Faith Works 11-21

Faith Works 11-21-09

Jeff Gill

 

Or On the Other Hand, Maybe Not

___

 

If I were to hazard a guess that there were some readers of the Advocate today who weren't feeling too terribly thankful, it wouldn't be going out on too shaky a limb.

 

Given the state of the national, regional, and local economy, the odds that there are some people turning pages (actual or virtual) who are looking more for the Help Wanted pages than sprightly opinion & comment are pretty good, almost a certainty.

 

The parson's usual dodge, said the parson, is to suggest that everyone, no matter if they've lost their job, even if they're short cash or feeling the sting of already-burned-through credit coming due, should still feel thankful for something . . . or other.

 

You still have your health, even if no health insurance, says the optimist; you have the breath of life itself, says the faithful believer, which is a gift; the pragmatist points out that you aren't in jail. (Except for all our faithful jail readers – hey there, folks, hang in there!)

 

Thankfulness is technically something you can feel no matter what your circumstances, unless you're a corpse or at least catatonic. Medical science declares that feelings of thankfulness lowers blood pressure, supports your immune system, and promotes general well being.

 

Does that include forced or insincere thankfulness? Or is it one of those categories of thought and action where if you believe something, you'll start to live so much as if it's true that it will effectively become true. You can't think yourself tall, but thinking self-confidently can start to straighten your spine enough to actually add both height and the impression of height.

 

There's anecdotal evidence enough that if you decide to speak and act and claim to be thankful, thankfulness for yet another day, for a few basics, and for the promise of maybe something more at some possible point later, you really do end up feeling thankful right down to your ungrateful appendix.

 

"Give thanks, with a grateful heart" says the well-known praise song, and it's a piece of wise counsel, but what about just giving thanks, and asking for a grateful heart to warm up inside you as a result? Sometimes, you just don't feel thankful for anything, including, not just starting with, the fact of having woken up that morning. You may even be particularly displeased about that. You know you shouldn't, but it's been that kind of week, OK? (You think, grumpily.)

 

Which may be so, but can you concede that there is a reason, any reason at all in your life, to offer thanks: to God, to your higher power, to something or Someone beyond your own abilities and actions?

 

And then could you be open to feel it, to feel the effects of that decision to present a thankful attitude in the general direction of the cosmos? It would be a start.

 

Most areas around the county have a community Thanksgiving service, usually on Sunday night, since so many travel on Wednesday or Thursday of this week. Granville & Hebron churches band together for a 7:00 pm service, while Utica, always a step ahead, has one at 6:30 pm Sunday night, and there are no doubt others.

 

If you're feeling particularly un-thankful this year, my heart and sympathies are with you. There are some real challenges out there, and I wouldn't want to even hint that they are anything other than demoralizing for anyone feeling alone and pushed aside.

 

What I'd also like to offer is to come join one of the community Thanksgiving worship services, since there's probably one very near you, and since they include multiple congregations, it's a great time to drop in and not feel like the only stranger in the building.

 

And for that hour of music and singing and prayer, take a shot at being thankful, even if only for very little. It might just grow.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him what you're thankful for at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Knapsack 11-19

Notes From My Knapsack 11-19-09

Jeff Gill

 

Give Thanks With Heart and Hands and Voices

___

 

Sunday evening at St. Luke's Episcopal Church the entire community is invited to start a week of Thanksgiving with a Community Thanksgiving Service at 7:00 pm, planned by the Granville Ministerium.

 

The Rev. Thom Lamb of First Presbyterian will preach, and The Rev. Stephen Applegate of the host church has arranged a number of us clergy folk from many different denominations in a worship service that can help raise up and focus our reasons to be thankful, as a village, as families, and as individuals.

 

Our offering at the service will go to the Coalition of Care's ongoing work, and a community chorus will sing for us.

 

That chorus is another expression of an impulse that's visible over on Newark's East Main Street, just past the big blue steel bridge, opposite the Licking County Justice Center. Right now, the "Church Build" Habitat for Humanity house is wrapped in blue material around the first floor framing, but sheathing will go on shortly, and then a crane will help lift the roof trusses into place.

 

Centenary UMC is celebrating a bicentennial year in 2010, and one of the ways they wanted to mark the occasion, along with the usual plates and such, was a gift to the community. A few members took the lead in the idea of pulling together county Christian churches, and got around twenty participants to commit to the idea, but Granville churches are strongly represented in both contributions and construction crew. The last day I was on the site, there were workers from Centenary, St. Luke's, Spring Hills, and St. Edwards.

 

The work will continue on Saturdays and Wednesdays through the holiday season; also coming right up – Thursday, Dec. 3, at 6:00 pm, is the Newark "Sights and Sounds of Christmas" guided tour of downtown churches. $5 per person, all for the Licking County Food Pantry, is a wonderful experience to see and hear some real county history, and great live music. Check out www.sightsandsoundsofchristmas.org for more info.

 

Of course the first Saturday of December is . . . time to leave town? Yes, I know there's a few Scrooges who feel that way, but this is the 20^th anniversary of the Lovely Wife and I first stumbling into downtown Granville as evening settled around the Four Corners, the Scouts lighting the luminaries, music echoing out of the churches, and a light snow fell all around. We were captivated and entranced and whatever else the thesaurus says about that, and if you'd told us that night we'd be living in this village fifteen years later we would have laughed and laughed.

 

If you'd have told us in 1989 we'd have a son in twenty years who would be lighting those luminaries, we might have cried, just a bit, with happy tears. And laughed.

 

Both of which we'll no doubt do on Dec. 5 at the Candlelight Walking Tour. See you there!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story about your favorite anniversaries or events at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Knapsack 11-14

Faith Works 11-14-09

Jeff Gill

 

Something To Believe In

___

 

 

I believe in Boston.

 

That may sound a little crazy to some, especially when I admit – I've never been to Boston. Got up to Newport and a quick run through Providence, but didn't make it Boston.

 

But I believe it's there.

 

Granted, much of my mental image of Boston is based on pictures taken from history and fiction; the Boston that is most real to me is the one described by Esther Forbes in "Johnny Tremain," a novel written during World War II set in the years before the American Revolution.

 

Add in Longfellow's "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," which is actually a poem, and some historical recreations in my junior high social studies books, and the dominant impression I have when I hear someone mention Boston is that of a long-lost city, with few points of contact with the current reality . . . whatever that is.

 

More recently, I have seen and appreciated the movie "Good Will Hunting," which is set in Boston as it is today, so I have an overlay which may or may not get me closer to the actual city, or at least the South End and parts of neighboring Cambridge.

 

Some of what I've learned over the years about Boston seems downright incredible: Beacon Hill, cut down to a plain, the volume used to fill in the ocean front bays all around the near-island of the city as it began? A vast tunnel where multi-millions of tax dollars went to die, which has been actually seen by few but discussed by everyone (in Boston), or a baseball park with a high, green wall called by all and sundry a "monster" unlike any other playing field? A boxing team on ice skates which fights sliding backwards, until occasionally a hockey game breaks out?

 

Still, I believe in Boston.

 

You might remind me that many have been there, and I could find them, even on my own street, so it is no "leap of faith" to say I believe in Boston. Yet I really can't think of ever having had a conversation with someone face to face about the place. It gets brought up on tv shows and lends its name to a particular brand of candy baked beans that are neither baked, nor beans, and the sum total of inputs has led me to decide: I believe in Boston.

 

If I chose to say "there is no Boston," then I might have to contend with those who say "you are wrong, I've been there, I had a cream pie." But whether anyone chose to confirm or refute my understanding, would that really affect the basic question, whether or not there is a city called Boston?

 

Some of you are saying "what is this lunacy? Everyone knows there is a Boston, and the reality of that place is tied to so many more everyday facts that to deny Boston would be like saying that there is no such thing as gravity." Which may be.

 

The fact remains that I have never been closer than fifty miles to Boston, have never seen it with my own eyes, have no direct contact with anything to do with the city other than knowing a few Harvard grads (which doesn't count, considering the broad Charles River between them), and do not root for either the Red Sox, the Bruins, or the Patriots, which play in Foxborough anyhow.

 

But I have decided that believing in Boston makes sense, fits into the rest of what I know directly of the world, and is no crazier than believing that I will, in twenty years, collect something from Social Security. I may not make it to Bean Town, may never walk the Patriot Trail past Paul Revere's House and Old North Church, or get a retirement check from Uncle Sam, but I believe they are there based on the evidence I have, both solid data and artistic impression, triangulated into a picture with depth and solidity in my mind's eye. Or at least Boston is solid in my assumptions, more so that the prospect of a government benefit.

 

And I believe there is a God, who takes note of my situation on a personal basis, but tends to creation with infinite care. Of Jesus I have heard much, and marvel at some, but his reality long ago and now is something that strikes me as better established than the likelihood of extraterrestrial life, on which thousands of scientists spend millions each year looking for.

 

Some of whom have endowed chairs at universities in the greater Boston area.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he has never been to Boston, but did cut through Fall River, MA late one night. Tell him about your trip to an unlikely spot at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Coalition of Care newsletter - Fall 2009

Coalition of Care newsletter – November 2009

Jeff Gill

What Do You See When You Pray?

When it comes to personal prayer, eyes closed is the American norm.
That's what you see if you cheat and look around during most
corporate prayer settings, in church or in other places for that
matter – eyes closed, head bowed.

There's nothing in the Bible that commends shutting out the world
that way, except perhaps the "prayer closet" suggestion Jesus gives
his followers, though that seems to be more aimed at avoiding the
gaze of others than closing off your own. Don't go out where you can
get people to see you and congratulate you as your primary prayer
practice, Jesus reminds us.

But closed eyes is what we're used to, and we like what we're used
to. Except then you have to wrestle with the question, what do I see?

Living in a highly visual culture, the fact is that most of us still
"see" something when we close our eyes. We're all Steven Spielbergs
within our heads, shooting a story and layering in the special
effects from our well fertilized imaginations.

So then the spiritual discipline question is: with images, or
without? Some Eastern Orthodox spiritual practices quite specifically
call on us to "empty" our minds, and clear out all ideas and pictures
while focusing on God; other traditions of the Christian faith
suggest a specific image, and working on keeping that central in our
mind's eye.

During the closing portions of the Gospel Celebration, in a final
prayer together, I asked everyone gathered there to join me in
imagining a desk and a chair, two chairs, and the occupants of those
two chairs in prayer together. To me, that is a central image of what
the "Coalition of Care" is about, the time spent for two people to
hear each others' stories and pray together for discernment and
wisdom and guidance.

What's been in my prayers since then, though, is an image of just one
person, in a chair at home, trying to offer up wordless prayers
through anguish and pain. It's the prayer of a mother, or a father,
or whatever the individual, who is trying to muster the courage, or
maybe the humility, or just to set aside their pride while stumbling
on the awkward, painful embarrassment of having to go somewhere and
sit down and say "I need help."

That's the point where we all can only call on grace, God's grace, to
help move that hurting person. We can't help most folk until they
come in, but that moment of decision to come in – those moments of
choice, to leave the chair, get in the car or walk down the street,
to go through the door, to wait, even a short time, to sit down with
the Coalition counselor . . . at any one of those moments, they could
decide to say "No" and head back into the dark security of despair.

We need to pray for those people, those moments, that grace, so that
those who need to open their eyes and pray their way into a
conference with the Coalition will find that strength, walk in that
hope, and sit in confidence that asking for aid is what God blesses
them to do.

Faith Works 11-7

Faith Works 11-7-09

Jeff Gill

 

The Care and Feeding of Apophenia

___

 

At an archaeology conference held on the OSU-N campus in the Reese Center, one of the presenters talked about "apophenia."

 

If you work with the evaluation of survey data or graphic information of any sort, you know the word, but it's a concept that most of us bump up against without ever needing to put a label on it.

 

Apophenia is just the term for seeing patterns or something familiar where there is actually no intended meaning, whether turning a stump in the twilight into a dog, or calling an arrangement of stars a bear or plow or dipper.

 

Pareidolia is a related concept, more specifically when our senses help us mistake randomness for meaningfulness. The best example of pareidolia that we're all familiar with is hearing the phone ring while we're in the shower. The white noise of water spraying creates so many little audio signatures that our brain kicks into overdrive, trying to hear *something,* and forces from the sound the sense that a distant phone is signaling.

 

Scientists point out that pattern recognition is what makes our brains so useful, and in fact children and adults with autism spectrum disorders can be so sensitized to sorting out inputs (to a fault, perhaps even obsessively) that they notice patterns that actually *are* there, but that most average people don't catch.

 

To a very different extreme is when a mentally ill person hears a message just for them in the arrangement of TV advertizing, or a voice speaking to them just below the dialogue in a movie.

 

Each year in the autumn I think about apophenia, and ancient history, and faith. The talk at the Reese Center poked me because I usually don't write about this subject just before Hallowe'en because it has the potential to push so many odd buttons, and often it's barely a day after Nov. 1 and All Saints' when the big push to the Holiday Season eats all our attention.

 

When the days grow short, and the darkness gathers quickly, and pools of shadow never see light again in our homes and yards until  March or later; when the waving branches of bare tree limbs claw a skeletal hand against a full moon; when the skitter of dry leaves pace an irregular step across the garage floor . . .

 

There's a certain logic, a necessity of ghosts and spirits and haunting that I cannot but find inevitable when I think what life must have been like not so very long ago, and there is in our well-lit, open plan, tidy cornered age an equally unsurprising grasping after the uncanny where it rarely occurs without a little pump priming.

 

Think about green timbers creaking, board floors all askew, small windows with "crazy" glass (the term itself comes from the pattern of ripples and cracks in old panes), and that's just indoors. Think about deep gloom within the forest, actual predators not fearful of humans (and many more human predators, whatever you've heard of "good old days"), and the limits of candle and torch, themselves generating a dancing flicker of shadow as much as of light.

 

Seeing those who had died in the bedroom corner, the shed's fence corner, or along the treeline, especially when the dead grew more numerous in your life by the year, by the week, starting in youth – of course you did. Today not a few of us get into our 30s and even more before we even see a funeral or a casket with contents, and what house is without lights and outlets in every corner, inside and outside?

 

Add in a bit of malnutrition, a general state of ill health combined with rare glasses for no less frequent poor vision, and it doesn't take imagination or even wishful thinking to see what isn't there.

 

Having thought this through, I read old documents with a slightly different eye: then I run across those who skip along from such considerations to the assertion that all religious belief is apophenia, "hindsight effect," that pareidolia is the source of every encounter with the divine.

 

This is where church leadership is tested, especially this time of year. Are the only two choices between agreeing with every out-of-the-corner of the eye apparition, or absolute scientific materialism? I'd say there's a fascinating middle ground for us to explore, and I hope to come back to this subject in the next few weeks.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he hopes you enjoy discovering useful words for odd occasions as much as he does. Share a new term with him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Notes From My Knapsack 11-5-09

Jeff Gill

 

Adaptability and Inflexibility Can Work Together

___

 

 

Julia Child and the Wright Brothers have been dancing together in my brain recently.

 

Julia Child, of course, has been back in the national consciousness with the movie "Julie & Julia," and that fun little film has also helped sell not only Julie Powell's book about making all 524 recipes in Julia Child's first cookbook, also titled "Julie & Julia," but it helped get a second book out into the public consciousness, or at least my own.

 

"My Life in France" is a memoir that Child wrote with her nephew, Alex Prud'homme, a project finished by him just after her death, written from a series of lengthy interviews he did with her over the year before she died at the age of 92 in 2004.

 

The book was the "other half" of the movie "Julie & Julia," the half that many of us wished was longer, which followed Paul Child and his new wife, Julia McWilliams, from 1948 to 1954 in Paris, Marseille, and ultimately Oslo, Berlin, New York, and to the home in Cambridge, Massachusetts whose kitchen ends up in the Smithsonian.

 

And it lays out the story of the writing of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," a book which not only created a revolution in American cuisine, but in a roundabout but very distinct way led to the revitalization of WGBH in Boston and PBS in general, created the cooking show as we know it, and is why there is a Food Network that keeps me up late to see who wins on "Iron Chef America."

 

But the book almost wasn't written, repeatedly. It repeatedly should have died, and almost did, with encouragement. The reasons to give up were numerous and convincing, and partnership of "Trois Gourmandes" who officially wrote it was even more complicated and fraught with tensions than the movie indicated, and it indicated a whole bunch of it.

 

Julia Child had to catch her vision, find her own sources of encouragement, deal with pressures to radically revise her hopes into something more conventional, a book that would have gotten to press faster and almost certainly would have sunk more swiftly out of sight . . . unlike "Mastering," which now has a whole new life on the best seller list beyond Julie Powell's and Alex Prud'homme's books.

 

What's this got to do with the Wright Brothers? Well, I had a couple of occasions recently to be in the Dayton area, and finally got to Huffman Prairie. It's a bit out of the way, even if you've found your way to the Wright–Patterson Air Force Museum (bigger, better, still free, go see it!) or Carillon Park (thanks, Col. Deeds!).

 

Not to offend any North Carolina fans out there, but Kitty Hawk? Feh. It was one step, an important step of sorts in the journey to flight, but just one intermediate step. People had flown gliders further, and looped about a bit, and the engine of sorts that pushed the first Wright Flyer in December of 1903 was a necessary step towards powered flight, but just a hop of a few hundred feet skimming the sand.

 

But what made flight a reality, and a useable technology, was taking off, flying a circuit, and safely landing after repeating that loop a few times. If you use that as the benchmark for "the invention of flight," it was a fall day in October and November of 1905 that really opened up the Age of Aviation, and it was in Ohio where Orville and Wilbur did that. The field, Huffman Prairie, is still open, and has seven large white banners marking the circuit they flew, once in December of 1904 and with greater skill and confidence, to the point of flying until the gas tank emptied, in the fall of 1905.

 

Julia Child and the Wrights are both in my mind as I think about how they are often seen as geniuses who produced a revolution with a burst of effort, yes, but mostly inspiration and circumstance. What happens when you look closely at their respective journeys, from idea to actuality, is that it took great persistence combined with cheerful flexibility and an unbending belief in their core inspiration.

 

That's a story that needs to be heard and learned and shared, and merrily thrown into the teeth of storylines that claim it's lottery winnings and reality show victories and a good publicist that get you to success.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Knapsack 10-31

Faith Works 10-31-09

Jeff Gill

 

Not Too Many Saints On the Ballot

___

 

We've got an Election Day coming Tuesday, and many important choices on local representation and civic issues.

 

These are the votes that most directly make an impact on our daily lives (or drives), and call for discernment that considers people, personalities, and positions.

 

I'll admit to having a tendency to vote for candidates I've met, even when I don't entirely agree with them, policy-wise. That's not a terribly thoughtful standard in a time when I know that I don't spend as much time at home as I used to, or as my parents did, so who knows which candidates tried to knock on my door and got crickets?

 

Prayer and a seeking after more careful consideration is one spiritual fruit that an election can help produce. Not that election campaigning tends to promote that, but if you want to step back from the agitation and anxiety and frenzy that much political advertising can bring into our homes and heads, you have to intentionally cultivate a little more interior peacefulness to get there.

 

As you think about how and for whom you want to vote, see what it takes to set aside all the fears and aimless emotionalism, and ask for guiding signs that are rooted in calm, and confidence, and hope.

 

Trick-or-Treat is behind us, Time Change (Fall back, one hour!) is tomorrow, and it is also "All Saints Day" in some traditions, the root of Hallowe'en as the eve of "All Hallows" as ye olde English has it, as "gospel" is good news from the same linguistic source.

 

Saintliness is one quality you could look for in candidates, and the past "examples of heroic faith," which is one definition of what a saint is, can be a guide as well. To be perfectly candid, if not perfectly saintly myself, there aren't many saints to choose from in any party, and the candidates and office holders I know personally would likely agree without reservation. There's something about public life that isn't terribly conducive to sainthood, which is probably why Saint Paul said in Romans how important it is for us to pray for them!

 

Yet there's another definition of saint to consider, which simply encompasses all of us in the community of the baptized. Paul does talk about "the saints" in his letters in ways that make it clear he means the whole membership of the church, and in the Reformation, which led to so much backing away from talking about saints and sainthood, Martin Luther said "To forget that we are saints is to forget Christ and to forget our baptism."

 

So when Christians gather, there is a sense in which you are surrounded by saints, not just in that "great cloud of witnesses" mentioned in Hebrews, but next to you in the pew. They may appear no more saintly that the candidates you vote for on Tuesday, but today, they should point you towards God, which is the real function of a saint in any tradition.

 

Sunday afternoon, with All Saints' Day falling on most churches' day of worship, there's also a chance to get together with saints who can surprise you even more than the saint five rows over back in your own congregation. The Licking County Coalition of Care is holding their annual Gospel Celebration at the Midland Theatre, starting at 4:00 pm. Tickets are $20, with the proceeds going to maintain their work tying together the efforts of congregations all across the county to serve those who fall through the more official safety nets (which have more than a few holes in them these days). And they even invited me back to MC all the fun!

 

Choirs and ensembles from churches, academic institutions, and just gathered up from friends who love to sing and play, all will give us a couple of hours to spend with the saints. Where else would you want to be on the afternoon of All Saints' Day, anyhow?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's honored to help www.coalitionofcare.com again this year. Tell him about a saint you know at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Faith Works 10-25

Faith Works 10-25-09

Jeff Gill

 

On the Importance of Dust, Et cetera

___

 

Orion is heaving himself up over the eastern horizon these days, right about the time all decent citizens of whatever faith tradition are sensibly heading to a warm and cozy bed.

 

Later, into winter, the three-star belted hunter will shine out as darkness falls, but right now you have to get back up about 5:00 am or so to see Orion; or Osiris, or Finnegan, or Nanabozho, or Mithras, or whomever your culture associates with the striding red capped figure walking across the night sky.

 

The Orionids are a meteor shower associated with Halley's Comet, that "short period" comet which reminds us of the vastness of scale used by astronomers, since it came in 1910 to carry Samuel Clemens away just as it had brought him, so to speak, 76 years before, and passed through our nights in 1986, not to be seen again until 2061.

 

While the comet's blaze in swinging 'round the sun is long past and won't come near again for decades, the debris trail left behind is a wider swath, which our planet crosses twice a year. This leads to a distinct, if sparse scatter of meteoric trails, originating from a spot in the sky just over Orion's shoulder.

 

I went out for the show, too late and again at too early, and saw a handful of silent, swift, emphatic slashes on the sky that left no lasting mark. Each one, no more than a speck of dust, really, but made incandescent by speed and friction and circumstance.

 

In fact, each day, literally tons of dust and micrometeorites settle onto the earth each day. Your roof may not have any blazing holes through it, but there are almost certainly a scattering of grains from beyond this planet that lay atop your house right now. Every year, tens of thousands, some say millions of tons of cosmic dust are added to the mass of our world as it orbits the sun.

 

With the new dawn, there are no more meteors to see, but the brilliance of the colors all around. Fall's glory turns to the usual autumn story of dropping leaves, with raking, mowing, mulching (and gutter cleaning) all to do. The bright colors fade into browns and greys, and the artist's palette of complete leaves drops to the studio floor, where they steadily break down into fragments and bits and . . . dust.

 

Water evaporates, materials compresses, and the whole drifted riot of leaf piles is no more than a thin layer of incipient soil – the agronomists assure us that it takes 500 autumns, 500 falls of forest leaf and dying vegetation, to make one inch of good organic soil. 500 years. Six inches of topsoil in your lawn? 3,000 years of dust laid down.

 

Even as you look up past the leaves in their descent, and enjoy the frequent stark blue of October noon, too quickly turning into dusk and dark, that cerulean is in fact the result of light scattering in the atmosphere, with the dominant color blue being due to . . . dust.

 

Then the skies grow less blue, not from impending evening, but with clouds rolling in from the west. Clouds, of course, being the moisture in the air coalescing around windborne . . . dust.

 

"Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return." These ancient words of committal tell a truth about one element of the human condition, the source and destination of the essential building blocks for our bodies. We hear them at funerals and Ash Wednesday (perhaps), and just a whisper of those words, echoed in the sound of a dry leaf scraping along a pavement next to the cemetery. "Dust thou art . . ."

 

Is dust a hint of death? Should we see dust motes in slanting autumn light as a sign of insignificance?

 

Or does our close connection to dust remind us of our roots in the heart of stars where carbon is formed; that our story layers into a deep, rich, fertile tapestry; we are formed of the same dust that draws bright lines across the vault of heaven, or uplifts the tall cap of cumulonimbus along with the wind and rain.

 

With the last week of October, we look into the graveyard, across the tombstones, and into the blue sky over a fading forest, shedding its color into a remnant, skeletal stand. Do we shudder with fear, or shiver with wonder? "Fearfully and wonderfully made" we are, and "to dust we shall return" may not tell us all there is to know about where that dust may yet dance.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; shiver his bones with a tale sent to knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Knapsack 10-22

Chuck -- Two-way option -- if you have room for 450 wds next week, here you go; if you're good and full up, but have a nook or cranny, just run the first three paragraphs: 100 wds.  Enjoy proofing all those letters!  Pax, Jeff

Notes From My Knapsack 10-22-09

Jeff Gill

 

Community Discussions, Community Solutions

___

 

With the outpouring of letters of support for candidates and critique of ballot issues filling the pages of our Sentinel, there is little room or reason for columnists in this pre-Election Day season.

 

Read them, consider their reasoning, discuss the pros and cons with your friends, and make sure to keep track of Trick or Treat jumping out at you next Thursday and Time Change falling back the following weekend.

 

And don't forget the Midland Theater Gospel Concert to benefit the Coalition of Care on Sunday, Nov. 1 at 4:00 pm; tickets are $20 at area churches or at the door.

 

So with all that you don't need much from out of my knapsack. I'll just pull out one last thing with the spread of worries over flu viruses and vaccinations and children's health.

 

Wisely, there's much said about keeping a child home when they are showing fever, body aches, and sore throat. Of course you should. What's not as easy to say quickly is that a huge challenge in maintaining student learning is consistent attendance, and the reality of "swine flu" can all too easily be used as the newest excuse in some homes for not getting kids up, out, and into where they need to be.

 

We've created a system where a major performance measure for administrators is simply daily attendance, and we see state funding tied closely enough to daily attendance to make the equation basically per diem "butts in seats." In an era with budgets so tightly constrained by unfunded mandates from above and public scrutiny from below, a small uptick in absence can literally bust a budget, making for many direct impacts on students.

 

And for most of the lowest performing students, regular attendance is a key correlation to their outcomes. Is correlation the same as causation? Nope, but there's a connection between the two, beyond a doubt.

 

Which all boils down to: wash your hands, teach your kids to wash their hands thoroughly (no, go back in there and do it again; I didn't hear the water running!), and if they are well, get them to school. If we have a huge upsurge in "pre-emptive absence" over an excess of fear about the flu, we will see major negative outcomes in our district outcomes on multiple levels.

 

Flu is serious, but it always has been. Maintain an even strain, as the astronauts and test pilots say, and get the kids to school. See you after the election!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Knapsack 10-17

Faith Works 10-17-09

Jeff Gill

 

Dropping By the Mounds On an Autumn Weekend

___

 

If you aren't in the Reese Center at some point today to learn about the Newark Earthworks and Native American culture woven deeply into our cultural landscape, you're missing out. You've got until 4 pm; I'm the MC, so I should be able to promise we'll stay pretty much on schedule . . .

 

Or come out after church tomorrow and get a tour at the Octagon section of the earthworks. It's an "open house" day at 33^rd and Parkview, so no golf to worry about, just come and stroll and soak in the beauty of the turning leaves and the wonder of 2000 year old astronomy.

 

"I lift up mine eyes unto . . ." the moon? The sun? The stars? Of course the original Psalm 121 continues "the hills, from whence cometh my help," which is to say, it's a question.

 

Does my help come from the hills? Nope. "My help cometh from the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth."

 

So it's kind of funny, and as a Biblical scholar, a little frustrating, that almost everyone reads this passage as an evocation of the beauty of the scenery. It seems pretty clear that the Hebrew is trying to point us beyond the hills, beyond even the heavens and the earth, to a Creator.

 

This past week, with the "Walk With the Ancients" experience of pilgrimage, I've heard many prayers, some said, often sung, and not occasionally in non-English languages, calling on the Creator in thanks, in praise, and with humbly worded requests.

 

Native American spirituality is not a subject on which I can or should call myself an expert, but I've spent a fair amount of time around it. One thing that we "dominant culture" folk need to keep hearing is that, in the words of a recent book title, written by a relative of one of our leaders, "Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong."

 

Some Indians are, to use their own words, not interested in spirituality at all. "Sorry," one such fellow said in my hearing. He sounded more amused than sorry, and I could see his point. His job wasn't to be what the passerby wanted him to be, with or without feathers.

 

I've met Indian chiefs and tribal storytellers who are Methodist ministers; sat with drummers who sing the sacred songs who are Baptists with a passion for evangelism; stood and watched a moonrise over the alignments of the Octagon with people who sincerely say that the moon is a spirit who watches over us.

 

Theologically, I love these interactions because they push me to consider what my beliefs tell me about the world I'm given to care for, and in what way I can live out and embody and speak of my beliefs with respect for the integrity of the individual before me.

 

And it's reminded me that evangelism or mission cannot be, should never have been, won't be in the future to an "ethnic group." There's a racism, a sin of a slippery sort when you try to address a group as a homogenous whole. You don't minister to Indians any more than you can minister to "veterans" or "gays" or "singles." Any assumption you make about the needs of a person based on what group they affiliate with is likely to be wrong, and wrong in a way that can sneak up on you in the worst fashion possible. When you assume you know the opennesses and vulnerabilities of an individual because of a label, you may just have the contents all wrong.

 

Working with the last five years of Newark Earthworks Day programs has taught me all over again that listening is at least half of any meaningful conversation. We talk about what we believe, walking the mounds, strolling through display tables, and between the speakers in the Reese Center at OSU-N -- more than I overhear or have happen to myself on many Sundays inside church buildings.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Knapsack 10-10

Faith Works 10-10-09

Jeff Gill

 

Not Just One Day After Another

___

 

When Frank McCourt died in July, his fellow Irish author Peter Duffy wrote a tribute that included a quote from McCourt's own work.

 

Duffy observed in the Wall Street Journal that "To someone like me who grew up in the post-Vatican II church, it's a fascinating glimpse of a lost world. "The rain dampened the city from the Feast of the Circumcision to New Year's Eve," he wrote of his childhood home of Limerick, Ireland. In just a few words, we are transported to a time when every schoolchild knew that said feast was celebrated on Jan. 1."

 

Frank, whose "'Tis" really ought to be filmed as was his "Angela's Ashes" (let alone "Teacher Man," my favorite of his three memoirs), had the proverbial love/hate relationship with the church of his youth.  Whether or not the church he rebelled against as an adult was the church that was when he was an adult is a different discussion.

 

What Duffy's point affirms about McCourt's remembrance of things faithful from his childhood is the value of a ritual calendar, a cycle of events that mark the turning of the year. Do we really need a "Feast of the Circumcision"? I'm not so sure theologically (although it's a principal feast still for the Missionary Order of the Precious Blood, I recently learned up at Maria Stein).

 

What the Christian churches in general have lost, with a devaluation of the Christian year, is a sense of sacred time that adds unique meaning to each season and month and week. We just passed through a week with "Ember Days," and I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm one of about a dozen people in the county who knew, or cared.

 

Do we really need Ember Days? An interesting question. I don't know.

 

What I do know is that as the church backs away from a ceremonial calendar, the culture seeks meaning and vitality, and makes us up a new one. We've got no Ember Days to mark the cycle of the seasons into worship and devotional ritual, but my son was very excited to see that the seasonal Hallowe'en store opened once again in a vacant storefront. He doesn't expect to go inside, indeed, he doesn't even think he wants to, but the orange sign and activity there confirm for him what the shorter days and cooler wind rattling the dry fallen leaves are muttering all around him.

 

So what's the Fast of St. Martin, and what's it got to do with Advent? It makes Advent longer, you say, beginning around November 11? Yikes, no thank you. And so the culture builds up a ceremonial moment around events some 90 years ago, and calls for silence in the schools at 11 am, if only for a moment.

 

I'm not so liturgical to want a big deal over rose colored vestments at Gaudete Sunday: shucks, most Sundays I don't even wear a preaching robe, depending on where I'm filling in that week. What I do miss, what I miss that in many ways I've never known, is a sacred sense of time that can fill every turn of the wheel from Sunday to Sunday.

 

Here around the Newark Earthworks, we keep finding how the daily practices and giant architecture of the Native Americans who built them kept close track of the sun and moon, and we don't marvel that their spirituality must have followed that awareness. Many folks from around central Ohio will join the pilgrimage walk from Chillicothe up the 60 miles of possible "Great Hopewell Road," from tomorrow down at Hopewell Culture National Park, through our stroll next Friday afternoon (Oct. 16) from Geller Park up 30^th St. to the Octagon, between 4:30 and 5:30 pm.

 

This walk, part of the events of Newark Earthworks Day that actually span the weekend (see http://newark.osu.edu/earthworks), lets us connect our understanding of the seasons, our search for meaning in the movements of the cosmos, and a day and path set aside where they can connect.

 

As I look forward to following singers and drummers, walking up 30^th St. this Friday from Heath to Newark, I look to my own spiritual traditions to ask "how can we keep sacred time every day?" Just a little archaeology into our history turns up quite a few artifacts that still have some life in them.

 

Rogation Days, anyone?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about a unique date on your church calendar at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Another viewpoint on brain funguses (fungi, i know) -- http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/cat_brainwatch_timeline.php

Notes From My Knapsack 10-8-09
Jeff Gill

Movement, Momentum, Meaning
___


Walking across the parking lot of Ross’ Market, a strand of silken near-nothing broke across my face.

Reaching up with my free hand, I brushed away what wasn’t quite there, and then felt one, two, then more like three more threads pull gently against my head and chest, then snap.

Just enough tensile strength to tell me that there was a connecting cord, literally “gossamer thin,” which I was pushing through.

Almost certainly spider web, the long tendril which serves as a slightly steerable parachute for some types of arachnid, this time of year found on days with still air in broad open spaces like parking lots.

We can almost feel the tug of daylight pulling away from us, with each day growing shorter with indecent speed, and leaves have been falling, let alone turning, for quite a few weeks now.

Out Newark-Granville Road, some of the tall trees along the way that have burlap treatment strips still girdling their trunks head high. It’s quite interesting to see where some old oaks , with spores securely at home for years, deep in the crevices of the well aged tree bark, have huge bracket funguses that have grown right through the mesh of the weave, sticking right through the burlap.

Out at Octagon State Memorial, near the tee for the tenth hole of the golf course managed by Moundbuilders Country Club, a “brain fungus” is hugely expanding far above the ground on the site of a dead and broken branch, high up in a beech tree.

There and over at the Great Circle of Newark Earthworks State Memorial the great old trees are almost as well preserved as the mounds themselves. Their age shelters life forms that need the unique features that only time can bring to the structure of the trunk and the soil beneath. Pupas spin their silent transformative tombs, night hour habitués perch high in cavities, lichens paint the pillars of the forest, while as in trees of any age the buds of next spring are gently but insistently pushing off the leaves now turning and drying.

Next weekend, October 16, 17, & 18, special events around the Newark Earthworks will focus on pilgrimage across the landscape, and the Native American people who transformed it in ways we still marvel at, but the annual transformations of autumn will be no less an attraction to walk out among the long embankments and stroll within the vast enclosures. Check out http://newark.osu.edu/earthworks and come feel the connections, like spider web strands tugging across wide spaces and long centuries.

They will pull at you.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tug at him with a story to knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

For WOSU Public Media's blog --

National Parks: America’s Best Idea
A Newark, Ohio perspective

What’s very encouraging to someone like me, about the Ken Burns presentation on the National Park movement, is the amount of attention he’s brought to the relative uniqueness of the concept, and its “pre-history,” if you will.

We have only had national parks officially since 1916, something that most people don’t stop to think about. When I give tours of the Newark Earthworks, the peculiar preservation history of these sites only makes sense if we quickly (and no doubt imperfectly) explain that pre-“national park ideal” history.

There are two main sections of these internationally renowned Native American earthworks still visible as above ground constructions, the Great Circle between Newark and Heath, which was made the county fairgrounds in the 1850s and was home for the Ohio State Fair in 1854, and then the Octagon and Observatory Circle, less well known to the public because it’s also been the home of the Moundbuilders Country Club since 1910.

In Burns’ presentation, the first two nights made clear just how crucial John Muir was not only to Yosemite, but to the whole set of values and ideals that defines what we take for granted in the idea of national parks today – http://www.nps.gov/yose/historyculture/muir.htm

Here in Newark, we have a possible link to Muir in that it was 1890 that the local citizens, with no particular name or officeholder pushing the initiative, decided almost as a quiet groundswell of determination to put a vote on the fall ballot. They asked the entire county to vote on whether the Octagon and Observatory Circle should be saved from development by public purchase – remember, the idea of a national park is 26 years away, with only Yellowstone set aside by federal fiat in 1871.

But it was Muir, asking the state of California to take action to preserve Yosemite, who was writing in magazines and newspapers, particularly “Century Magazine,” a best-seller of that era, talking about the preservation of unique natural and cultural resources. Was Muir the inspiration of Licking County’s movement?

Whatever the cause, the vote was 74% in favor of a property tax levy countywide, well over 90% in Newark proper. The land was purchased, then used as a summer militia encampment, and then for light recreation by Newark High School after 1901 with a new sport called “golf.”

So while I may not be too happy about Ohio’s oldest continuously played golf course being on top of a 2,000 year old Native American earthwork, I do think we need to consider that for 1910, this was a creative solution to a very new problem – how to manage public preserves.

Even the history of a militia encampment fits into the larger arc of the development of the National Park ideal, as Park Ranger Shelton Johnson explains in his essay on the “Buffalo Soldiers” who were in a very real sense the first park rangers, and whose uniform is what you still see on park rangers today --
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/hisnps/NPShistorians/invisiblemen2.pdf

The Newark Earthworks aren’t mentioned in the Ken Burns program, but from Daniel Webster and Caleb Atwater first considering a federal act to preserve them in the early 1800s to the possible NPS connection in years ahead, as the sites are slated to go on the United Nations’ World Heritage List of significant natural and cultural sites, I hear our story echoing through all the other stories of how preserving these wonders for all to see, for generations to come, truly is “America’s Best Idea.”

Notes From My Knapsack 10-3

Faith Works 10-3-09

Jeff Gill

 

The Power of a Beckoning Finger

___

 

Across a crowded room, a single crooked finger, a shrug of a shoulder, or a raised eyebrow, can communicate all you need to know, while pretending to listen to someone speaking much but saying nothing.

 

These non-verbal signals are called "gestures." In an average day, we communicate perhaps as much through them as we do with spoken words, if you consider communication to be the act of sharing information effectively between persons.

 

In the post-modern world, a "gesture" is almost any act that symbolizes a larger meaning in a small action, often somewhat insincerely: a gesture indicates an action that you probably will never undertake in full.

 

A dollar into an offering plate is a "gesture" in this respect. You put a fairly insignificant amount towards the work of the church, which symbolizes that all of your assets are in the hands of God. Right? They are, except . . .

 

Or in terms of the environment, you keep a couple of re-useable grocery bags in the back of your oversized SUV. You want to be seen as concerned about things related to the future of resource use and consumption, but please don't think through the relative impacts too closely.

 

You can see where "gesture" picked up the "scare quotes." That's a pretty post-modern phenomenon, too, the practice of using quotes to "signal" a sense of irony or presumed insincerity.

 

Are gestures a problem? How hard should we be on partial indications of commitment, on half-hearted motions towards a full bodied engagement with real situations?

 

That buck in the bucket is certainly a problem if your giving never moves beyond that level. A life of gestures is like never speaking up, just winking and nodding your way through life. But a kiss blown at the window for someone driving off to work isn't insincere, just an index of love to be more fully shared when the day rounds off to an end.

 

Religious behavior can be gestural, and as such can be debated for relative sincerity, on each act's comparable significance. A bowed head can be a sign of humility not really felt, but of social conformity alone.  When we cross ourselves, or put on a crucifix, are we really meaning to take on the sign of Christ as the pattern for our lives?

 

Then some suggest that work trips and short term mission projects are as gestural as a recycled sack in the cargo bay of an Escalade. They don't really change the world, and may get in the way of "real change."

 

Whoops, I just used the scare quotes.

 

The thing about gestures, for me, is that we are always needing to be more self-conscious about them, but we can't live without them. And we shouldn't. Every act of volition can't change the world, and every farewell can't be a Hollywood clinch and dip kiss goodbye.

 

Gestures, thoughtfully used, are a sign also of humility. Even if I give all that I have, and offer my body to be burned, and have not love, I have nothing. (Wait, that should have had quotes, not "scare quotes," right?)

 

Sometimes, we can only do the small thing. Doing the small thing is a crucial reminder that often the small thing is all that we can do, but we should still do it. ("Do not grow weary in well-doing.") A gesture signals that we are aware that the biggest changes come from God, and our part is almost always going to be a "gesture," nothing more – but so much more.

 

So a tip of the hat, a wry smile, and a cheerful shrug of the shoulders for gestures. The CROP Walk for hunger next weekend, the Coalition of Care Gospel Concert in a month, your pledge card for the church stewardship campaign. Think about what you mean when you make them, and they (with God) can change the world.

 

Or maybe just "change the world."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he likes changing the world in his "spare time." Tell him about your gestures of faith at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Faith Works 9-26

Faith Works 9-26-09

Jeff Gill

 

Wade In the Water, Wade In the Water, Children

___

 

Wade in the water,

Wade in the water, children,

Wade in the water,

God's gonna trouble the water.

 

This weekend I have the privilege of doing an adult baptism. It's a very old, and in some ways very new practice of the Christian church, one adapted from Jewish purity ritual and commanded by the word and example of Jesus himself (in Matthew 3 & 28).

 

John the Baptist is the great bridge between those expressions of what it means to be washed in water, cleansing both body and spirit, using the Jordan River as a ritual location that was open to and affordable to all, regardless of social class or income.

 

Baptism is of course old with that Biblical history behind it, and it is new because . . . well, there are a number of factors making adult baptism a "new" area for many churches.

 

For many generations, baptism became more and more a membership ritual, and in quite a few traditions, something done to infants.  "Believer's baptism" traditions may have infant dedication and a "cradle roll," but don't take the plunge, so to speak, until twelve years old or so.

 

Add in that most people were "born into" a church to start with, and adult baptism tended to be with adolescents at the oldest.

 

Now that more children and families are avoiding church commitments altogether, it is less unusual to run into an adult who has never been baptized, and even in infant baptism traditions like Methodist and Lutheran, there's growing interest in "being baptized the way Jesus was."

 

Jordan's water is chilly and cold,

God's gonna trouble the water.

It chills the body, but not the soul.

God's gonna trouble the water.

 

When I was in seminary, there was one class which gave us a chance to practice on each other. I got baptized quite a few times, being the tallest in my class ("if you can get Gill dunked, you can do anybody!" said the prof). The one advice on non-baptistry baptisms he gave us was quite practically useful: always keep the nose pointing upstream. You don't want to bring the candidate for baptism back up into the current; hard on your arms and back, and shoves more water up their nose.

 

But it was a long, long time before I had to think about that advice. Like most clergy, I stayed inside my comfortable baptistery, with heating unit built in and waders on a hook behind the door.

 

A few weeks back, I got to help Central Christian in Newark celebrate 125 years; once, I took their youth group to the E. Main St. bridge just west of where it crosses Raccoon Creek. That's where their church did baptisms for the first decades of their life together.

 

Down in Hebron, where the founding preacher, Deacon Thomas Madden started Hebron Christian in 1867 before skating up the canal to start the Newark church, they had the outlet of the old interurban power plant, where warm water kept a stretch of the canal ice free year round, so baptisms could happen even in February.

 

How many of us have a dim family account of Great-Aunt Hattie, and the elders chopping a hole in the ice to baptize her one cold winter's Sunday? No one is in a hurry to go back to the future that far, but more and more people are asking for a baptism outdoors, in a pool, a pond, even in running water.

 

And I'm happy to make that happen, and bring together a congregation of whatever sorts to that spot. There's something about the nature of that "first" baptism, with Jesus hearing John say "Me baptize you? That's crazy talk." Jesus didn't need baptism to be cleansed himself, but he not only set the example (as any leader would), he shows us that a big part of what baptism is about is how it reminds us – how it reminds all those who witness it of how they fit into God's story of redemption, of cleansing, of renewal, of rising up out of the waters, of resurrection.

 

If you get there before I do.

God's gonna trouble the water.

Tell all of my friends I'm coming too.

God's gonna trouble the water.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your story of cold water and new beginnings at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Knapsack 9-24

Notes From My Knapsack 9-24-09

Jeff Gill

 

The National Parks: America's Best Idea

___

 

 

Sunday, September 27, I suspect many of you already plan to be watching PBS in the evening, to catch the first of six episodes of "The National Parks: America's Best Idea."

 

Ken Burns has shown us familiar sights in new lights before, of baseball and jazz and the Civil War; most recently, "The War" asked us to consider the homefront of World War II.

 

You know the presentation – archival photos, artfully selected and drifting past out of a close-up angle, the almost recognizable voices reading from diaries and letters and original documents, blending into current color footage of the scene today.

 

It's almost a marvel that Burns' "Florentine Films" hasn't taken this challenge on before, but the scope of some 400 sites and almost 150 years, starting before we even had a National Park Service, may mean that he needed the work he'd done before to really do justice to this theme, and the subtitle which can strike you on first reading as almost banal.

 

Yet there is a striking truth to the fact that until 1916, there was no such thing as a "national park system," not here, not anywhere.

 

Which is where Licking County almost edges into the story that you'll be watching the next few weeks.

 

It turns out that in the early 1800s, national figures like Daniel Webster and Caleb Atwater said of the Newark Earthworks, just as Thomas Jefferson said of Natural Bridge in Virginia and Charles Dickens did of the prairies, that they should be made a special preserve of some sort.

 

In 1853 New York City set aside Central Park, but they weren't sure what to do with it. "Parks" were interchangeable with cemeteries and town commons, and their use or uses, let alone management, was still an open question.

 

During the Civil War, Lincoln happily handed the dimly appreciated acreage of Yosemite over to the state of California to manage, being busy with other matters; in 1872, Yellowstone was seen as unique enough to be worth preserving, but supervision was given over to the Department of War, hence the garb of park rangers to this day, with campaign hat and green & grey uniform. Michigan set aside Mackinac Island as the first official "state park" in 1875, and California designated Yosemite a state park in 1890 at the urging of John Muir.

 

And it was in 1890 that local residents decided that the Newark Earthworks, or at least the part that wasn't the county fairgrounds – as the Great Circle had been since 1854 – would be put on the ballot for a levy vote, to decide whether or not to purchase the Octagon & Observatory Circle for preservation. It passed overwhelmingly, and the county purchased the land.

 

Since the idea of a state park service was still alien to Ohio – private groups had bought Serpent Mound and Fort Ancient – various ideas were tried to manage the acreage, including militia oversight like the Army at Yellowstone, until the idea of a country club and a "low impact" activity like golf came up in 1910.

 

So as you listen to Ken Burns' story about how this country worked its way into figuring out one of the best ideas we've exported around the world, the concept of a "national park system," keep in mind that we have our own place in that still unfolding story. Those tales and more will be shared in the week around Newark Earthworks Day, coming Oct. 17 – check out www.newark.osu.edu/osun/NewarkEarthworks for more info!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's looking forward to leading the last section of the walk from Geller Park to the Octagon around 5 pm on Fri., Oct. 16! E-mail knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.

Faith Works 9-19

Faith Works 9-19-09

Jeff Gill

 

Flames, Regret, No Lines, No Waiting

___

 

Seriously, you have no idea how much I'm holding back on this Disney thing. The ideas and inspiration that come to mind by looking at the little things around a Disney park – I had no idea. I should have, but it really was just a tidal wave of "wow" around every corner.

 

Can churches "do Disney?" Well, no, and I'm not trying to say they should. But learning from them can be an interesting challenge, just as faith communities learn from new musical styles (like Charles Wesley did) or new ways to gather the public together (as both Dwight Moody & Billy Graham did) or even new technologies (which more than 2 out of 3 congregations are with webpages and digital projectors).

 

Careful attention to detail is a hallmark of the "Disney approach" that I think churches can, should, and must pay attention to – signage and small corners like restrooms and nurseries are where people make up their minds, long before they hear the sermon, whether they're even going to come back a second time. Training, so that each person who engages a visitor is communicating something of the story and sense of place you are trying to create, from the parking area to the ushers – shucks, Disney should have learned that from churches, not the other way around. For Christians, we are the story we're embodying about Jesus, right? "Put on Christ" and live in that image . . . sound familiar?

 

But most of all, keep it simple, and be who you are, without hesitation or apology. Sure, if you clearly and unambiguously share what you believe your core message is, someone will doubtless complain. The growth of rudeness is only matched by the growth of willingness to take offense, whether intended or not, even an avid interest in finding offense where none is meant.

 

I mentioned last week that I was amazed at just how international the experience of Disney was. Foreign visitors were unmistakably the majority, simply on the basis of languages spoken around us in line, on the buses, at the hotel. But one day we were getting off the train at Main Street, USA, and the whole area was moving into an ordered arrangement – the staff got into lines, the band played, and a flag lowering was held at 5:00 pm, complete with "Star Spangled Banner," a flag folding ceremony, and then the singing by all and sundry of "God Bless America."

 

All activity stopped, and the program around the flagpole drew the respectful silence, and apparent approval of all in earshot. Folks, if this actively upset many citizens of other countries, I have no doubt Disney would stop doing it; I also have no doubt that someone(s) have complained from time to time. But they carry on, and it was a lovely and appropriate sight to see. If I'm ever lucky enough to be in Disneyland Paris, I'll expect the same with the French tricolor and the "La Marseillaise."

 

And then there's Hell. No, I don't mean the Florida heat in August. But I am forced to consider this – outside of the stray Jack Chick tract, I have seen in my entire life three depictions of eternal damnation to color my mental outlook. They all three include painful flames, punishment as the deserved result of intentional choices for the wrong, and deep regret with no end in sight, all presented not to titillate, but to prod the living to see their earthly choices in the light of eternity.

 

Those three are: "The Black Hole" (1979), "Mickey's Christmas Carol" (1983), & "The Haunted Mansion" (2003). All three are Disney productions. Yes, I've read Dante's "Inferno" (1300), but that's not a visual representation.

 

In fact, if you go to any of the park shows, whether by daylight at noon in front of the castle itself, or the various fireworks displays that light up the last of evening, you will see and hear a message that boils down to this: there is good, there is evil. Evil sometimes is victorious, and good often struggles to prevail, but good will win, and evil will not be rewarded. That's the plot of just about every narrative they have to offer.

 

Choose the good, and bring others with you. Apparently, that message has some resonance, and a cross-cultural impact. How clearly is your core message communicated regularly in your church, and what is shown to be at stake?

 

It's no Mickey Mouse question.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he promises not to talk about Disney again for at least a few weeks. Tell him what's inspired you recently at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow "Knapsack" @Twitter.com.

My latest Newark Advocate blog post, which is really just a long-winded salute to Dave Barry's column on getting your colonoscopy done like a grown-up.

Faith Works 9-12-09

Faith Works 9-12-09

Jeff Gill

 

Good and Evil and Disney

___

 

One thing I did not expect in going to Disney World was the overwhelmingly international nature of the experience.

 

I expected high humidity and hair drenching heat, but it had not occurred to me that you'd regularly go for long stretches of time not hearing a word of English . . . and when you did, it often had a strong accent of Liverpool or Bristol or even Sydney.

 

Families from around the world made every part of the Disney Parks empire feel like a bit of Epcot and the "World Showcase" (where you find the little enclaves of global culture strung around a lagoon reflecting the faux Eiffel Tower and Venice campanile, etc.).

 

Conversations with some of the Disney "cast members," the title held by all employees from trashcan cleaner to costumed character, indicated that more Americans like to come in the winter and during spring break, so my perception that international guests were noticeably dominant seems accurate. A few cast members said, smiling broadly at me, that Midwesterners are usually smarter than coming in August.

 

Some are, some aren't.

 

What I also did not expect was to see and feel that Disney really does have some lessons that the smallest church can learn from and adopt. First and foremost, as I mentioned last week, there is training.

 

Training means simply this: that no one goes out on any task without making sure that the employee has been taught the basic story and values of the organization, knows how their task fits into the larger goals and themes at work around them, and are prepared to step to help with anything that goes on in their immediate vicinity, even when it is just knowing how to find an answer.

 

Can faith communities do this? Could we all do a better job of making sure that anyone who has a ministry function of any sort knows how their task – nursery attendant, kitchen helper, morning greeter – fits into the work going on around them, and how that all is part of the core mission and themes of that particular congregation?

 

Or to put it a little more awkwardly: is it better to fill a slot with someone who has tunnel vision and no interest in anything other than their own particular efforts, or another less adept person who sees their work as part of a whole? Is it even better, sometimes, to leave slots open until the right fit and training can be found?

 

In Christian churches, we sometimes confuse "everyone has a gift" to "anyone can do whatever they want." Not the same. Identifying a person's giftedness is a ministry itself, and making sure that gift serves the larger purpose is leadership's heavy lifting.

 

Right behind training is applying a comprehensive vision, to the point where not only is every part of an environment part of the experience, but even the participants start to deliver, let alone shape, the experience they came for. In Disney Parks, I'm learning, you will often find yourself pausing to figure out where you are – and get asked sometimes by people on either side of you "Can I help you find where you're going?"

 

There's something about the immersive experience they create that makes people start to act like staff, but in a good way. For the opposite, put into a search engine "starbucks marketed like church" and watch the video that comes up. And cringe.

 

Can your parking area, your restrooms, your gathering space preach your message? Well, here's the newsflash: they already do. The question is whether they're preaching the message you want them to.

 

Your problem may be that your Sunday message says one thing, and your locked front door, dingy bathroom, and cheerless nursery attendant says another. Or it could be as simple as trying to say too many things, when "one dish is sufficient," as one of Walt Disney's inspirations once said. A simple, one word, or short phrase message can come across in many ways, while a longer, more complex theme can so easily misfire or be misheard as to create more confusion . . . than not even trying.

 

There's one more week I want to put into this look from the Magic Kingdom back into our worship centers and sanctuaries. And it has a little to do with the Devil and Hell, Evil afoot, and Goodness triumphant. Doesn't get much simpler than that!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; why yes, he does have 1,200 Disney photos on his Facebook page, why do you ask? Ask him why at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.com.