the storehouse tithe was intended to do, which was feeding the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the sojourner. The “Bishop’s storehouse” is meant to provide for member needs, so that they can count on the faith community for support and not a governmental entity, but is often used for general relief as well.
Islamic folk have a smaller percentage that goes to the poor and needy, but the “zakat” is also for them a firm number, easily calculated. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll call it 2.5% of your gross income, beyond the amount of your income needed for basic subsistence.
What bothers me as a Christian pastor is that so many believers and couples don’t know what 100% is, which puts every other percentage into play.
What’s 100%, and why do I care?
Well, if you don’t know what you make a year, then you can’t honestly make plans for the year in giving or saving or anything else by percent or even in round numbers. So many people only know what they make an hour, or a week, maybe what they bring in per month.
If I were to suggest to such a person that the monthly figure could be put times twelve, there might be an angry “sure, I knew that” coming back at me. OK, fine.
But you need to know what your personal or household gross, or total income is before any other percentage has any meaning, from giving to savings to taxes.
A for instance – many households see their tax refund as “magic money,” a kind of bonus that shows up to brighten their springtime.
But the reality is that the refund is your money, withheld beyond what you owed in taxes, returned with no benefit from savings or investment. You earned it, pay period by pay period, but if you enjoy general ignorance of what you’re making, you won’t be bothered by what is or isn’t coming home.
This is why I’d say, before anyone gets out in the weeds of debating what constitutes a proper modern-day tithe, they need to know a) how much does this household bring, in total, from our paid efforts per year, and b) add up all the federal, state, local, property, and calculated sales taxes, and divide b) by a) and multiply times 100. That will tell you what percent of your gross income goes to care for today’s poor and needy, maintain education, and other functions once provided by religious bodies.
Some folks get all rhetorical and think “I pay half my income in taxes,” and others have no idea how big the number is, never having considered the question. I’ll tip y’all off that most of you will come up with a number somewhere between 18% and 40%, with a third most common.
Is doing that math a religious duty? Nope, but if you think your faith calls you to be responsible and accountable for your overall stewardship, I’d think that this is a necessary first step towards your religious duty.
So, if you’re entirely average, you’re now looking at a bit more than 75% of what you earn in total. What will you do with that? Set aside ten percent for the work of your faith community?
That’s fine, except if you think doing so means you can do whatever you want with the stuff that’s left over, I’ll hazard a guess that God would rather you kept your money, although the church treasurer would have different opinions in all likelihood.
The point of tithing, however defined, is to remind us that the money we receive is a gift, no matter how hard we worked for the paycheck. We give so that we learn how all our income is a blessing, which is from God, and all that we have will be God’s again, if not into a landfill. Our giving is where we come to understand what the true nature of what we “have” can be, and starts the process of looking at everything from a different, eternal point of view.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him how your church deals with stewardship and giving at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
[soft, distant whisper . . .] "Baseball season, baseball season..." [fades slowly, repeating]
Cubs, 1969 –
A summer day, a pennant race — Fergie Jenkins pitching to Randy Hundley;
Joe Pepitone, Glenn Becker, Don Kessinger, Ron Santo;
Billy Williams, Jose Cardenal, Ernie “Let’s Play Two!” Banks; Leo Durocher in the dugout, Jack Brickhouse in the WGN booth. Park district bus tours to 1:10 pm weekday games, coming back with mini-bats ("kids, don’t swing those at each other!") and real cloth baseball caps in Cubbie blue. Vienna red hots, and Heilmann’s Old Style beer scent on our sneakers, even as we drove past the steel mills (still operating, still erupting smoke and flame) on the way home.
There is an angel with a flaming sword standing between me and that Wrigley Field scene.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Notes From My Knapsack 3-2-08
Jeff Gill
Ohio Gets National Attention, Not Bad News
Ohio has gotten some major national press in the last few months, over home foreclosure, declining property values, job loss (well, second in this one area to Michigan), college grad departure rates, and bankruptcy.
Yippee.
Tuesday will give us a little different coverage with the primary vote, since against all expectations back in Iowa and New Hampshire, the Democratic presidential race is open while the Republicans are busy laughing over Nader’s entry into the race as an Independent (no final word from Ron Paul yet on a third or, uh, fourth party run).
How do the tough economic circumstances impact the decision on who will run for the D’s in November? Some say the proposals of Clinton and Obama are barely distinguishable, and that leaves style – advantage Obama. Others say that the ability to deliver complicated policy maneuvers through Congress takes a skilled and experienced politician – advantage Hillary.
Others say we need a strong international presence which is willing to project force to defend the national interest against global terror blocs – advantage Republicans, already forming up behind McCain. And some say we should treat foreign entanglements like the flu and wash our hands of ‘em, while stripping back the feddle gov’mint as small as we can get it – there’s your Paul/Nader support.
So, which course will Ohioans follow? I wouldn’t betcha a nickel on any of ‘em, but a close vote in November is likely, while in the short run I think Hillary will turn out the most core supporters, whatever early March weather throws at us next Tuesday between 6:30 am and 7:30 pm. Clinton will win Licking County on the D-side, but Obama will make the state as a whole closer than Bill would like.
And on we go to Denver and the convention? Could be . . .
Local races will be all about name recognition, and the best known folk will beat the lesser known names. Levies and bond issues will be the focus of interest and discussion, mainly for schools but Fire/EMS and cemeteries and senior services are way up there this go ‘round.
Full disclosure: I have a part-time job that takes me in and out of the Licking County Court Annex, aka the old Children’s Home, quite often. If I wanted to stay quiet and comfortable, I’d want to stay put there, but in the debate over the Senior Levy a bunch of chatter has focused on that building and its likely demise.
Folks, if this were an historic church building, it would be doomed. If George Washington slept here (a neat trick, given that he died in 1799 and it was built in 1886), it would still be slated for demo. The problem is that to save the building you’d have to start by pulling the slate and cast-iron trusses off the top, and tear down the third floor. Then you’d have to rebuild either a new floor or just rebuild the roofline a story lower, at the cost right there of many millions – at which point you’d still have a rabbit warren of small rooms with heavy masonry walls between them, with little adaptability for any purpose other than offices, which can be provided more cheaply any number of places.
The basement would need to be entirely dug out around the exterior and resealed and properly drained, as mold and damp are endemic in the gloomy depths now. Heating and cooling are currently provided room by room mostly, at major electric cost, while the wiring and phone lines would need a long-overdue upgrade. We’re getting into $13.5 million territory right there. It just isn’t worth it, and it isn’t historic enough for anyone to help pay for it.
I hope people understand I love history and respect greatly the particular history in the walls of this structure, which Jon Emler has done much to keep in the public eye. But I’ve rambled from the bat-filled attic to the depth of the old laundry and kitchen in the basement, and this building can’t be saved.
Designing the new senior center to echo the outline of the Licking County Children’s Home of 1886, and reincorporating some ornamental stonework, is a wonderful and appropriate gesture by the county officials in charge. Add to that the fact that Licking County school districts are across the board spending less per pupil than almost any other neighboring or state-wide comparable districts, and I can say honestly I hope both the seniors’ and the school levies up this Tuesday all pass.
As for the state funding system for education, well, that’s another day.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’d love to hear your ideas about how to reform the state funding formula at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Ohio Gets National Attention, Not Bad News
Ohio has gotten some major national press in the last few months, over home foreclosure, declining property values, job loss (well, second in this one area to Michigan), college grad departure rates, and bankruptcy.
Yippee.
Tuesday will give us a little different coverage with the primary vote, since against all expectations back in Iowa and New Hampshire, the Democratic presidential race is open while the Republicans are busy laughing over Nader’s entry into the race as an Independent (no final word from Ron Paul yet on a third or, uh, fourth party run).
How do the tough economic circumstances impact the decision on who will run for the D’s in November? Some say the proposals of Clinton and Obama are barely distinguishable, and that leaves style – advantage Obama. Others say that the ability to deliver complicated policy maneuvers through Congress takes a skilled and experienced politician – advantage Hillary.
Others say we need a strong international presence which is willing to project force to defend the national interest against global terror blocs – advantage Republicans, already forming up behind McCain. And some say we should treat foreign entanglements like the flu and wash our hands of ‘em, while stripping back the feddle gov’mint as small as we can get it – there’s your Paul/Nader support.
So, which course will Ohioans follow? I wouldn’t betcha a nickel on any of ‘em, but a close vote in November is likely, while in the short run I think Hillary will turn out the most core supporters, whatever early March weather throws at us next Tuesday between 6:30 am and 7:30 pm. Clinton will win Licking County on the D-side, but Obama will make the state as a whole closer than Bill would like.
And on we go to Denver and the convention? Could be . . .
Local races will be all about name recognition, and the best known folk will beat the lesser known names. Levies and bond issues will be the focus of interest and discussion, mainly for schools but Fire/EMS and cemeteries and senior services are way up there this go ‘round.
Full disclosure: I have a part-time job that takes me in and out of the Licking County Court Annex, aka the old Children’s Home, quite often. If I wanted to stay quiet and comfortable, I’d want to stay put there, but in the debate over the Senior Levy a bunch of chatter has focused on that building and its likely demise.
Folks, if this were an historic church building, it would be doomed. If George Washington slept here (a neat trick, given that he died in 1799 and it was built in 1886), it would still be slated for demo. The problem is that to save the building you’d have to start by pulling the slate and cast-iron trusses off the top, and tear down the third floor. Then you’d have to rebuild either a new floor or just rebuild the roofline a story lower, at the cost right there of many millions – at which point you’d still have a rabbit warren of small rooms with heavy masonry walls between them, with little adaptability for any purpose other than offices, which can be provided more cheaply any number of places.
The basement would need to be entirely dug out around the exterior and resealed and properly drained, as mold and damp are endemic in the gloomy depths now. Heating and cooling are currently provided room by room mostly, at major electric cost, while the wiring and phone lines would need a long-overdue upgrade. We’re getting into $13.5 million territory right there. It just isn’t worth it, and it isn’t historic enough for anyone to help pay for it.
I hope people understand I love history and respect greatly the particular history in the walls of this structure, which Jon Emler has done much to keep in the public eye. But I’ve rambled from the bat-filled attic to the depth of the old laundry and kitchen in the basement, and this building can’t be saved.
Designing the new senior center to echo the outline of the Licking County Children’s Home of 1886, and reincorporating some ornamental stonework, is a wonderful and appropriate gesture by the county officials in charge. Add to that the fact that Licking County school districts are across the board spending less per pupil than almost any other neighboring or state-wide comparable districts, and I can say honestly I hope both the seniors’ and the school levies up this Tuesday all pass.
As for the state funding system for education, well, that’s another day.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’d love to hear your ideas about how to reform the state funding formula at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Faith Works 2-23-08
Jeff Gill
Worse Yet, The Subject Is Money Next Week
If I told you that it might be worth your while to go check out the website of http://www.relevantchurch.com in Tampa, Florida, it might just be another congregation doing something interesting on the internet.
You might go, you might not, but no big deal either way.
If I told you this was the church which also has the website http://30daysexchallenge.com, would you move a bit faster to the computer?
Which is clearly a part of the strategy, maybe even an outreach agenda, of this church plant which is largely younger couples and singles, which meets in a rented hall.
To be perfectly candid, when I first heard about “The 30 Day Sex Challenge” on TV, I assumed it was a cheap play for coverage – which worked, since I’m hearing about it in Ohio – and was more flash than substance.
After going to the website, particularly the blog they’ve set up for participants (which I’m sure is moderated verrrry closely), and from reading the guides they offer for download for free (as .pdfs) at http://blog.relevantchurch.com, I have to repent of my initial skepticism.
What the pastors are offering in their congregation, and to others who wish to participate over the internet, is a season that is clearly embedded in Lent, while not mentioning those 40 days and Sundays since their target audience is a largely unchurched bunch for whom Lent is something under the bed.
As for what going on in the bed, well . . .
This 30 day challenge is to be defined by the individuals and couples involved, between Valentine’s Day and Easter, and will be accented by sermons and studies in and through the church. But the core idea is that divorce and alienation is rampant, as people “hook up” casually and over-commit to work and amusements to the detriment of their marriages.
So Relevant Church is actually swinging a double–edged sword, starting with asking singles to commit to 30 days of NOT having sex. Many of us who are life-long church goers and committed Christians are saying, “Um, guys? Your job is to tell them they shouldn’t be having sex in casual relationships at all, not for 30 days.”
I’ll admit that was part of my initial reaction to the “30 Day Sex Challenge.” Looking closely at what the church is saying and doing, though, I have no doubt that this is their consistent teaching. But they know who they’re trying to reach, and to unchurched borderline seekers, they’re saying “Hey, we know this sounds crazy, but single folks, what if you spent 30 days without sex as an excuse not to communicate, and looked at your current relationships and approach to relationships during that time?”
It seems to be striking a chord. Will Relevant encourage them to not stop with 30 days of self-control and restraint? I think so.
And then there’s the challenge to married folk. They have lots of young folk with small kids, and double career strivers. What they’re challenging them to do is make a major commitment to each other, and it’s not just about sex, though that is unapologetically the baseline they’re proposing. Focus on each other, and your relationship, and make time and space and privacy for intimacy, and leave the bars and the BlackBerries and buddies behind. Just the two of you, and a time commited to closeness.
The study guides are very simple, which means folks will do them (Rick Warren should get a royalty), but they are affecting and engaging in how they use the point of married intimacy as a potential blessing from God, and not an oxymoronic punchline of a TV sitcom.
They recommend Bible readings and suggest reflections, with the Song of Songs prominently featured (well, duh). There is a starting questionnaire that is licensed from Willard Harley of Marriagebuilders.com, whose materials I’ve used in pre-marital counseling for years. He’s an excellent Christian counselor with much wisdom around marriage, and doing this questionnaire alone could open up marriages in growing directions, with or without the 30 days.
Before anyone writes me to say “no, the Song of Songs isn’t about couples and sex, but about the relationship between Christ and his church,” yes, I know the citation. But what about this: might God intend the healthy intimacy of a married couple to interpret for us the relationship between Christ and his church?
Kudos to Relevant Church, and Amen!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him where he’s off-base at knapsack77@gmail.com.
* * *
Notes From My Knapsack 2-24-08
Jeff Gill
Make More, Take More, Now or Later
If you’re working the plan properly, we all should be well into figuring and filing our taxes for 2007.
For some of us, that includes estimating our income for 2008 and getting a legally mandated head-start on paying those taxes, too.
We who proudly number ourselves among the self-employed include a number of odd categories that the Tax Code includes (yes, they call it a “code” right up front, which is mighty honest of ‘em).
Clergy, for instance, are often considered “self-employed” for tax purposes even when you serve a specific congregation. Many other so-called “independent contractors” are considered self-employed, which can be a nice deal for their employers.
This means you pay both halves of your FICA, also known as your Social Security payments. Some churches and other contractors offer offsets for that difference, but many working folk don’t even know their employer pays half when they do.
What really makes this interesting is that the feds, the state, and for many of us the local government when there’s an income tax all require you to estimate your income for the coming year. Well, if I knew that, would I be a free-lancer? Anyhow, I have goals, I have dreams, and a whole lotta hope.
On the other hand, I have to pay quarterly estimated taxes, often (usually) before I’ve actually gotten paid for the contract writing or teaching or speaking that I’ve done – being an adjunct or supply or freelance contributor means I’m at the end of the line, payroll-wise, which is just how it is.
What makes this a truly intriguing system is that if I estimate too low what I think I’ll make, that I’ll have to pay taxes on before I receive, then I have to pay an extra penalty on top of my additional tax obligation, for having “paid too little” in estimating the money.
Checking with the Lovely Wife, aka The Brains of the Outfit, she confirms that we’re “Okey Dokey” if we pay (in advance, remember) at least 90% of our taxes that we’re estimating. So if I earn 11% more than my wildest dreams or most prudent imaginings can calculate, I owe both the additional taxes and a little bonus to each of the Federal Treasury, to Gov. “Keno” Strickland’s coffers, and to my beloved village of Granville.
All this in the same country that solemnly declared after the last Christmas season that consumer spending was “only” up 3.5%. That’s an economic crisis, but 11% improvement of my lot is penalized – what’s the deal with the narrow 7.5% window of permissable success?
Candidates like Mike Huckabee can make lots of hay while the sun doesn’t shine on shenanigans like this. His IRS eliminating, national sales tax establishing plan doesn’t make a lick of sense when you try to break it down, but there’s a good reason why people feel unreasonable about the Infernal Revenue Service.
Which is what I write every year on the envelope with the 1040 form. And it’s never been sent back to me “Addressee Unknown.” You know what Attorney Fred Gailey proved in “Miracle on 34th Street,” right?
Every year the Lovely Wife and I do one extra calculation not required by the forms, but ought to be for citizenship. We add up all our income, and all our taxes – federal quarterly and final, state income and sales taxes, local income and property taxes – then we do the division. This year looks to be about 34% of our income going to the common weal, not counting the extortionate penalty factor, admittedly small.
Having said that, we’ll likely be voting for pretty much all of the local levies for our schools and public services. You pay those taxes to support the value of the real estate they’re calculated on. I still think taxes in that form for those purposes make plenty of sense, though the monkeying around with rollbacks and formulas to help make things “fair” (i.e., take from some, keep most, give a little to poorer districts) does more harm than good.
That has nothing to do with my sense that the overall payroll and sales tax system is dangerously near broke, and no amount of “gaming” will fix it. Disincentives in the tax structure work even better than incentives, and they’ve gotta go. If someone doesn’t come up with a better alternative, sheer frustration is gonna get some Huckaplan shoved through Congress. Ideas, anyone?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is no tax accountant. Set him straight on the numbers through knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Worse Yet, The Subject Is Money Next Week
If I told you that it might be worth your while to go check out the website of http://www.relevantchurch.com in Tampa, Florida, it might just be another congregation doing something interesting on the internet.
You might go, you might not, but no big deal either way.
If I told you this was the church which also has the website http://30daysexchallenge.com, would you move a bit faster to the computer?
Which is clearly a part of the strategy, maybe even an outreach agenda, of this church plant which is largely younger couples and singles, which meets in a rented hall.
To be perfectly candid, when I first heard about “The 30 Day Sex Challenge” on TV, I assumed it was a cheap play for coverage – which worked, since I’m hearing about it in Ohio – and was more flash than substance.
After going to the website, particularly the blog they’ve set up for participants (which I’m sure is moderated verrrry closely), and from reading the guides they offer for download for free (as .pdfs) at http://blog.relevantchurch.com, I have to repent of my initial skepticism.
What the pastors are offering in their congregation, and to others who wish to participate over the internet, is a season that is clearly embedded in Lent, while not mentioning those 40 days and Sundays since their target audience is a largely unchurched bunch for whom Lent is something under the bed.
As for what going on in the bed, well . . .
This 30 day challenge is to be defined by the individuals and couples involved, between Valentine’s Day and Easter, and will be accented by sermons and studies in and through the church. But the core idea is that divorce and alienation is rampant, as people “hook up” casually and over-commit to work and amusements to the detriment of their marriages.
So Relevant Church is actually swinging a double–edged sword, starting with asking singles to commit to 30 days of NOT having sex. Many of us who are life-long church goers and committed Christians are saying, “Um, guys? Your job is to tell them they shouldn’t be having sex in casual relationships at all, not for 30 days.”
I’ll admit that was part of my initial reaction to the “30 Day Sex Challenge.” Looking closely at what the church is saying and doing, though, I have no doubt that this is their consistent teaching. But they know who they’re trying to reach, and to unchurched borderline seekers, they’re saying “Hey, we know this sounds crazy, but single folks, what if you spent 30 days without sex as an excuse not to communicate, and looked at your current relationships and approach to relationships during that time?”
It seems to be striking a chord. Will Relevant encourage them to not stop with 30 days of self-control and restraint? I think so.
And then there’s the challenge to married folk. They have lots of young folk with small kids, and double career strivers. What they’re challenging them to do is make a major commitment to each other, and it’s not just about sex, though that is unapologetically the baseline they’re proposing. Focus on each other, and your relationship, and make time and space and privacy for intimacy, and leave the bars and the BlackBerries and buddies behind. Just the two of you, and a time commited to closeness.
The study guides are very simple, which means folks will do them (Rick Warren should get a royalty), but they are affecting and engaging in how they use the point of married intimacy as a potential blessing from God, and not an oxymoronic punchline of a TV sitcom.
They recommend Bible readings and suggest reflections, with the Song of Songs prominently featured (well, duh). There is a starting questionnaire that is licensed from Willard Harley of Marriagebuilders.com, whose materials I’ve used in pre-marital counseling for years. He’s an excellent Christian counselor with much wisdom around marriage, and doing this questionnaire alone could open up marriages in growing directions, with or without the 30 days.
Before anyone writes me to say “no, the Song of Songs isn’t about couples and sex, but about the relationship between Christ and his church,” yes, I know the citation. But what about this: might God intend the healthy intimacy of a married couple to interpret for us the relationship between Christ and his church?
Kudos to Relevant Church, and Amen!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him where he’s off-base at knapsack77@gmail.com.
* * *
Notes From My Knapsack 2-24-08
Jeff Gill
Make More, Take More, Now or Later
If you’re working the plan properly, we all should be well into figuring and filing our taxes for 2007.
For some of us, that includes estimating our income for 2008 and getting a legally mandated head-start on paying those taxes, too.
We who proudly number ourselves among the self-employed include a number of odd categories that the Tax Code includes (yes, they call it a “code” right up front, which is mighty honest of ‘em).
Clergy, for instance, are often considered “self-employed” for tax purposes even when you serve a specific congregation. Many other so-called “independent contractors” are considered self-employed, which can be a nice deal for their employers.
This means you pay both halves of your FICA, also known as your Social Security payments. Some churches and other contractors offer offsets for that difference, but many working folk don’t even know their employer pays half when they do.
What really makes this interesting is that the feds, the state, and for many of us the local government when there’s an income tax all require you to estimate your income for the coming year. Well, if I knew that, would I be a free-lancer? Anyhow, I have goals, I have dreams, and a whole lotta hope.
On the other hand, I have to pay quarterly estimated taxes, often (usually) before I’ve actually gotten paid for the contract writing or teaching or speaking that I’ve done – being an adjunct or supply or freelance contributor means I’m at the end of the line, payroll-wise, which is just how it is.
What makes this a truly intriguing system is that if I estimate too low what I think I’ll make, that I’ll have to pay taxes on before I receive, then I have to pay an extra penalty on top of my additional tax obligation, for having “paid too little” in estimating the money.
Checking with the Lovely Wife, aka The Brains of the Outfit, she confirms that we’re “Okey Dokey” if we pay (in advance, remember) at least 90% of our taxes that we’re estimating. So if I earn 11% more than my wildest dreams or most prudent imaginings can calculate, I owe both the additional taxes and a little bonus to each of the Federal Treasury, to Gov. “Keno” Strickland’s coffers, and to my beloved village of Granville.
All this in the same country that solemnly declared after the last Christmas season that consumer spending was “only” up 3.5%. That’s an economic crisis, but 11% improvement of my lot is penalized – what’s the deal with the narrow 7.5% window of permissable success?
Candidates like Mike Huckabee can make lots of hay while the sun doesn’t shine on shenanigans like this. His IRS eliminating, national sales tax establishing plan doesn’t make a lick of sense when you try to break it down, but there’s a good reason why people feel unreasonable about the Infernal Revenue Service.
Which is what I write every year on the envelope with the 1040 form. And it’s never been sent back to me “Addressee Unknown.” You know what Attorney Fred Gailey proved in “Miracle on 34th Street,” right?
Every year the Lovely Wife and I do one extra calculation not required by the forms, but ought to be for citizenship. We add up all our income, and all our taxes – federal quarterly and final, state income and sales taxes, local income and property taxes – then we do the division. This year looks to be about 34% of our income going to the common weal, not counting the extortionate penalty factor, admittedly small.
Having said that, we’ll likely be voting for pretty much all of the local levies for our schools and public services. You pay those taxes to support the value of the real estate they’re calculated on. I still think taxes in that form for those purposes make plenty of sense, though the monkeying around with rollbacks and formulas to help make things “fair” (i.e., take from some, keep most, give a little to poorer districts) does more harm than good.
That has nothing to do with my sense that the overall payroll and sales tax system is dangerously near broke, and no amount of “gaming” will fix it. Disincentives in the tax structure work even better than incentives, and they’ve gotta go. If someone doesn’t come up with a better alternative, sheer frustration is gonna get some Huckaplan shoved through Congress. Ideas, anyone?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is no tax accountant. Set him straight on the numbers through knapsack77@gmail.com.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Faith Works 2-16-08
Jeff Gill
Clergy Calendars Askew
This year Easter is really right up in our faces and calendars. Barring major developments in human longevity, none of us alive today will see the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus come this early again -- we’re talking 2160.
The last time we had a March 23 Easter was 1913, which few of us recall. It can also come as early as March 22, but so rarely “we” won’t see that until 2285.
So Ash Wednesday and Mardi Gras before and Lent that follows after are all way too early from what we’re used to. The idea is that after Easter there’s a bit more slack in the schedule before graduations and summer programs start to press in, though that may be a concept more than a reality.
A number of special training programs for church staff and leaders are wisely aiming for the season after Easter, and I plan on letting y’all know about them in good order.
One that I’m particularly impressed by is organized through “The Kids’ Team of Licking County.” The Kids’ Team is a group of community professionals who work with the results of child abuse and neglect, and sadly they have plenty of work to do.
This team, including folks like Ken Oswalt, our county prosecutor, and staff from Children’s Services in the Dept. of Job and Family Services, is putting together an educational training seminar on how clergy and church staff should handle identification and reporting of child abuse and neglect.
They’re offering two dates for pastors to choose from, and you can just pick the one that fits best in your schedule. The first training will be held on Wednesday, April 9th, at 9:30am at the First Methodist Church located at 88 N. 5th St in Newark, and the second will be held on Tuesday, April 22nd at 7pm at the Jersey Baptist Church located at 13260 Morse Road, Pataskala. Their goal for this training is “to help you better understand your role in this process of suspected child abuse or neglect and offer support and information on what to do when you suspect such situation. We are aware that making a report is often a complex task. Not only is it difficult to know when to report, it is equally as difficult to deal with the aftermath when families are in crisis.”
This well-timed training opportunity is open to all clergy in the Licking County area, as well as youth pastors, classroom teachers, or child care staff associated with your church. This training is offered at no cost to you or your staff, and every church in the county will soon get a letter with more info, or you can call at 740-670-8914 for reservations by Friday, April 4th.
Not to discourage you from marking this right now on your calendar, but I not only plan to attend, I’ll be helping deliver some of the content at these training events at the invitation of the Kids’ Team. I’m often responsible for sharing this kind of material for fellow counselors and camp directors in church camp settings, and work closely with the Scouting program along these same lines, called “Youth Protection Training.”
They don’t teach you much about this in seminary, if at all, and dealing with child abuse is a bad place to learn by experience.
While many are aware of stories that have been in the media over the last few years about clergy and church staff involved inappropriately with children, less well known is how often pastors and church leaders have helped to end situations of molestation and abuse, and lead families to the full range of healing assistance available in our community.
Suffering in silence and solitude is not necessary, but too many think it is the only path available. Attending this training event can give your church a road map for getting where you really want to be going in the first place, even if a detour suddenly blocked the way ahead for your youth ministry.
God has a way of showing up along detours, y’know.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Clergy Calendars Askew
This year Easter is really right up in our faces and calendars. Barring major developments in human longevity, none of us alive today will see the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus come this early again -- we’re talking 2160.
The last time we had a March 23 Easter was 1913, which few of us recall. It can also come as early as March 22, but so rarely “we” won’t see that until 2285.
So Ash Wednesday and Mardi Gras before and Lent that follows after are all way too early from what we’re used to. The idea is that after Easter there’s a bit more slack in the schedule before graduations and summer programs start to press in, though that may be a concept more than a reality.
A number of special training programs for church staff and leaders are wisely aiming for the season after Easter, and I plan on letting y’all know about them in good order.
One that I’m particularly impressed by is organized through “The Kids’ Team of Licking County.” The Kids’ Team is a group of community professionals who work with the results of child abuse and neglect, and sadly they have plenty of work to do.
This team, including folks like Ken Oswalt, our county prosecutor, and staff from Children’s Services in the Dept. of Job and Family Services, is putting together an educational training seminar on how clergy and church staff should handle identification and reporting of child abuse and neglect.
They’re offering two dates for pastors to choose from, and you can just pick the one that fits best in your schedule. The first training will be held on Wednesday, April 9th, at 9:30am at the First Methodist Church located at 88 N. 5th St in Newark, and the second will be held on Tuesday, April 22nd at 7pm at the Jersey Baptist Church located at 13260 Morse Road, Pataskala. Their goal for this training is “to help you better understand your role in this process of suspected child abuse or neglect and offer support and information on what to do when you suspect such situation. We are aware that making a report is often a complex task. Not only is it difficult to know when to report, it is equally as difficult to deal with the aftermath when families are in crisis.”
This well-timed training opportunity is open to all clergy in the Licking County area, as well as youth pastors, classroom teachers, or child care staff associated with your church. This training is offered at no cost to you or your staff, and every church in the county will soon get a letter with more info, or you can call at 740-670-8914 for reservations by Friday, April 4th.
Not to discourage you from marking this right now on your calendar, but I not only plan to attend, I’ll be helping deliver some of the content at these training events at the invitation of the Kids’ Team. I’m often responsible for sharing this kind of material for fellow counselors and camp directors in church camp settings, and work closely with the Scouting program along these same lines, called “Youth Protection Training.”
They don’t teach you much about this in seminary, if at all, and dealing with child abuse is a bad place to learn by experience.
While many are aware of stories that have been in the media over the last few years about clergy and church staff involved inappropriately with children, less well known is how often pastors and church leaders have helped to end situations of molestation and abuse, and lead families to the full range of healing assistance available in our community.
Suffering in silence and solitude is not necessary, but too many think it is the only path available. Attending this training event can give your church a road map for getting where you really want to be going in the first place, even if a detour suddenly blocked the way ahead for your youth ministry.
God has a way of showing up along detours, y’know.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
[Scroll down if you're looking for the pictures from the "A Christmas Story" house!]
Notes From My Knapsack 2-17-08
Jeff Gill
The Man Who Would Not Be King
George Washington fought against King and Country, from the point of view of George the Third of Great Britain.
The House of Hanover’s hapless heirs had helped many like Washington see the hopelessness of reaching a negotiated democratic settlement with an hereditary monarchy.
Lord North didn’t help much, either.
Next year about this time the main attention will rightly go towards Honest Abe, as Lincoln’s 200th birthday will come February 12, 2009. (And that same day, Charles Darwin, for those of you completing your set of historical coincidences!)
What has picked up the unofficial name “Presidents’ Day” comes from the coincidence of Lincoln’s Feb. 12 birthdate and Washington’s Feb. 22, which just to make matters worse, or more interesting for real history geeks, is Feb. 11, because he was born 276 years ago, before the British Empire adopted the full Gregorian system of keeping a calendar, shifting dates forward by eleven days. Anyhow.
(And Black History Month comes from the conjunction of Lincoln’s and Frederick Douglass’ birthdays in what was first called by Carter Woodson “Black History Week.” Anyhow.)
But the federal holiday we observe tomorrow is, in fact, “Washington’s Birthday,” and Millard Fillmore and Richard Nixon will have to look elsewhere for their day in the sun.
Why this focus on one individual?
When King George III was told in 1783 that Washington declined further power and wanted only to return to his farm, he declared, "If Washington does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." For once, King George III may have been right.
George Washington was repeatedly asked to become monarch of the new nation he helped bring into existence as commander of the Continental Army, especially by folks like Alexander Hamilton who thought they stood a chance of being named George’s heir (Washington had no children.) It was only with great reluctance he allowed himself to be elected President, and more so for a second term, where he drew a line, and rode home to Mount Vernon. For this Lord Byron picked up on his ruler’s earlier comment, and on the end of Washington’s political career called him the “Cincinnatus of the West,” echoing a figure from the classic period of the Roman republic who voluntarily gave up power, and accidentally named an Ohio city some years later.
In light of the example and role of “the man who would not be king,” Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News editorial board asks on his blog: “Which ten American historical figures would you cite that would give a high school student a decent, if incomplete, grounding in American history? The question is not about the Ten Most Important Americans, though certainly the lists could overlap. Think hard about this. Think about the lives Americans have lived since the colonial times, and come up with ten reasonably well-known people whose biographies convey something essential about the American character and experience.”
With the added qualification of “Presidents excluded,” Rod has picked up a bunch of suggested lists that often go something like this: “Muhammad Ali, John Wayne, George S. Patton, Neil Armstrong, Mark Twain, William Randolph Hearst, Robert E. Lee, Alexander Hamilton, Davy Crockett, and a combo pick, Sitting Bull/Geronimo/Crazy Horse.”
A woman, reading a series of lists of ten with all men, suggested this list: “Abigail Adams, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth Blackwell, Margaret Sanger, Mother Jones, Mary McLeod Bethune, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Cochran, Margaret Chase Smith.”
Go to http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon and search for “Ten Names” to see quite a slew of suggestions along these lines, but actually almost any of them would create an interesting framework for teaching the outline of American history through the lens of lives such as these.
But whatever list you might most prefer, there’s no such roster that would be as complete or effective without George Washington’s presence. Monday, enjoy a pancake, his favorite food, and salute him in your own way.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s tried the Mount Vernon recipe for “hoecakes” and will stick with Bisquick. Send him your historic recipes at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Notes From My Knapsack 2-17-08
Jeff Gill
The Man Who Would Not Be King
George Washington fought against King and Country, from the point of view of George the Third of Great Britain.
The House of Hanover’s hapless heirs had helped many like Washington see the hopelessness of reaching a negotiated democratic settlement with an hereditary monarchy.
Lord North didn’t help much, either.
Next year about this time the main attention will rightly go towards Honest Abe, as Lincoln’s 200th birthday will come February 12, 2009. (And that same day, Charles Darwin, for those of you completing your set of historical coincidences!)
What has picked up the unofficial name “Presidents’ Day” comes from the coincidence of Lincoln’s Feb. 12 birthdate and Washington’s Feb. 22, which just to make matters worse, or more interesting for real history geeks, is Feb. 11, because he was born 276 years ago, before the British Empire adopted the full Gregorian system of keeping a calendar, shifting dates forward by eleven days. Anyhow.
(And Black History Month comes from the conjunction of Lincoln’s and Frederick Douglass’ birthdays in what was first called by Carter Woodson “Black History Week.” Anyhow.)
But the federal holiday we observe tomorrow is, in fact, “Washington’s Birthday,” and Millard Fillmore and Richard Nixon will have to look elsewhere for their day in the sun.
Why this focus on one individual?
When King George III was told in 1783 that Washington declined further power and wanted only to return to his farm, he declared, "If Washington does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." For once, King George III may have been right.
George Washington was repeatedly asked to become monarch of the new nation he helped bring into existence as commander of the Continental Army, especially by folks like Alexander Hamilton who thought they stood a chance of being named George’s heir (Washington had no children.) It was only with great reluctance he allowed himself to be elected President, and more so for a second term, where he drew a line, and rode home to Mount Vernon. For this Lord Byron picked up on his ruler’s earlier comment, and on the end of Washington’s political career called him the “Cincinnatus of the West,” echoing a figure from the classic period of the Roman republic who voluntarily gave up power, and accidentally named an Ohio city some years later.
In light of the example and role of “the man who would not be king,” Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News editorial board asks on his blog: “Which ten American historical figures would you cite that would give a high school student a decent, if incomplete, grounding in American history? The question is not about the Ten Most Important Americans, though certainly the lists could overlap. Think hard about this. Think about the lives Americans have lived since the colonial times, and come up with ten reasonably well-known people whose biographies convey something essential about the American character and experience.”
With the added qualification of “Presidents excluded,” Rod has picked up a bunch of suggested lists that often go something like this: “Muhammad Ali, John Wayne, George S. Patton, Neil Armstrong, Mark Twain, William Randolph Hearst, Robert E. Lee, Alexander Hamilton, Davy Crockett, and a combo pick, Sitting Bull/Geronimo/Crazy Horse.”
A woman, reading a series of lists of ten with all men, suggested this list: “Abigail Adams, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth Blackwell, Margaret Sanger, Mother Jones, Mary McLeod Bethune, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Cochran, Margaret Chase Smith.”
Go to http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon and search for “Ten Names” to see quite a slew of suggestions along these lines, but actually almost any of them would create an interesting framework for teaching the outline of American history through the lens of lives such as these.
But whatever list you might most prefer, there’s no such roster that would be as complete or effective without George Washington’s presence. Monday, enjoy a pancake, his favorite food, and salute him in your own way.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s tried the Mount Vernon recipe for “hoecakes” and will stick with Bisquick. Send him your historic recipes at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
[The pictures from the "A Christmas Story" house are just after this post; scroll on down! pax, jeff]
Faith Works 2-9-08
Jeff Gill
Food As an Act of Faith
There’s a little seven word phrase that’s been stuck in my head the last few weeks, and look out – I’m trying to stick it in yours.
It comes from the writer Michael Pollan, who wrote “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” a few years back, tracing food from the land to your table, and all the long, strange trips edible items take to get there.
He didn’t end up a vegetarian by the conclusion of his journey, but it was a near thing.
Pollan’s latest is called “In Defense of Food,” and in the magazine article that was the basis for the book, he came up with the tagline “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
For some of us, that sounds like a Lenten discipline right there. But Pollan is no ascetic, calling for an entirely meatless regimen or a life of deprivation. He is asking of those of us who eat – that’s a pretty inclusive category, sweeping up people of faith in many quarters – to just be more mindful of what it is we’re putting in our bodies.
Paul the Apostle had some hard words for the Christians in Corinth about “the body is a temple” of the Holy Spirit, and his general statement moves towards the folk wisdom “we are what we eat.”
Chemistry and biology remind us “we really, really are what we eat.” Religious traditions of all sorts have asked hard questions about what food is proper, or right, or “clean.” Some of those answers are cultural norms dressed up for church (“don’t eat those guys food”), and some have practical underpinnings, such as the relative unhealthiness of swine in desert environments (“don’t eat pork”), and others have ethical groundings.
Observant Jews keep a separate set of dishes for dairy and meat products, and even non-traditional Jews in Israel have those foods kept at a distance from each other. Why this concern? Well, as the nation Israel grew in the land of Canaan, many of their neighbors considered a particular dish as a real delicacy – a youngling, lamb or calf, boiled in the milk of its mother. The Old Testament dietary code said this was a vile practice that led to cruelty and insensitivity to suffering, and you should bend over backwards to avoid it.
Today, avoiding yogurt sauces over chicken might seem to be missing the point, but when you know the source of the practice, you can appreciate the concern.
In the season of Lent that began last Wednesday, many Christians are looking to their diet for a source of conscious discipline, and may be giving up cookies or candy or some treat for Monday through Saturday (with a modest exceptions on Sundays to Easter). Catholics traditionally give up red meat on Fridays, which is why Friday Fish Frys are so common right now, and everyone from Wendy’s to MickeyD’s is promoting fish sandwiches.
I come back to Pollan’s thoughts, asking us all in a way that should be of particular interest to religious folk “What are we eating? What are the implications of how that food got to our tables? What should we then eat?”
Or – “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” Pollan is suggesting that we consider food as items where we can know where it comes from and how it got here (mostly); preferring butter to margarine and fruit to fruit snacks and vegetables to oddly colored specks embedded in our pre-made entrees.
What is your diet saying about your beliefs, especially through this Lenten season?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; toss him an answer at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Faith Works 2-9-08
Jeff Gill
Food As an Act of Faith
There’s a little seven word phrase that’s been stuck in my head the last few weeks, and look out – I’m trying to stick it in yours.
It comes from the writer Michael Pollan, who wrote “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” a few years back, tracing food from the land to your table, and all the long, strange trips edible items take to get there.
He didn’t end up a vegetarian by the conclusion of his journey, but it was a near thing.
Pollan’s latest is called “In Defense of Food,” and in the magazine article that was the basis for the book, he came up with the tagline “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
For some of us, that sounds like a Lenten discipline right there. But Pollan is no ascetic, calling for an entirely meatless regimen or a life of deprivation. He is asking of those of us who eat – that’s a pretty inclusive category, sweeping up people of faith in many quarters – to just be more mindful of what it is we’re putting in our bodies.
Paul the Apostle had some hard words for the Christians in Corinth about “the body is a temple” of the Holy Spirit, and his general statement moves towards the folk wisdom “we are what we eat.”
Chemistry and biology remind us “we really, really are what we eat.” Religious traditions of all sorts have asked hard questions about what food is proper, or right, or “clean.” Some of those answers are cultural norms dressed up for church (“don’t eat those guys food”), and some have practical underpinnings, such as the relative unhealthiness of swine in desert environments (“don’t eat pork”), and others have ethical groundings.
Observant Jews keep a separate set of dishes for dairy and meat products, and even non-traditional Jews in Israel have those foods kept at a distance from each other. Why this concern? Well, as the nation Israel grew in the land of Canaan, many of their neighbors considered a particular dish as a real delicacy – a youngling, lamb or calf, boiled in the milk of its mother. The Old Testament dietary code said this was a vile practice that led to cruelty and insensitivity to suffering, and you should bend over backwards to avoid it.
Today, avoiding yogurt sauces over chicken might seem to be missing the point, but when you know the source of the practice, you can appreciate the concern.
In the season of Lent that began last Wednesday, many Christians are looking to their diet for a source of conscious discipline, and may be giving up cookies or candy or some treat for Monday through Saturday (with a modest exceptions on Sundays to Easter). Catholics traditionally give up red meat on Fridays, which is why Friday Fish Frys are so common right now, and everyone from Wendy’s to MickeyD’s is promoting fish sandwiches.
I come back to Pollan’s thoughts, asking us all in a way that should be of particular interest to religious folk “What are we eating? What are the implications of how that food got to our tables? What should we then eat?”
Or – “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” Pollan is suggesting that we consider food as items where we can know where it comes from and how it got here (mostly); preferring butter to margarine and fruit to fruit snacks and vegetables to oddly colored specks embedded in our pre-made entrees.
What is your diet saying about your beliefs, especially through this Lenten season?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; toss him an answer at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
"A Christmas Story" in Cleveland
On Feb. 3, 2008, this fellow got a delightful opportunity to wander about and be photographed in the house used for all the exterior and some of the interior photography of "A Christmas Story." The 25th anniversary of that movie is coming this November, and the staff at the house and museum and gift shop has done a great job creating a unique visitor experience.
A few of the shots taken by me and by Monica, one of the curators of "A Christmas Story" house, follow:
The stairs up, which Ralphie famously descends in the deranged bunny pajamas --
-- and this is Ralphie and Randy's bedroom looking towards the street, while this next is the view east over the Cuyahoga River valley which you see a number of times in the movie, usually wreathed with snow and ice --
On Feb. 3, 2008, this fellow got a delightful opportunity to wander about and be photographed in the house used for all the exterior and some of the interior photography of "A Christmas Story." The 25th anniversary of that movie is coming this November, and the staff at the house and museum and gift shop has done a great job creating a unique visitor experience.
A few of the shots taken by me and by Monica, one of the curators of "A Christmas Story" house, follow:
The stairs up, which Ralphie famously descends in the deranged bunny pajamas --
-- and this is Ralphie and Randy's bedroom looking towards the street, while this next is the view east over the Cuyahoga River valley which you see a number of times in the movie, usually wreathed with snow and ice --
-- they even let me pick at the turkey in the stove, before the Bumpuss' dogs got to it --
Can you see the Red Ryder air rifle behind the desk?
And i brought the Little Guy back a Little Orphan Annie decoder pin, which i tested out next to the sink, with the laundry hamper as a desk, with the bar of Lifebuoy bearing a distinct set of toothmarks (not mine!)
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