Knapsack 7-28

Notes From My Knapsack 7-28-11

Jeff Gill

 

Some Things Change, Some Things Don't

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This week our local Boy Scout Troop is off to summer camp. Huzzah for Troop 65 and Granville Kiwanis, their chartering organization!

 

There's a number of images that some of us might have about what BSA camping looks like, but if you've not been involved for years, or only have some loose, media-related scenes in mind, you may have the wrong picture.

 

My troop loaded up on an old school bus, a not uncommon way for Scouts to roll into camp in the 1970's. Troop buses, sadly, with their distinctive paint schemes and refurbished back ends with shelving and racks for gear, are a thing of the past: even the most well-funded troop can't afford the liability insurance, and they've almost all been retired across the country from sheer practicality.

 

Ask today's adult leaders if they miss the adventure of looking for a part on an antiquated school bus from a breakdown that always happens in a wonderfully awkward situation. Not so much.

 

What you may envision is a group of lads trekking into wilderness, chopping down trees and building their entire site out of lashings right down to the latrine – if they don't get picturesquely lost as do most pseudo-Scout groups in movies.

 

"Leave no trace" has been the watchword for some years in the BSA, actually, and long-term (five or six night) camping, while an annual part of every troop's outdoor program, is either at a Scout camp like Licking County's own Camp Falling Rock, a Scout reservation in a nearby state, or a high adventure program around the country like Philmont, which is a whole different proposition (and another column).

 

So not only are the young men of T-65 going to an established camp with a summer staff and designated troop camp sites, even latrines are changing. Groundwater regulation means that the old pit KYBO's are being phased out in many areas, while composting toilets are more and more common. (The legend is that many early Scout camps used coffee cans from the Kybo brand, hence the name sticking to the outdoor outhouses and "kybo tape" being…you guessed it. Now they say it's an acronym for "keep your bowels open," but you know "the rest of the story.")

 

Adult leadership for our 34 Scouts will be five Scouters; each troop brings their own unit leadership, while the total camp of some 300 has a site staff of 35-40 for dining hall, program areas, aquatics/lifeguards, etc.

 

Every adult present at a residential camp has to go through what's called "Youth Protection Training," an excellent program that can be done online and must be repeated every two years. There is additional training for various unit roles, let alone for summer camp staff.

 

Plus each youth & adult must have a physical form (three pages, lots of detail along with a copy of the insurance card), and then there's the "tour permit," a document that is filed with the council office as to the insurance and safety status of each driver. We're going into Pennsylvania this year, so a tour permit out of county is absolutely mandatory.

 

For all the modern trapping of paperwork and safety, the Scouts will still swim and canoe in a lake, sleep in tents (even if made of space-age fabric and not mildewy canvas), build fires (in approved locations), and burn food which will be eaten enthusiastically. Much has changed, and yet much is still what Baden-Powell and twenty-two British boys did on Brownsea Island in the summer of 1907.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and an assistant scoutmaster for Troop 65. Tell him your camping tale at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 7-30

Faith Works 7-30-11

Jeff Gill

 

Now is the acceptable time

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Less than 150 days away.

 

No one will thank me for pointing this out, I know.

 

Christmas is less than 150 days ahead, and every so often I like to mention that in July or so, because if you're going to get a grip on the ears of this rough beast and turn it, like the young boy riding the tiger, you need to start now.

 

If you are perfectly content with how you and your household celebrate Christmas, in décor or gifts or traditions, you may feel free to skip ahead to the ads or the Sports section, and congratulations. . . I think.

 

For many, there's a growing discontent through November and December, sometimes erupting earlier in September when the first decorations show up in stores. We don't quite like how we're celebrating the occasion, not just in "the culture" (whatever that is) or at church, but in our own lives: the area we should be able to best control, and yet end up feeling most out of control there, at home.

 

July & August, pastors and church leaders know, is when the mold is carved, when the ingredients are mixed, when all but the final coat of paint is applied. Cantata music is picked and ordered, pageant scripts are considered, costume parts and craft elements are hunted down like a nimrod looking for his wild boar in the woods for the wassail feast.

 

In a more inobtrusive way, we're doing that as we start to idly think, while browsing catalogs or strolling past storefronts, "Hey, I'll bet Millie would like that for Christmas." And so the rut begins to be worn.

 

Before the rut goes so deep the wagon can't turn, how do you get control of the applecart? Tomorrow I get the chance to preach on this, at least a bit, at Centenary UMC in Granville (8, 9:20, & 11, thanks for asking), and I have some suggestions that are relatively painless and potentially productive. You don't have to swear off all gifts, all decorations, every party, just to get your seasonal celebration back on track.

 

There's the ever-popular "remember that Jesus is the reason for the season," but there's two problems with that approach to redeeming Christmas cheer. One is, it doesn't work very well. Years of putting that slogan on bumper stickers and bookmarks make it clear that it works for those for whom it already works, and just puts a cherry top of guilt on the whole teetering pile of non-Jesus-y Christmas stuff. Or to put it another way, if it was going to work, we'd see it by now.

 

The other problem with "Jesus – the reason for the season" is that, as Christians (I'm talking to us'ns, now), we know that Jesus is the reason for every season, and should be celebrated as having entered our world and our lowly estate on every day. Lots of Christmas season sermons remind us of exactly that; Jesus was born that we might live, and that's gift, pure and simple.

 

So why celebrate Christmas at all? Is making it "a day" let alone "a season" actually a problem in and of itself? It can be, but not necessarily. Our Puritan forebearers suspected it was going to end up like this, and if you read the early Licking County histories (before the return of Civil War veterans with those wacky trees they wanted to put in the parlor, like the fellows in Siegel's regiment had in their camp) – there were basically no Dec. 25 celebrations to speak of here in the early 1800's, other than among German Catholics, and even that was low key.

 

Most of what we call Christmas celebration is less Christian than it is a cultural acknowledgement that winter is hard, and long dark nights are depressing, and we need some feasting and lights and gift-giving just to get through it. When you start to separate out the purely cultural from the faithful, it gets a bit easier to figure out what you must do from what you want to do . . . and then sort out what you have to do, or if you do a'tall.

 

Sort it out from your angle, but start sorting now: what kind of Christmas do you want those around you to remember in years to come? Making memories is a perfectly reasonable frame to put around your own picture of that baby in his manger.

 

Just don't let the frame overwhelm the portrait you're putting on display for others to see. If they only see the frame, it's the wrong choice!

 

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

Faith Works 7-23

Faith Works 7-23-11

Jeff Gill

 

What is familiar may not be reassuring

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On vacation last week, my family went to church. No shock there, I trust.

 

This is something I regularly commend to anyone who will listen: I've heard marvelous feedback from young people and seniors alike over the years, in parish ministry and through this column, in how one's own experience of worship is seen afresh by way of going to a service where you're a stranger.

 

What's different, even in small ways, can help us get to grips with what's important. We've got that well-known travel writer Soren Kierkegaard to remind us that worship is fundamentally conducted for an audience of one, that is, God (not a program put on for the benefit of the congregation).

 

When we go to a different service, we don't have any reason to expect things to be the way we're used to, or oriented around our tastes, and when those experiences are subverted, we can get a bit more real about how we tend to want worship to focus on us, not God.

 

On the other hand, we need a service that helps us focus on God, so our choices and responses are part of the picture.

 

Our experience last week, though, surprised me in a way that doubles back on these questions. We were in a tourist-oriented, resort-ish community, with a very young demographic on the streets and behind the counters, but probably an older skew if you came back in February. Either way, the surprise in the service was . . . how unsurprising it was.

 

From the moment we stepped off the sidewalk through the red doors, there was nothing unfamiliar at all. Granted, we were in a neighboring Midwestern state, even if it was a long drive away and there were large boats down the block with masts higher than the steeple. It was a mainline Protestant denomination with which we're familiar, and there was much that would have led you to assume most of what made up the service.

 

But it was just striking how we could have been sitting in a pew, singing these songs, looking at the make-up of the parishoners around us, anywhere right here in Licking County. Drop this church in Kirkersville, St. Louisville, or out towards Croton, and they would have fit right in, let alone if you'd walked out the doors not to fudge shops and beachwear stores, but to Perry or Knox Counties.

 

There's something very comforting and (duh) familiar about singing "How Great Thou Art" or "In the Garden" when far from home, and the prayer time joys and concerns, with a few names changed, are almost certainly the ones you would have heard along Rt. 13 or down Church St. in Newark.

 

Yet the question I think we could ask is: why? Why would an order of worship, and even more so the style of worship, be so identical, across eight hours of driving or four decades of churchgoing? And how is that working for us?

 

To which many sigh wearily, and reply "so the answer to share the gospel is to do everything differently? And if so, how often do we have to change? And to what, exactly?"

 

Actually, not at all. What I think the problem is has to do with not so much our worship patterns, but our understanding of what church is for, let alone worship. If a church is doing mission that is deeply engaged with their local context, and that missional life is woven through the entire life of the church, then it won't be a question of conformity to culture, but a healthy interchange from the everyday work of the church back into the worship life itself.

 

I think of a Franciscan parish among the Navajo/Dineh people, where the art and images of the culture were shaded into the familiar stations of the cross and window art. There's a community center down in Buckeye Lake where lighthouses and lake scenes that tie directly into Bible stories fill the worship space. A church plant we occasionally visit when in a suburban area where we have family has literally built its sanctuary into an office park, the horizontal lines of the space echoing the area in a way that reaches out and embraces the world where they are called to serve.

 

What have you seen while worshiping on the road, whether familiar or unexpected, or even unexpectedly familiar? And what does it say to you about worship?

 

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

Faith Works 7-16-11

Jeff Gill

Where Would Jesus Vacation?

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Empty pews often mean vacationing families this time of year, as folks leave their familiar scenes of church & community to try out a new landscape, and get some "relaxation" in.

The scare quotes go 'round "relaxation" because so many of us work hard at our leisure, cramming in experiences and sidetrips and meals and such to the point where we come back from vacation exhausted.

So for those of you who manage to re-create yourselves in your recreation, and get down on your downtime, congratulations. That seems like a worthy goal, alongside of learning about new places & gaining a variety of experiences. Growth and broadening are good for mind, body, and spirit, but if you run around to do the same things you do back home, just in different chains or under new nameplates, but within shouting distance of a beach (that you rarely see), then I'd speak up for just finding a place to veg out and relax.

Christians might find themselves asking, whatever type of vacation experience they pursue, the classic question: What would Jesus do? The ol' "WWJD?" query.

Or reframed here as "Where would Jesus vacation?" Or just: would he?

Well, yes – that's the simple answer. The details are a bit more challenging.

Over and over in Mark & Luke's gospel accounts, Jesus takes some time "in a place apart." These mentions are usually tied specifically to the words "for prayer," but the overall sense is clearly for renewal and restoration.

There's a whole 'nother column about the value & place of spiritual retreat, which is rarely identical to what any of us mean by vacation, but there is some overlap.

When you look at Jesus' travels, though, you find a man who regularly goes to Jerusalem (yes, for Temple ceremonies, but he clearly goes more frequently than even piety of the day called for), and also ends up in unexpected places like Caesarea Philippi, also known as Banias, or the place of Pan.

Banias, known during Roman rule as Caesarea Philippi, was a bit of a Las Vegas. It was a resort community around the springs of the headwaters of the Jordan, populated with many myriad shrines to a plethora of pagan gods. It made a great backdrop to Jesus' question to Simon soon to be Peter, "who do you say that I am?" but it was an odd spot to find an observant Jew.

Then there was the road trip to Sidon & Tyre, where the notable tale of the encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman occurs ("even dogs can eat scraps from the table" she says to the alien rabbi from whom she seeks healing). However you read the gospel record, Jesus was not just a homebody, nor did he only travel on church business.

The wider tradition suggests that during the so-called "hidden years" between twelve and thirty, Jesus might have journeyed to the East, perhaps as far as India, where Hebrew traders had outposts in that era; British lore has long held that a young Jesus came with relative and businessman Joseph of Arimathea to see the tin mines of Cornwall, and either with him or inspiring Joseph to return after the Resurrection to establish Glastonbury.

As William Blake wrote: "And did those feet in ancient time/Walk upon England's mountains green:/And was the holy Lamb of God,/On England's pleasant pastures seen?"

At any rate, it doesn't seem too far out on a limb to say that Jesus would have, did have the occasion and opportunity to take a break and a trip from time to time. It wasn't all carpentry in the shop in Nazareth and then a relentless round of preaching for three years across Galilee and Judea.

What is clear, though, is that you don't stop praying or maintaining your spiritual practice on vacation. In fact, vacation might well be the time to focus on and refine your discipline to seek communion & communication with God.

That might be the best souvenir you can bring back.

Meanwhile, I hope many of you try out a worship service somewhere on vacation, and I'd love to hear from some of you about what you learned about your own services and practices back home, through your tourist's eyes on the road.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; yes, he's on vacation this past week – how could you tell? Tell him your story of worship on the road at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 7-14

Notes From My Knapsack 7-14-11

Jeff Gill

 

Might Have Beens & Could Still Imagines

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When someone is excited about a book they've read and want everyone (EVERYONE!) to read it, too, they can be quite tedious.

 

I know, I've been that person.

 

So let me try a different approach.

 

Imagine the entire Columbus metro area, including Granville & Newark & Lancaster and all around, in the wake of a horrible bio-disaster. A new infectious agent shows up out of nowhere, and kills off 95% of the population, sparing among the few a disproportionate number of the very young, and the very old.

 

Horrible, but not tedious, right?

 

Let's carry on the thought experiment by imagining that the area is largely sealed off from further interaction with anyone else for about a generation, call it 21 years.

 

After that interval, come back, whether to downtown Columbus or Granville itself. What do you find?

 

Well, probably no OSU or Denison – remember, the mystery disease left mostly the young & old in the 5% survivors – and other civic institutions are likewise obliterated. The buildings themselves: do you think much of the utility infrastructure did well over two decades? Maybe in a few isolated pockets, but most of the power plants and transmission systems would break down and not be repaired.

 

Schools would exist, but in a radically revamped form, given the survival priorities of the remnant and the strange new skew of demographics. Government, ditto, with a structure probably barely recognizable from pre-outbreak days. The flag, the pledge, witness oaths in trials, but otherwise . . .

 

In a nutshell, this is what Charles Mann tries to help us understand in his book "1491," now out in paperback. He gives a continent spanning overview of current research on Native peoples, from South America through the Hopewell culture of the Ohio valley, and makes his case that our sense of what "Indian" life was like both at and pre-European contact is radically warped.

 

What he shows us is a growing understanding among historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists that there were very, very early contacts (DeSoto comes in for some deservedly rough treatment) right on the heels of Columbus & 1492, then a gap, before the first so-called "contact narratives" are written.

 

During that crucial twenty-or-so year period, the first few transmissions of smallpox, influenza, measles, even the "common" cold, tore through the Americas devastating populations of Native peoples. Kill rates of 90 to 95% are looking more and more likely.

 

More significant from the cultural studies perspective is that we think we know what the continent "looked like" or how Indian nations "worked" & "behaved." We do not, because what is first written down is almost always a description of what American Indian life looked like after the "great dying" (as some Native accounts record it), and some time after, to boot.

 

While I'm obviously most drawn to the attempts to put Hopewell & Mississippian cultures of the Ohio Valley & Great Lakes in context, some of the richest material is looking at the Amazon River basin, long thought to be always unoccupied by people other than the most primitive subsistence tribes.

 

The growing new understanding of how Amazonian cultures worked & shaped their environments before 1491 is stunning, and holds hints of how much more we have to understand about Middle Woodland peoples of our area "before the dying time."

 

And the paperback of "1491" is out now, because Mann is publishing his newest book, titled "1493," next month. I cannot recommend these books too highly.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and a program assistant at the Newark Earthworks Center of OSU-N; tell him about your summer reads at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 7-9

Faith Works 7-9-11

Jeff Gill

 

A Basket of Summer Fruit

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In the eighth chapter of Amos in the Hebrew Scriptures, also known in the Christian Bible as the Old Testament, there is an ancient image with immediate relevance.

 

Amos, that dresser of sycamore trees and charcoal burner, a layman of the countryside, had a vision that the priests of the Jerusalem Temple apparently couldn't see. It was of "a basket of summer fruit."

 

They didn't have tomatoes in Israel of old, but summer fruit is close enough. Large, thin skinned, juicy, filled with taste and a savor that is only good for a season.

 

The thing about summer fruit is that it doesn't last, it can't last.

 

We have tomatoes year round now, but at the cost of thick skinned, solid jacketed, nearly tasteless globes of tantalizing red with the flavor of white insulating foam. That's not summer fruit.

 

A basket of summer fruit is a beautiful thing, but by just sitting there you can feel it: ripeness will soon turn to rot. Seasons turn, insects erupt, mold appears. You can put them up in jars or cook them into another dish, and it usually makes sense to just slice them and layer them with mozzarella and fresh basil leaves, with a touch of balsamic vinegar, but if you try to admire them on the counter for too long . . .

 

Amos goes on to explain that the vision God gave him said something about the land, the nation, the people of his day. They were themselves "a basket of summer fruit," lovely to behold just now, for a moment, but soon and very soon, things will change.

 

There is rot inherent in the rosiness, decay underneath the deliciousness, and doom about to ooze out of the very heart of what seems like hope and promise.

 

This is the vision that troubles many in faith communities today. It is a vision of America as "a basket of summer fruit," overripe and ready to burst. On all sides of the political spectrum, there's concern over how sustainable the American way of life really is; from the left, dependence on oil and consumption lights up Vegas and The Strip, but heads us towards an inevitable rupture. From the right, indifference to family structure in general, and to moral principles in public life opens up a seam that can pour out the vitals of our society across the countertop, leaving the husk fit only for the trash.

 

Prophetic visions, both, tied back to an ancient image of God speaking through prophets to offer the nation a different way.

 

The dilemma among many church bodies is that these not-dissimilar visions often end up in conflict, arguing about the right political path for believers to support. Progressives call for increased taxes on higher incomes to pay for more investment in alternative energy investigations and social program supports, while traditionalists cry for stronger statements and stricter laws on behalf of the values they understand as sustaining for us all.

 

Where I see an intersection between Amos' vision and both Christian factions is a reminder of the importance of sustainability. A society based on "whatever works for you" has little future, nor does one rooted in "I've got mine, good luck getting yours."

 

What all political efforts in faith communities could do better to reassert is that the believers' understanding sees no earthly quality or situation as truly sustainable in the long, the eternal haul.  Over time, only God is sustainable, since God sustains all creation.

 

So any position that doesn't start and to some degree come back around to end with God is almost certainly unsustainable in an ultimate sense. Neither green technology nor constitutional amendments are going to last forever.

 

Like most politics, church politics can easily lapse into the short term approach, and the winning strategy for the current election cycle. What congregations & denominations can best find unity around that will last is by proclaiming something, or someone, who is going to endure from yesterday, through today, and well beyond tomorrow.

 

If you've read Hebrews in the New Testament, you know where my thinking is going. Tomorrow I plan to preach this out a bit further at Central Christian in Newark at 8:30 & 10:30 am.

 

Meanwhile, pray for all those off at work to the many denominational & jurisdictional meetings taking place through the summer. May they find an eternal word to proclaim!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; no, he's not going to General Assembly this year. Tell him about your take on church politics at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter. 

Knapsack 6-30

Notes From My Knapsack 6-30-11

Jeff Gill

 

The Knapsack Uncomprehensive Plan – 50 cents

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Oh, dear.

 

If you're going to write opinion and perspective in the public press, these moments come from time to time.

 

What at least the handful of columnists I have talked to all agree is our least favorite part of the work (other than deadlines) is when we have to disagree, out loud, with friends.

 

There are a number of people I consider friends on the various panels that have been working on our Granville area "comprehensive plan," and I know them all to be hard-working persons of good will who mean only the best for our lovely and lively community.

 

If you want to see some of the evidence of their diligent efforts, you can go to the village website: http://www.granville.oh.us/draft_comprehensive_plan/

 

But I must be candid if I'm to be a columnist with integrity. I'm massively underwhelmed. We've spent a great deal of money to hire people to come in as a design consultant firm and speak the obvious to us, at length.

 

(Cue chorus from the balcony: we've heard you preach, Gill. That's the pot calling the kettle cast iron!)

 

Right. A municipal comprehensive plan, like a zoning code, exists in many cases to define and refine the obvious, because of those charming folks known by the blanket term "developers." I've written elsewhere on this, but basically, I mean them no ill, either: developers develop.

 

Since their goals are to a) develop, in order to b) make a buck, their interest in long term community health is often not what it could be. They often say c) we care about this community, and that's why we want to do a) – to which I refer you back to b). Anyhow.

 

If you don't lay out this stuff, developers will cry foul if you try to stop them from putting a pink five story pachinko parlor in the middle of downtown, saying that you let a two story tan building go in down the block, so ipso facto and Q.E.D. (in legal terms). Hence the obtuse & lengthy articulation of the apparent.

 

None of which makes me feel better reading pages and pages of "if wishes were horses we'd all ride to town." For the fifty cents it costs to get a Sentinel, I'd propose this simple plan:

 

I.               Downtown Granville shall look generally like something Norman Rockwell arguably might paint. No element of this plan shall be construed to prevent the streets from being turned to a variety of public uses, which reminds everyone from truck drivers to local folk in a hurry that public purposes are why we have a village core in the first place. Retail also has a place, as evidenced by many Rockwell works which can be consulted as to drug stores & soda fountains & small, cramped police stations.

II.             The residential part of the village surrounding downtown shall faintly resemble a Thomas Kinkade "artwork." Additions, outbuildings, & solar panels are only allowed if they do not block the slanting rays of "the golden hour" from charmingly illuminating the streetscapes.

III.           Denison University is understood to be a vital engine of innovation, diversity, and economic energy for the village, and hence will be cut some slack, understanding that the closer to the downtown, the less slack shall be cut, but don't take it personally.

IV.            Business is icky, but necessary, and we'll find a place for you somewhere, ideally way out there at the edges, unless you can masquerade somewhere on the Rockwell-Kinkade spectrum.

V.              The farther from Main & Broadway you get, the bigger we expect house lots to become, until the lawns become golf courses or farms that have no odor to speak of (or smell of).

 

That would work for me, but they tell me it's not legally enforceable. Plus, I think roundabouts are kind of cool, plus they work if you give 'em a chance. It's probably just as well I wasn't on the committee.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's on the BZBA for the village, which should probably worry you. Tell him your worries at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 6-25

Faith Works 6-25-11

Jeff Gill

 

Let the Whole World Sing

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Just to catch up anyone who is just joining us: hard though it may be to believe, but not that long ago, if you couldn't speak with enough volume & projection to be heard in the back row of a large, high-ceilinged room, you had no future as a preacher.

 

Or a politican, for that matter.

 

The flip side is that a smart, thoughtful person with a soft voice might not be heard in more ways than one, and that a buffoon with leather lungs could have a career on the stump or in the pulpit.

 

Public address systems didn't start getting used by national figures until 1914, Warren Harding got it really going as President in the 20's, and Aimee Semple McPherson was a pioneer woman preacher in 1923 California in no small part because she had both radio and microphones in her Angelus Temple.

 

For the average congregation in the Midwest, though, in a 60 by 40 foot sanctuary with a 20 foot ceiling, the bias towards "elocution" as a job skill for preachers still held through World War II. In the 1950s, small PA systems became affordable, and then they became necessary (all those returning vets who stood near 16 inch guns going off might have had something to do with it, too).

 

Organs, both pipe and electric, have their roots in the preamplification age, because it was the accessible technology that got notes "broadcast" enough for all to hear and occasionally join in through a vast, cavernous, stony space. Early Lutheran churches in Europe and Anglican cathedrals in England were where the technology of full-size pipe organs really took off, because that's where congregational singing and lay choirs began to be central to Christian worship (hat tip, choirmaster Johann Sebastian B.).

 

Now we think of pipe organs as quaint, and technology means praise bands, or worship teams, or whatever you call them. Yes, I know, some call them the Devil's spawn, others say the high point of their week.

 

Modern sound technology means volume is now no problem, for speakers or music alike, correct?

 

Ah, but no. Now our problem is: how loud should it be?

 

A small footnote – I have the pleasure of preaching tomorrow morning, 10:45 am, at the Church in the Mall. You don't get much more contemporary than a church in one of the frontages inside Indian Mound Mall, and they do, indeed, have a rockin' praise band with a full playlist of Christian contemporary music (often known as CCM for short).

 

The truth is, I'm a fairly half-hearted fan of CCM. It's OK, but left to my own devices (you can go to Pandora and click Sycamore Lodge Broadcasting if you doubt me), I'm more of a Mahler and Rachmaninoff and Carlos Nakai kind of guy, with the stray Jars of Clay or Third Day tune mixed in.

 

My point being that CCM is not something I welcome because of my own tastes, but because I see who is responding, and it's the younger adults who have been so long absent from Sunday worship. Unchurched or dechurched folk who don't actually hate hymnbooks, either, but find that dirge-y tunes sung slowly just accent their already alienated sense of what "church" means to them.

 

CCM is a tool, and will no doubt be dated and quaint (and held onto past its sell-by date) in a few more decades. As a tool today, it's working quite well in certain settings.

 

But how loud should it be? Some point out, with some accuracy, that the "live your life with earbuds implanted" generation may expect a volume level somewhere around Nigel's infamous "turn it up to 11 on the dial." I know I once spent a long night ten feet from a wall of speakers for Marshall Tucker Band and the Outlaws that probably took a whole range off my hearing, and would hope for younger listeners that they realize that making your ears bleed today can lead to decades of "say what? I can't hear you!" down the line.

 

What contemporary worship does need, in my not so humble opinion (IMNSHO for you Twitter fans out there), is actually more diversity. We need bluegrass worship services, acoustic worship services, and yes, techno-rave services even if I may not be a good choice to preach for them.

 

But in general, I hope worship leaders & sound techs alike keep one thing in mind: if you can't hear the person you're standing next to sing, at least a bit, it's too loud.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; yell a question to him over the music at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 6-18

Faith Works 6-18-11

Jeff Gill

 

A Speaker Used To Be a Person

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Last week I talked about those thrilling days of yesteryear, when air conditioning was not the norm in worship spaces, and for a preacher to step to the pulpit in shirtsleeves could make the wire services (now there's another anachronism, along with "ring you up," or "spin a record").

 

What churches often did in the summer, and a few still do, is a) move the service up a little earlier, before the sanctuary walls started picking up the heat of the day, and b) open the windows.

 

Hah. Today, whether your office, your child's school, or likely your church, the odds are the windows couldn't be opened if you wanted to.

 

What created an added challenge upon opening windows, aside from bugs flying in (since stained glass windows with hinged bottoms tend to be nearly impossible to screen), was the sound.

 

The town I grew up in had a cheerfully heathen motorcycle lover who, beyond doubt, made a point around 11 am of driving a loop past all the downtown churches, twice, before heading out into the more welcoming countryside. What was a hushed sanctuary for most of the year, swathed in oak and maple and maroon carpet, interrupted only by organ music and resonant preacherly intonations, would gain for June, July, & August the punctuation of dogs barking, birds singing, and the occasional fire truck (plus that 11 am motorcycle).

 

My mother's hometown had a train track a block away, and there was occasionally a special that would run through on Sunday mornings, and there was an odd moment of some duration when everyone, organist, preacher, all & sundry, would simply pause, and look about smiling as the clanks, shrieks, and clacka-clacka ding-ding-ding would fill the auditorium for a time . . . until the sound would fade, and the sermon would pick up as if nothing had happened once the gates swung back up with a thunk and the warning bell ceased to ring down at the crossing.

 

The thread through all of this was: no microphones. Electronic amplification was, as far as I can discern, a secondary outcome of radio technology, and didn't start getting used in this country at all until around 1913. Theodore Roosevelt is one of the last speakers to address a packed Madison Square Garden without amplification, in 1912 (all this is discussed in the opening of the eminently readable book on Roosevelt's later life by Candice Millard, "The River of Doubt"); when he returned two years later from his subsequent trip to the Amazon, although weakened he still wanted to tell the story of his explorations, so he booked the largest room in Washington, DC, Constitution Hall. His hour and a half lecture, delivered in a weary, softer tone of voice than the capital was used to hearing from Roosevelt, was still entirely without amplification.

 

In the 1920s, political speechmaking changed dramatically, starting under Ohio's own Warren Harding. Radio addresses became more common, reaching a national audience, and making a simultaneous "public address" system an obvious side-benefit.

 

As Andrew Tobias says about finance, "a luxury once sampled soon becomes a necessity." PA systems went from an extravagance to a commonplace, and more and more people insisted they couldn't hear if there wasn't a microphone in front of the podium . . . even if it wasn't turned on.

 

Two things were going on. One was expectations: crisp, clear tones that you don't have to strain to hear are no longer just a welcome relief, but a baseline assumption in any public presentation. The other change is that the interaction between audience and speaker changed dramatically, some would say for the worse.

 

Gladstone, the British prime minister and noted public speaker in his own right, talked about how an audience's attention and energy was "the mist, which I give back as rain." What he meant was that, in order to ensure a good speech, you had to work to make good listeners of them, and the effort meant there was a mutual process, a cycle of sorts, between what it took to be heard, and how you delivered what they listened to.

 

George Whitefield, the contemporary of John Wesley who made open air preaching common in the 1740s, had a voice that Benjamin Franklin personally confirmed was clearly audible from a city block away. For a generation, politicians and preachers had to have loud, strong voices, and be able to read and engage an audience in order to help them hear, whatever their vocal quality.

 

Today, a sound system allows almost any voice to be made audible, but the connection with the listener – that's still an art.

 

Next week: sound meets music. Buckle up, buttercup!

 

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

Notes From My Knapsack 6-16-11

Jeff Gill

By the Light of Another Campfire

___

There's a moment on most campouts, no matter how sugared up everyone got on 'smores, when things start to get quiet.

It's usually after dark, when the first round of Scouts have voluntarily gone off to their sleeping bags, and just after you've gone 'round to tell the rowdy crew over by the dining fly to quiet down with their euchre game, and checked the tents of the newer boys where the giggling comes in sudden waves and just as abruptly turns to silence mixed with snores.

You're back by the campfire, which was high as a signal beacon for Viking armies not long ago, but has now burned down to a sea of embers dotted with whitecaps of orange & blue flames.

Every so often, the glowing wood pops or just shifts, and a spray of sparks kick out and up, drifting into the night sky.

Some sparks go high, lasting longer than you think they'd might, and some wink out far earlier than you think they should.

Whether you're in a comfy camp chair or perched on a slice of tree trunk, there's a perimeter defined by the line between almost too hot on your face and knees, cool on the back of your neck. Adult scouters of long standing and a few of the older youth leaders make up the circle, with the occasional guitar or even a fiddle coming out to lend a melody line to the roundabout, singing one song after another, old and new in turn.

Not that the music isn't central to such a scene, but then there also comes conversation, a welcome time to talk without having to shout, that doesn't include a sudden shouted "put that down!" or "don't hold it that way if you like ten fingers!" It's a relaxed time, when campouts and hikes from years ago blur together, and blend into future treks, not yet taken but immediately real in our imaginations.

You can talk about almost anything at such times, if it's what you need to talk about. There's a store of wisdom and experience around the fire to match almost any challenge you may see ahead, personal or professional.

Embers have burned down to a dim glow now, and we are all but faces, the rest in darkness. The cold curls in around our shoulders, but the heat of the remaining coals keeps any of us from edging closer for fear of melting our boots. The songs pop up sporadically, and the conversations eddy from one side of the fire to the other, flaring into the whole circle from time to time.

One by one, the faces withdraw from the campfire, and mutter from off in the darkness "I'm going to bed." The last few remaining splash the corners of the firelay into a decent order, brush the cleared space beyond the rocky border a few perfunctory times, then lay a last log or two in the middle as a down payment on the morning's coffee, now just five or six hours away. A last word or two across the charmed circle, and then the faces become simply a voice wishing you a good night's sleep as you go your separate ways.

In Troop 65, I really hadn't had the chance to get to know Art Lowell as well as I'd have liked, and I was looking forward to the week ahead at summer camp, perhaps to get to know him better. We'd both sat around a few late night campfires, and assumed we both had many more ahead before lights out, and "Taps."

He will be present, though, at many gatherings yet to come, even though we laid him to rest, a young man of 50. And he will remind us to treasure every campfire, as our earthly light dims, and the sparks fly upward.

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

Faith Works 6-11

Faith Works 6-11-11

Jeff Gill

 

Headline News, 109 Years Ago

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A friend who is scanning through early 1900s newspapers for some historical info found an article that wasn't his target, but sounded like I might appreciate, so he sent it to me by e-mail. Thanks, Peter!

 

Not only did I enjoy it, but I think some of you will, as well. Copyright having surely lapsed, I will reproduce it in full . . . it isn't long.

 

The headline is "Popular Preacher," and the subhead reads "Removes Coat During Services."

 

Dateline "Newark, O., July 9." The article reads "Rev. H.N. Miller, pastor of the Fourth Street Church of Christ, appeared in the pulpit of his church Sunday night in a shirt waist (i.e., shirtsleeves). Mr. Miller, before preaching a scholarly sermon, spoke of the intensely hot night and invited the men in the audience to remove their coats."

 

Before I give you the second paragraph, which is also the last line of the article, let me set the scene for any of you who are unsure what's being described.

 

This is in the congregation which is today known as Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), now up at 587 Mt. Vernon Rd. a bit north of downtown.

 

In 1902, they were in the spot on Newark's Fourth St. which is a gap today, between the Masonic Temple and the Telephone Building. They were thriving, since being founded in 1884 and building their own structure in 1895, which would add a full-size sanctuary just two years later in 1904 . . . which would burn entirely to the ground in 1946, leading to the "new" building they now occupy up Mt. Vernon Rd.

 

So in 1902 it's July, a hot July across the state, and the Fourth St. Church of Christ still has a morning Sunday service, and an evening service, which is usually more of a Bible lecture than a sermon as we think of them, or a "scholarly sermon."

 

The hall is not terribly large, maybe 40 feet by 60, and of course there is no air conditioning, or even electric fans. It is well-filled with worshipers, and the heat of the day, even with the sun low in the west, is still radiating through the brick walls.

 

For the preacher to suggest, even at the sultry end of a steaming day, in a tightly packed, almost airless sanctuary, that the men might remove their coats as he had just done: it made statewide wire service headlines. My friend didn't find this in the Newark paper, but in the Stark City Democrat. It clearly got around the next day.

 

It closes: "There was a general response and Mr. Miller is being complimented for introducing the custom in Newark."

 

Do not underestimate the courage it took for Pastor Miller to take this, to our eyes, logical step. I started preaching in the 1980s, and vividly recall some conversations behind the platform, in un-air-conditioned churches, where the relative merits of "coats" or "no coats" were discussed with no little nervousness. Even then, there were feathers and fur that could be ruffled by deciding to dispense with the suit jacket.

 

After all, what's next? Not preaching with a tie on?

 

Now we have A/C in nearly every congregation, and often no one has a coat . . . or a tie. And I read this article, salute my distinguished forbearer Rev. H.N. Miller, and wonder: what did the women in starched dresses, complex foundation garments, and heavy hats think as the men took of their coats?

 

I suspect I know part of why it took another 80 years for this to no longer be a newsworthy story.

 

Next week: sound systems . . .

 

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

Faith Works 6-4

Faith Works 6-4-11

Jeff Gill

 

There Are No Spectators At a Wedding

___

 

 

There is a moment in just about every wedding I've ever officiated at, one part of the standard liturgy that is on my short list of non-negotiables. I'm fine with, and even encourage interest in writing one's vows, or being a bit creative with the outline, but there's something that always needs to be present, in my opinion.

 

It's adapted from the Episcopal "Book of Common Prayer" service, and it's after the "Declaration of Consent" from the bride and groom, which folks sometimes confuse with the vows themselves, being a statement of "yes, I know why I'm here, what we're about to do, and it's of my own free will."

 

The vows come shortly after, but before that and the readings and a homily from the officiant, even before I ask – or don't ask! – "Who presents this woman in marriage?" and just after I've asked each of the two main celebrants of the day their declaration, I look past the happy couple, at you.

 

The families in the front pews, the bridesmaids and groomsmen on either side, the more distant relations in the middle distance and dad's workplace colleagues in the back along with Uncle Charlie and the cousins who always come late, even when the wedding doesn't start on time. I look at you all.

 

And in my best ringing tones, projecting my voice up over and beyond the man and woman immediately in front of me, I ask "And YOU: do all of you gathered here, from far and near, family and friends . . . will all of you do everything that is in YOUR power to uphold these two persons in their marriage? If so, please respond by saying together, 'We do.'"

 

What occasionally startles the bride and groom is the strength of the response, as the roomful of invited guests, of all manner of connection, loose or strong, religious or merely tolerant enough to come to this sort of occasion, all prick up their ears at being asked to take an active role in the proceedings, and sing out with great emphasis, "WE DO!"

 

Do they all mean it? There may be moments ahead when one or another of them, maybe in the wedding party itself, maybe in the back row, is tempted to say "Ahhh, who cares what she says? C'mon, let's go; we'll be back by midnight I'm sure."

 

I'm just crazily optimistic enough to hope that, having said this "WE DO!" at the wedding, they might recall some years later that they promised to help build this marriage up, not tear it down.

 

And I'm encouraged in my lunacy by the vehemence with which people at least SOUND like they welcome being asked to play a part. Folks who assumed their role was to bring a gift and fill a seat, suddenly becoming an actual part of the ceremony, and in a low stress role to boot . . . they like it. Maybe because they immediately realize it makes sense, too.

 

A marriage is not, really, just about two people. It's about community, and a culture (small-c) around what it means to celebrate in the beyond-the-big-day sense of celebrate a marriage. It needs everyone at their oar, all of us invested, involved in getting the occasion off to a good start, and also carried on without untoward incident.

 

Without that wider view, when the vision narrows down to just the two, then it's easy for the focus to get misplaced, and look at the external trappings and décor elements as the real heart of the story. It's from this cramped viewpoint that you get brides asking "Can we get THAT thing out of here for the service?" (pointing at the cross on the altar), or grooms planning the honeymoon more carefully than they do the getting of the license (oh, yeah, can I bring that to you next week afterwards, pastor?).

 

We are all part of the marriage, even if we (rightly) have no part in planning the service. Or at least we should be, because any one person can get divorced, but it takes the whole community around the couple to make a happy marriage.

 

Just two people can pull it off, but it's hard, hard work to do on your own.

 

If you attend any weddings this summer, I hope you get asked to speak your support, and trust me, the couples hear how you say those two simple words, "WE DO!" and they draw comfort from them.

 

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

Knapsack 6-2

Notes From My Knapsack 6-2-11

Jeff Gill

 

The Nature Center is all around you

___

 

Next Monday aside, school pretty much ends this week.

 

(Yes, yes, I'm sending my son to school on Monday. I do other pointless things without complaint, so why not that . . .)

 

Ahead of us all stretches the summer. We hope and pray that the storms have passed, that blue skies will be the new normal, and that we who have school age kids can get them to play outside sometimes.

 

The legendary seventh grade science wildflower project is now behind us, and I'm curious to see how personally handling the Peterson Guide for Wildflowers and learning how to see, to notice, to consider the easily overlooked life in our own yard and nearby fields – I'm wondering if much of that will stick, or thinking about how I can incentivize keeping the examination of nature going through the summer.

 

The Lad went from anxiety over the rare and mysterious "dame's rocket" to realizing that, for a few weeks, it's everywhere; he now knows that bloodroot is effectively gone and won't be back 'til next April along with Trillium (we saw trillium flowers, but never where we could pick it). Checking out the field guide, he learned that his dad's old favorite, ironweed, is something he points out in August because that's the only time you can find it.

 

Birds are starting to be "seen" in his world, as opposed to just being "birds" (other than the dreaded mourning dove lurking on our front porch mornings), and he's figured out that the savant who created the Pokemon franchise built it on a pre-existing hobby of insect collecting. So there are some carry-overs already.

 

With the Lovely Wife having planted Ohio wildflowers on two sides of Sycamore Lodge, after watching the ravening deer packs chew through anything not evolved to mock their depredations, we had quite a bit right around the house for the class project. Add in that Dad quixotically hand-pulls dandelions and avoids all but the barest trace of chemical treatment on the lawn, and it's been fun watching the Lad shift focus to see that "lawn" is not a homogenous green mass (OK, later in the summer, brown), but an ecosystem of sorts with a vast assortment of plant species and even a range of insects and a few mammals.

 

Bill McKibben, the noted essayist and nature-writer, is passionately interested in the environment, concerned about global climate change, and when he's home in New England, a Sunday school teacher at his neighborhood Methodist congregation. He was on the NPR faith and culture program "On Being (with Krista Tippett)" last August, talking about everyday life and ordinary people and a personal faith.

 

He made one remark that's stuck in my head since last summer: "The suburbs are a device for making sure that you don't notice nature."

 

Cars and air conditioning and big box stores and no sidewalks and . . . yep, I think he's got a point. I could talk about programs and plans and lessons, but the corrective is perhaps no more complicated than – Notice nature.

 

And help the children around you notice it a bit more, too. It's right outside your door.

 

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

Faith Works 5-28

Faith Works 5-28-11

Jeff Gill

 

Prepare For Sudden Stops

___

 

 

If you watch video on a slow internet connection (is there any other way?), you are well familiar with a certain awkward reality.

 

Take anyone, no matter how handsome or lovely, well spoken or practiced in public presentation, and then stop the video at a random moment.

 

They will look silly, or worse.

 

If you take any one of us, and pause at a point in time, you will see eyes closed (or one eye half closed), mouth askew, or hands flapping oddly. The fine photographers of the Advocate know this all too well, too, which is why they love digital technology – take hundreds of pictures, and only one or two are recognizable and useful. You don't have to squint at rolls of film by red light to figure out which to develop, and toss most of even that selected set.

 

In a grim sort of way, death is like that. Most of us will not have lots of advance knowledge (it's why ministers joke about scheduling funerals), and even those who have an inkling are usually not expecting that unwelcome guest when it arrives.

 

So it's not usual to have to sort through pockets and drawers and in-boxes of people who have recently passed and find yourself feeling a bit embarrassed for them. You just know they were not planning on having anyone see this aspect of their life, or deal with their flaws and foibles, and figured they had a bit more time to arrange their public presentation for a general audience.

 

You could call it "the end times," if only for that person.

 

Last week, there was quite a bit of jovial mockery, some of which I willfully participated in, about the fringe pastor out west who had declared a set day AND time for the Rapture, or "ingathering of believers to God" with the End of Days, aka Eschatological Apocalypse, scheduled for Oct. 21.

 

As you may know, the world did not see (as far as we know) a taking up into the air of Christ-followers, and there was an all-too brief silence from this gentleman who became a media celebrity.

 

Apparently overlooking Deuteronomy 18:22 (let alone vs. 20), he's taken up his notes, peered through them, and decided to double down on dumb and assert that Oct. 21 is the day of departure, not of destruction, and later events will follow in due time.

 

Summer vacation spots no doubt breathed a sigh of relief.

 

Let's be clear: I'd never heard of this guy before his end of the world pronouncement, and neither had just about everyone. He got lots of attention when plenty of minor preachers and prophets labor in anonymity because he set up conservative Christians perfectly for abuse and derision. Seriously, you could do this story every month in this country alone, daily if you combed Africa and Asia for end-times predictions, but the key was a major purchase of billboards and ads which made this story both unavoidable and irresistible to general media.

 

Do I think he's sincere? I don't even know enough about him to answer that. He's 89, which tells me one thing: with all due respect, he's got a judgment day facing him soon. Personally, he's got the odds on his side for predicting an end to it all one day that's sooner than later.

 

What we're in danger of losing in all this mess is that each of us, relative to time and eternity, have a full stop coming not too far down the track. It's not always well marked, and while the point is very much to enjoy and make use of the journey, the end is a summing up, at least for others to make if not for us to witness.

 

The life of faith says we have a perspective on that final review, and we can face it with confidence because God wants us to expect it, to not fear it, and sent Jesus to show us with his life, by his death, and through his resurrection that it's all gonna be OK. We've played our part, made our faces, missed our cues, and stumbled on our entrances, but it's not our show to ruin, so be of good cheer.

 

Our lives, this world, time itself will end. Knowing that shouldn't give us despair or cause us to chase ever more desperately after satisfactions that won't last anyhow; an awareness of our end should guide our todays, with one another.

 

The fact that we might get caught looking foolish, in a last photo, or like the preacher in California, isn't really the problem; not living thankfully in the time we're given might just be the real embarrassment.

 

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

Faith Works 5-21

Faith Works 5-21-11

Jeff Gill

 

Utilitarianism and Faith, Together and At Odds

___

 

Just a couple of weeks ago, there were levees along the Mississippi that were literally blown up, near where the Ohio joins the Big Muddy, and where some of our local runoff and outflow ultimately joins rainfall from across the Midwest.

 

The decision was made to flood some 100 homes to relieve pressure that threatened 3,000 people in and around Cairo, Illinois. Two hundred some people take a hit, so more than twelve times as many people can be protected.

 

Is that fair?

 

Most of us would work to avoid that word, and fall back on "logical." It makes sense to us, a kind of sense that philosophically gets called "utilitarianism," or "the greatest good for the greatest number."

 

It makes sense, but is it enough? Utilitarianism, that is.

 

Last weekend, the Morganza floodgates were opened, releasing through a planned pathway a torrent of water from the still rising Mississippi, again reducing the pressures building up on levee walls, some of which date back to the great floods of 1927 where hundreds along the lower Mississippi died.

 

Not only levee failure, but over-topping is feared, where the maximum height is reached by rising water, which can quickly start to cut gaps in earthen structures, or simply undermine from behind other kinds of built floodwall.

 

If the massive flows of water continued unabated to New Orleans, there was great concern that they might do again to that city from the north what Hurricane Katrina and levee failure did from the south in 2005.

 

Might.

 

You can see where utilitarian arguments that look so straightforward and elegant in some settings can get complex and confusing in a big hurry. So we know, if we open the Morganza, that 3,000 square miles, 11,000 buildings, and at least 25,000 people will be flooded out, for sure.

 

If we don't, there might be flooding in Baton Rouge or New Orleans, which could be sudden and relatively unpredictable, leading to possible loss of life, and the probability of tens of thousands of homes and businesses hit again as they were not very long ago.

 

What's the right thing to do? You can still do a number of pragmatic utilitarian calculations as to just how probable the damage will be if nothing is done, and in this case it looks very high. Not for sure, but high. How do you do the math for deciding just how probable probably has to be in order to definitely impact someone else?

 

And what is the math for a sense of the justice in giving New Orleans a little extra consideration? Does the recently repaired devastation from Katrina mean that we should go out of our way, even to the detriment of others, to protect the Crescent City from repeated horrors?

 

Then there's the counterbalance in that all of the people in the areas being affected this week through Louisiana are regularly reminded by civil and federal authorities that they've built or located in an area which can be chosen for "protective flooding." If you've wondered at why so few folks in the Cajun country watching waters rise have pitched a fit, that's a major reason why.

 

Information, then, plays a role: as does compassion. Some of the folks interviewed in the flooded zone have said flat out "better us than those poor folks in N'Orlins." I doubt they've all said it, but some have. How do you put that sentiment into a formula?

 

I raise these issues as the floodwaters rise, at least on our TV screens if not nearby, to partially address a point. Those who are unhappy with or even outright hostile to a public role for faith & religion in civic affairs usually comment on "reason" and their dislike of "unreason" getting a voice in decision-making.

 

Their implication is that there is, close at hand, an entirely reasonable and rational way to make choices about things like floodwaters and health care, military action and relief operations, or public policy in general.

 

During these sorts of events like the Mississippi floods, utilitarianism looks, from a distance, like it's head and shoulders up out of the muck, making clean and crisp decisions on the mathematical merits.

 

Up close, on an individual and communal basis, utilitarian options drown in the fast moving tide of minutiae. Faith isn't a shortcut for hard choices, either, but it can give you a solid place to stand while you make them.

 

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

Faith Works 5-14 edited

Faith Works 5-14-11

Jeff Gill

 

On the Beauty of Chastity

___

 

We're heading into the heart of commencement season, with advice and counsel freely provided to captive audiences.

 

You'll hear some good ones, you'll hear some bad ones, all of them well-intended and some ("Use sunscreen") quite brief, as well as helpful.

 

The late David Foster Wallace gave what is considered to be one of the best commencement speeches of the last few decades, just up the road at Kenyon College in 2005. It's been turned, since his recent tragic death, into a book ("This is Water"), and the text of the basic address itself is easy to find online.

 

If you consider yourself rather old school about things like graduation ceremonies (say, you'd never imagine bringing an airhorn in your pocket for when your relative crosses the stage), it starts off rather ramblingly, and fairly typical commencement fare for all that.

 

Then Wallace makes a sharp pivot in his talk to say this: "There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."

 

Whoa. Outside of a private Christian high school or a denominational college, that's a bit unusual. He goes on in this vein, with a nod to the variety of traditions honored or deferred by his audience in Gambier on that sunny day:

 

"An outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough."

 

"Will eat you alive." I read a blog post where one of the graduates that day said he paused there, and repeated it, to rapt silence.

 

"Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you."

 

A commencement speech that is unlikely to be heard much of anywhere is an address "On the Beauty of Chastity." Like David Foster Wallace struggling with the question of what (or Who) to worship, there are some subjects even in these days that are not fit for polite company. Chastity would be one of them.

 

If you had John Milton, or C.S. Lewis come back to speak, or St. Catherine of Siena and St. Teresa of Avila (maybe even old St. Joseph himself), they'd surely find chastity a good starting point for their talks to graduating students, even as they might be baffled by airhorns.

 

It's not so unlikely a subject for moderns as you might think, given that chastity doesn't mean the Punch-n-Judy caricature most people think of hearing the word. Chastity is purity in the sense of self-discipline; as Kierkegaard said "Purity of heart is to will one thing."

 

We stand in awe as basketball players sink three-pointers, knowing the tens of thousands of practice shots that led to that game winning moment; we watch, rapt, at footage of Navy SEALs in grueling training in ice cold water, preparing for feats only possible with intense focus & discipline; we listen in delight to singers & instrumentalists who practice, practice, practice to give a fluid, easy performance on the day of the show.

 

That's what chastity is, as the saints knew. It's not NOT having sex outside of marriage, but it's the life practice of discipline, self-discipline, a learned focus that allows us to achieve that which truly leads to happiness. A happily married couple is chaste, a single person who hopes to marry and prepares for that relationship until it begins is chaste, and chastity is as much what you do, when, much more than it is what you don't do.

 

Chastity is deferring some satisfactions now to gain a greater joy and peace later, and can be practiced by anyone.

 

Anyone, that is, who worships a vision and a goal somewhere beyond their own fleeting pleasures; who can accept short-term pain for long-term gain. Exercise and diet and study, as well as sex, are all tools for a life well-lived if used in a disciplined, which is to say chaste, manner. Tools flung about without intention or plan are dangerous, to self and others.

 

Chastity, on the other hand, can make something beautiful. May all those who commence this graduation season become craftspeople of their own lives.

 

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