Notes From My Knapsack 10-5-17

Notes From My Knapsack 10-5-17

Jeff Gill

 

No, not me. You, maybe.

____

 

Every morning, I brew a pot of coffee. Since I was fifteen, I've drunk about six to ten cups of coffee a day, from dawn to dusk and often right on into the night.

 

I'm often told, and have been since in my twenties, that "son, one of these days soon you'll find you have to stop drinking that stuff by noon or you won't sleep a wink."

 

Just turned 56, still waiting for that fell day to fall. Hasn't yet. We'll see.

 

I could stop any time, of course. I just don't want to.

 

Lots of people come home at the end of the day, turn on the television. They don't have to, there's no paycheck or reward or any upside oftimes for doing so, it's just a habit. House is too quiet without it, they say. They could not click the TV when they walk in the house, even before they sit down, and might be happier for not having done so. They just don't want to.

 

Some of us, younger ones for the most part, put earbuds in at every reasonable opportunity and not a few unreasonable. Recorded music makes them feel better, and the soundtrack to their lives gives them a lift, and it blocks out things they don't want to hear. You or me, for instance. Gotta good beat, you could dance to it, keeps you going. They don't have to have music to live, but it helps life out.

 

Statistically, it's clear many of us take some pain pills in the morning. I've had my seasons. The sheer numbers sold over the counter indicate that either there are cellars all over America filled with the stuff, or quite a few take a handful first thing, and gobble a few more at intervals right on to bedtime.

 

Aching joints, throbbing head, general debility, and some ibuprofen or aspirin ease the day along. Could we get along without them? Sure, but it wouldn't be pleasant. Do we take more than we really need? Um, who's asking? Who decides? It doesn't hurt anything, much. Not really.

 

I am told by some friends and acquaintances that smoking a bit of weed is a useful end to a long day. Easier to get all the time, possibly even legal soon, so what's the harm. It's not addictive. It's not addictive. It's not addictive. (I heard you the first time, really.) Well, it can be habit forming, but not like alcohol, and that's legal, right? Let me have this habit, I'm not hurting anyone. Okay, I reply, I'm not saying it is. Except it is still illegal . . . cue lecture as to why it shouldn't be.

 

And I go to the grocery for salami and cheese and peanut butter, without which life would surely have no meaning worth speaking of, and traipse down a long aisle of alcohol. One gets the impression in Our Fayre Village that some of this gets drunk. Often. Much.

 

In our community controversy around schools and testing and expectations, one thing is clear to me. We live in an addictive society. I'm not even getting into the question of prescriptions and such. We are all addicts, and the cultural norm is to be addicted, to something or some things.

 

How we got here, and what that means, and how it is currently managed, by all of us: that's the question I'm compulsively tugging at.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he will freely admit to being a writing junkie, and can't get through a day let alone week without writing something. Tell him about your compulsions at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 9-30-17

Faith Works 9-30-17

Jeff Gill

 

At the destination of our journeys

___

 

This weekend, the first of October, is when Christians around the globe observe World Communion Sunday.

 

Not every tradition has what's called "the Lord's Supper" at every worship service; Catholics and most Anglicans and many Lutherans and my own Disciples of Christ do so, but quite a few Protestant traditions have communion just once a month, once a quarter, or even just once or twice a year.

 

So the first Sunday of October became a good target date to try to gather in all of those schedules so there might be one occasion where we all might be mindful of each other, in different traditions, gathered around the same table. Presbyterians in Pittsburgh are proud of having gotten this ecumenical ball rolling, and I'm happy to give it a push.

 

The larger point has to do, I would say, with the Great Banquet. The meal at the end of the road. A welcome place with room for all. You can visualize it in many ways, but as we're all on a journey, the question is asked: where are we going? The book of Revelation at the end of the Bible offers some strange and wonderful images, but there's a marriage supper at the conclusion as we enter the City of God.

 

You've been to a wedding reception, I'm sure. They're all different, and they're all the same. There are guests of honor, there are family and friends from near and far, there is food both familiar and unusual: homey snacks before, and a mighty cake at the culmination waiting for everyone to share.

 

Looking around, you see familiar faces, and strange ones. You ask around, and don't you always hear "sure, you know them; that's cousin Lemuel from her side of the family twice removed"? There are people you should know, those you forgot you knew, and people you're glad you met.

 

This is what most of us who believe in Heaven think it is like. Do I literally think I'm getting carrot cake with cream cheese icing in the life to come? Not exactly, but the joy I have in tasting it now, with memories and expectations and goodness all coming together . . . that's just a taste of what I believe God intends for us in time's fullness.

 

And as for the Great Banquet, the "marriage supper of the Lamb," the King's feast, the message of that imagery is what we all know in our bones of this life: that if you invite someone to come to your table and eat with your family, they are being invited into a new relationship that goes beyond just those minutes or hours for a particular meal. You are now family, even if you travel away and are a long time gone. There's a tie that is likely to last over the years until you return, the prodigal of sorts, who will be welcomed and even celebrated on your return.

 

That is a huge element of what many of us see in worship at the communion table. The elements of the meal are small, and the symbolism our various traditions read differently, but the point is the same. This table, to which we are invited by our gracious Host, is a meal of fellowship that hints at a greater banquet that has no end.

 

There's also a sort of tradition that when the family gets together, you dig the extra leaves for the big table in the dining room out of the hall closet, behind the winter coats. You pull the end cabinet around and stretch the tablecloth over it; you set a card table up in the front room or back of the kitchen or even in the garage, and there is a special privilege to being at that "kids" table. Many elements come together but it is undoubtedly one table, even if Uncle Albert has to shout the grace around a few corners as we hold hands and bow our heads.

 

One table. Liturgical or simple worship; concert halls and auditoriums; newer church plants and old established buildings. Carved wood with Gothic letters in front saying "This Do In Remembrance of Me" or a card table with a cloth over the top. But from time zone to time zone this Sunday, from place to place, across denominational boundaries, we join as God's family, as brothers and sisters in Christ, to share in this holy meal. One.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's looking forward to communion every weekend, but this one especially. Tell him about tables of welcome you have known at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 9-23-17

Faith Works 9-23-17

Jeff Gill

 

A place that is more than a place

___

 

Already it has been an occasion for some interesting conversations as the first episodes of Ken Burns & Lynn Novick's "The Vietnam War" have aired on PBS (It continues through Thursday, Sept. 28, then will re-air on a weekly basis through Oct. and Nov.). With those who remembered it all too well, and those who are just now coming to realizations about how and why that "land war in Asia" had the impact on our country that it did . . . and in so many ways, didn't, as we have repeated what seem to have been stark, unmistakable lessons in our national affairs.

 

I was in 7th grade when the draft ended; I was in 9th grade when Saigon fell and the truth that we had lost in Vietnam became an unmistakable national reality. I went through grade school with maps of that elongated nation on classroom walls, with those place names so oddly accented in the air and on our lips, and into junior high with the POW bracelets and the awkward memorial services for the dead and the protests all very nearby. There was an assumption in the environment that many of us (the boys, at least) would soon be in the service, and most would see that place across the Pacific at one point or another.

 

And then, it was gone. For those of us who were too young to have been caught up directly in it all, it was an odd and resonant silence. Vietnam became an idea, an issue, a cause but not a place or a people. Other than the occasional flurry of MIA debate, it was not a location that the USA had anything to do with, but a word we often mouthed.

 

Vietnam is not back with us, because it never left: we're still working at seeing the nation, her people, and our ambivalent relationship with her, with honesty and accuracy. I have spoken to a dozen or more people who have been there in the last decade or more, and they all speak with tones of wonder about the kindness, good cheer, and welcome the Vietnamese people offer to visiting Americans. I look forward to the last few episodes of the PBS program, in hopes that Burns & Novick help us understand what that new relationship does and can mean, as we try to figure out as a nation what our relationship to global conflicts should be to get to such a place with other countries without going through the pain we have received, and inflicted, in Vietnam already and in other drier and dustier spots around the world.

 

What stands out to me in the initial stages of the re-told story is how one religious minority tried to dominate another religious majority, and where the pent-up frustrations turned to violence. Perhaps even more sharply, I noticed how our own American ignorance of history and religious community values not our own led our leadership to blindly take the side of the oppressive minority.

 

Which we did again in Iraq, and which has hobbled our ability to figure out our own national interests nearby in Syria and Lebanon. It's like we just have trouble learning this lesson.

 

And this is also why, as a committed Christian and leader in my own religious community, I get so incredibly frustrated when people resist learning about other faiths and different cultures. Pluralism is not universalism, let alone relativism; we can honor and value the truths we hold dear, but understand better how other beliefs function in their own contexts.

 

To be fair, there's often anxiety around the idea that pluralism is being presented as an end in itself, that all views are relative, and that to understand is to accept. I think that mature believers can handle new ideas and different faiths, but it's easiest to just avoid the whole thing and sit in a warm bath of the familiar, and call everything outside of your door "different" and therefore strange.

 

That's how we go astray, I believe. Not all differences are equally . . .different. That's true geopolitically, and ecumenically, too. We can compare, and contrast, and advocate, and listen. If our faith is so shallow, so fragile, that learning how other believers think will damage our own thoughts, they weren't all that robust to begin with.

 

Blessings to all who served in Vietnam, and may they and our entire nation be blessed by this time of reflection.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's curious to hear what any recent visitors to Vietnam have learned. Tell him what you heard there at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes From My Knapsack 9-21-17

Notes From My Knapsack 9-21-17

Jeff Gill

 

Door to door to door

___

 

Years ago, I sold Boy Scout popcorn door to door, and got a great story out of the experience: I grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana, and I got to sell a five pound bag of Orville Redenbacher popcorn to Orville Redenbacher.

 

In general, I didn't look forward to the popcorn sale day, when we spread out across the town in various station wagons (it's the early Seventies, okay?), except for the then-rare experience of getting to have lunch at McDonald's, but I did well enough. My younger brother only told me years later that when he had to go out on "Popcorn Day" he'd mime pushing the doorbell, stand there a while, then trudge on; the mom driving his group around would comment on how he had such bad luck with people not being home. He hated the whole process.

 

Fast forward, and my son went around with what became a nationwide popcorn deal for Scouts; he had sold wrapping paper for elementary school in Hebron, mostly to family, and then in band there were candles and candy and a few other vats of cheese that turned out to be more tiny pots of . . . something.

 

Door to door sales are hard. I had a paper route, back when kids delivered papers (again, Seventies), and there would be drives to sell subscriptions. Those prizes were some great stuff, I thought then, and I pushed myself. I got a radio, a trip to a college football game, a few other items, never the telescope or tent or trip to New York.

 

Today, I live near one of our village's entrances off of the expressway. I'm also an officer in our neighborhood association, and when I took that role one of the previous holders told me "one of your jobs is to call the police non-emergency number when solicitors come around." My reaction at first was "really?" But that changed.

 

First, as soon as the weather warmed up, I was amazed at how many van loads of folks would get dumped down the block and set loose with clipboards and order forms. Some were very persistent, and I would see how an elderly lady next door would get nearly-literally arm-twisted. I'd ask "are you registered?" or any other question, and see a shocking eruption of hostility. It became easier to make the call to 1234.

 

Especially after the second or third time the officer would come back, after showing up and tracking down the waif with a pen on a string, and finding out they were runaways. A couple of times a summer, the police would follow the thread back to the van, the "boss," and the hotel room six of them were sharing. Many – not all, but many – of the "subscription sales" and other door-to-door solicitors were not what they claimed, and on more than one occasion one of them would pull the police checking on the location aside and say "help me."

 

I don't know what the right law about solicitation in Granville should be. But the idea that there be some regulation, some way to sort out the situation, other than everyone having to put a "No Solicitation" sign on their door, that makes a world of sense to me.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your door-to-door experiences at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 9-16-17

Faith Works 9-16-17

Jeff Gill

 

What do you believe, and how would I know?

___

 

There's a very old preaching illustration that can be summed up with the question: If being a Christian were a crime, is there enough evidence to convict you?

 

There's an echo here that wasn't as audible years ago, when we were more ready to confuse Christendom with country, and the mainline Protestant churches tended to assume that the culture of America was entirely supportive of "our" religion.

 

We could spend some serious time on a discussion of how the mainline never was that main, on Main St. or from sea-to-sea (for one thing, the "mainline" model never took Catholicism into account, let alone non-Christian faith communities, which have been with us since before the Declaration of Independence), but there was a normative model not long ago. It was an image of popular piety that we carried into civil religion across the nation, and many, even non-believers, had in their popular imagination of "being Christian."

 

That standard model, that kind of imagining envisioned that a good citizen going about their business like everyone else was also, pretty automatically, a good Christian. Looking back, we missed a great deal when we started to assume that religious formation was or ever could be a responsibility we could pass along to popular culture. Pop culture is, well, pop culture.

 

And even in the heart of that "middle America" imagination, there was an uneasy awareness that for many regular churchgoers, there wasn't much evidence for how faith in a loving God directly involved in our lives was an active and vital part of who we were. How did that amazing realization, if we'd come to it and affirmed it, make our lives different from someone else who hadn't taken that step in faith, but drove the same car, took the same vacations, read the same books, and enjoyed the same recreations? "Is there enough evidence to convict you?"

 

The good news is, from where this preacher stands, the huge shift in the last generation to Christian missions in this country. Yes, people have and probably should comment critically on "missions tourism," where folks go somewhere warm and exotic to do two days of service to those in need and get five days of cheap vacation in a tropical paradise. But let me say with as much weight as I can bring to bear: I've not seen that around here. Not at all.

 

To Haiti, to Zimbabwe; to South Carolina and not the fancy parts; to Mississippi and the Gulf Coast without a pause at a casino, even for the buffet; and now to Houston and Florida. Almost exactly one year ago, terrible flooding hit north-central West Virginia, and our congregation is preparing to go next month to a place that's hard to find on a map, let alone in a vacation guide. The hands-on work is most missional, most vital when the big ticket relief efforts are over, the telethons are done and the large corporate entities have moved on. It's the mucking out and tearing off of drywall, the peeling of paint and re-shingling of a patch job that's already years old.

 

Already, it's being said that faith-based organizations have brought in, both to the Houston area and to south Florida, almost double what FEMA has put on the ground and in people's hands. That's not being said to hack on FEMA, just to point out how large and broad those church organized responses are.

 

And most critically, and as the mission team folk from my own congregation have taught me, it's after FEMA is a faded memory that people still sitting in the midst of a fair amount of still visible destruction start to wonder "does anyone really care?" When the first adrenaline rush passes, and the surge of National Guard help and boxes off the big trucks are being delivered somewhere else, the local people who absorbed the brunt of the blow are only then taking stock of what they've lost, and what looking forward means now.

 

This is where a few van loads of people with a mix of carpentry and electrical and plumbing and just leather-gloved "rip it out" skills, showing up to just say "how can we help?" can move hearts and lift spirits, let alone take a ruined house and make it a habitable home again.

 

In this country, and overseas, mission service in the name of your faith can create some compelling evidence that your beliefs mean something.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him where you've seen faith made visible at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.