Notes from my Knapsack 3-29-18

Notes from my Knapsack 3-29-18

Jeff Gill

 

Sunrises

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About now, sunrise is at 7:15 am, thanks to the clever busy helpful adjustments of the government a few weeks ago. We are saving daylight, having trimmed an hour off the morning and pasted it onto the evening. Huzzah.

 

So I'm waiting to get sunrises back where they belong in my morning routine, or where I think they should be about this time of year.

 

I've written more over the years about moonrises than sunrises, because of the Newark Earthworks and their ancient, learned geometries from two thousand years ago, and through them I've learned how amazing it can be to watch a moonrise, which few end up doing.

 

But most of us have watched the sunrise, at some point or another. It can be a painful experience, if you've waited through a long dark night, and found yourself watching the east for light, for hope, for a beginning or an ending, but weighted with sorrow.

 

Or it can be a joyful moment, especially if you went to a special vantage point, moving up to it in the dark, in pre-dawn gloom, and were where you could enjoy to the fullest the gathering light moving up in advance of the breaking forth of the sun's rays over a distant horizon.

 

Sometimes, a sunrise is just the price you pay for a party that went on too late, a job that began too early, and you see it in your rear-view mirror or squint into it through the windshield, a feature of a time of day you'd prefer to be able to avoid.

 

I know there are many who enjoy a good western view, on the gulf coast of Florida or out in California or even islands beyond, where you can relax by watching the sun set with a cool drink near at hand, letting the red rubber ball squeeze down into the ocean far off.

 

But I find myself most put in tune with the day, with my life, getting to sit where I can see the first light of day tint the highest tree branches near me, then watch the glow work down the trunk and to the ground, finally warming my face where I sit with a good hot cup of coffee.

 

A good sunrise can put you in touch with those for whom it's a sunset far to the east, and make you mindful of those who off to your west are still waiting for the first glimmer of dawn. A morning that begins with a sunrise that can warm your heart will light up the whole day, even when the sun is eaten up by clouds overhead later on.

 

This Sunday, many of us remember a sunrise thousands of years ago, one that began in predawn mists of uncertainty and anxiety, but which by full light had turned into a day full of rejoicing and wonder. Sunrises can do that for you.

 

This spring, and it is indeed spring no matter what the forsythia are saying to us, I hope you get a chance to wake and greet a sunrise to see what it has to say to you. It might just cast a light on the day and days ahead, that makes more clear than even a good night's sleep alone can bring.

 

Happy Easter!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he will be atop Horns Hill at 7 am on Easter morning. Tell him what the sunrise says to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 3-31-18

Faith Works 3-31-18

Jeff Gill

 

Seeing and hearing, a story

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She almost bolted out of the dark interior of the church into the bright sunlight of Jerusalem.

 

Inside, the crowds and the turmoil had been enough to throw her off, but the tour guide had taken them to the tomb first, then to the Golgotha chapel, which confused her. The guide did his best to help orient everyone in this ancient building, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, explaining how the original stone quarry had been reshaped and built over, across seventeen centuries, including the place of Jesus' crucifixion, and the location of his now empty tomb, but the lamps and candles and icons and incense . . . it was all too much for her.

 

Other tour groups crowded in on every side, a chorus of guides speaking at once, in different languages, and when she heard their guide tell everyone that they had free time to wait in line to enter the "Edicule," the chapel built around Christ's tomb at the heart of the church, but that it would be a two hour wait, she turned and went back out the main, ancient doors and into the courtyard.

 

This was not what she was hoping for, what she'd expected when she signed up for a tour of the Holy Land. There had been wonderful experiences so far, and she wasn't regretting being there for a minute, but this stop on their week long program had thrown her for a loop. She was thinking about Easters past back home, the flowers and morning light and stillness only broken by organ music and hymns, and this was . . . something different. Too different. She couldn't keep the cross, or Jesus, foremost in her thoughts.

 

They were to head back out the Jaffa Gate, and west to their hotel for lunch in two and a half hours. She could tell the tour guide had seen her look on tourist faces before, and he quickly agreed to let her leave, after a few questions confirmed for him she could make her way back on her own.

 

Even the courtyard, about the size of her backyard at home, was crowded. She worked her way through the entering pilgrims, heading back to the main point of entry to the church. A turn, a couple more blocks, and blessedly, the Old City opened up and there was even something resembling a small park in front of her. An open bench sat in the sun like an invitation.

 

Looking around, there were low ruined walls, a sign saying something about a "muristan," and the closest thing to green growing plants she'd seen in some time. The sound of the guides in the echoing hollow spaces of the church were gone, and there was a bit of wind blowing through the tiles and towers around.

 

Then she saw the cat. It was sitting on a stretch of wall off to one side of her, paws tucked together beneath, but one in the cat's mouth, then curling up behind an ear, pulling it forward and around, again and again.

 

The cat grooming itself suddenly took her to a different place. She was at home, but not at home. Her cat back in Ohio, cats anywhere, a cat in this place two thousand years ago, would have groomed themselves in just the same self-possessed, repetitive way. Past and present felt closer together, and she to that past represented by the city, the streets, and that busy bustling too crowded church. And then she heard the name of Jesus.

 

It was "Jesus," and "sepulcher," with German accents, in the midst of more she couldn't quite make out, but they had come out of the Lutheran church across the way, and were walking as a group without a tour guide, heading exactly away from the street which would take them to the ancient church, the traditional place of crucifixion and resurrection. And then they came to halt all together, just in front of her, pointing all the wrong way, an apparent leader of sorts squinting at a map.

 

She summoned up her courage, and her one year of high school German, and stood up. "Gehen kirche Sepulcher?"

"Ja?" replied the woman with the map.

 

With a muddle of "Ich spreche ein sehr bisschen Deutsch" and "rechts, zwei . . . blocks? Then rechts nochmal?" the light dawned, fingers pointed at the map, and the group turned in the correct direction with a flurry of "danke! Danke fraulein!" over their shoulders.

 

She sat back down, and smiled. She had pointed them in the right direction. Towards Jesus.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your trips to disorienting places where the familiar can still show up at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 3-24-18

Faith Works 3-24-18

Jeff Gill

 

If you are looking for some Easter reading

___

 

In 1942 a retired Congregational minister named Lloyd Douglas published a book.

 

It wasn't his first book, nor would it be his last, but of his entire output it's the one that has stayed in print without interruption for 76 years, and is likely to be around in electronic or some other form along with the stray printed copy for a long time to come.

 

"The Robe" is probably the book I've given to more people, second only to the Bible, than any other work . . . "Blue Highways" is a distant second. And "The Robe" is a good companion to that volume, especially this time of year.

 

Douglas had started writing at age 50 (encouraging, some of us might say) and when he retired from pulpit ministry at 60 he only picked up the pace of his novel writing craft. And he was 65 when his (I would argue) greatest work was released.

 

It came out just as America was entering a world war, and both author and publisher made the copyright available for a cheaply printed, palm-sized edition (this is long before paperback novels were common) that was produced in mass quantities, along with a number of other popular books for distribution to service members overseas. Time would prove that Douglas did not lose out in the deal in the long term.

 

"The Robe" became the first CinemaScope movie in 1953, and the first widescreen release in twenty years, as Depression era cost cutting and wartime rationing had kept film stock narrower, but the rise of television had studios scrambling to draw people back into theatres: Douglas' tale of the followers of Jesus and the Roman soldier who sought what they had was deemed a good choice to open up viewers to the grandeur of the Palestinian landscapes and Imperial majesty back in Rome. And with Richard Burton and Jean Simmons, I think of all the great "sword and sandal" epics of the 50s, it holds up better than most to the modern viewer. Not as vast as "The Ten Commandments," but with less of the silent movie ethos of DeMille, as 20^th Century Fox saw the potential of this story to reach families, regular moviegoers, and even whole communities (a marketing model DeMille would follow three years later).

 

The story is about Jesus, but he is seen only obliquely, in both the novel and the movie. This is perhaps part of the strength of this picture against the somewhat dated portrayals in similar films like "King of Kings" or "The Greatest Story Ever Told." The robe of the title is, of course, Jesus' robe; the protagonist of the narrative is Marcellus, a son of nobility and a Roman tribune, whose father is a senator in the time of Tiberius. Before the book's end, Caligula has taken the throne, persecution has begun in earnest against this Christian cult infiltrating from Judea into Rome itself, and you may have guessed – Marcellus becomes a Christian.

 

But first, in what's not quite a spoiler alert, Marcellus is the officer in charge of the detail tasked by Pontius Pilate with crucifying Jesus. And of course, in a dice game played at the foot of the cross, older soldiers having made sure to help their young superior deal with the horror of crucifixion by getting him good and drunk, Marcellus wins the seamless garment that is the only possession of Jesus whose destiny is mentioned in the Bible. In fact, the obscure detail of Romans gambling for Jesus' outer garment, his robe, is one of a relatively short list of points that is common to all four gospels. Psalm 22:14 points to this incident, and the fulfillment of that prophecy made it of importance to all four authors.

 

The robe is really just a vehicle for understanding the man who once wore it, just as "The Robe" is a story wrapped around a quest to understand and explain how faith develops from questions to hopes to commitments. Marcellus' journey, and those of many more characters than this column can outline, is a journey that we can identify with. He begins a skeptic and a doubter; "The Robe" lets you travel with him towards becoming a believer.

 

How far will you go with him? I'd invite you to read "The Robe" yourself and find out.

 

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

Faith Works 3-17-18

Faith Works 3-17-18

Jeff Gill

 

The mystery of virtue

___

 

Today is St. Patrick's Day, but I've written that column a few times before; Monday the Christian calendar honors St. Joseph, and I'm not sure I have anything new to say about him just now.

 

What has been on my mind lately is virtue. Or rather, the mystery of virtue.

 

Where does it come from? What exactly is it? How does a person live a virtuous life?

 

As a pastor, I know I'm supposed to tell you to find the right worldview, to accept by faith a vision of what your ultimate values are going to be, and to confess that faith by living out those values. And yes, for me, as a Christian believer I find security and certainty in the faith I hold, about the world and what lies beyond it.

 

What is much more up for grabs is the question of what my faith, or anyone's faith, tells me about virtue. The life of a believer, most faith traditions would affirm, my own included, should show the positive effects of your faith, but what exactly does that look like?

 

For the Amish, the externals are simpler; if your belief system isn't quite so prescriptive, what does it mean to answer the call to be a virtuous person? Should everyone on their confession of faith sell all that they have and give it to the poor, or is that a particular teaching to certain persons like the Bible's rich young ruler? Or does virtue just mean following the Ten Commandments, not murdering or lying or committing adultery?

 

The Good Lord knows that we'd probably all be better off if we could just get more people to follow those ten timeless instructions, but actually most of us think of virtue as going beyond just not killing or not telling fibs. The description of "a virtuous person" evokes something bigger, broader, and honorable in their context even beyond their religious community. We know what it means, but find it hard to describe.

 

And cynically, as a society, we've long accepted it as a given that it's well-nigh impossible for a politician to be virtuous, nor do we really expect it of celebrities or sports figures. It's considered unusual for them to even try, and in fact it makes us all the more suspicious when someone in the public eye tries to appear virtuous. This has been true for a while.

 

Alasdair MacIntyre in 1981 wrote a major work of moral philosophy entitled "After Virtue." His pessimistic take was that the modern age had become incoherent in what he calls "moral discourse" and worse yet, we refused to admit the internal inconsistencies or disconnects in what we said was of lasting importance and how we were choosing to live, even as we try to force our public discussions around these awkward corners of individualism and human destiny. MacIntyre was an academic and philosopher, but his main critique of modernism was how from the Enlightenment forward it has been the loss of a sense of lasting, ultimate purpose in the lives of individuals that left philosophical and social debate about morality floundering for a solid footing.

 

Can someone be virtuous if they have no hope or sense of life beyond the earthly sense of living? I know they can, because I have seen it. What is more under debate is how to teach virtue, to support virtue broadly in a culture without any shared transcendent meaning to ground it in. Manners do not require a heaven, nor does good taste insist on God as the final arbiter, but virtue evokes something more, a larger quality of humanity that extends from everyday courtesy to willing self-sacrifice.

 

How then can we teach virtue, if it is not a code or a style guide or a list of commandments, ten or more? Perhaps the best way to understanding virtue is through stories that tell us about people who display it, whatever "it" is.

 

The American writer Flannery O'Connor spoke in a way about the struggle to talk coherently about virtue, in her posthumous book of essays "Mystery and Manners," when she said that "a story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way . . . You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate."

 

What I love about Lent is how every year it takes me back directly to the story of Jesus. It's in the Gospels, and the personal accounts of how he lived, that I read about a life that speaks as clearly as can be about what virtue is.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about where you see or hear virtue afoot around us at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 3-15-18

Notes from my Knapsack 3-15-18

Jeff Gill

 

An amazing spectacle never to be seen again

___

 

Robins spend the whole winter in these parts now.

 

Some of that is global climate change shifting the zone boundaries north for what birds can or will tolerate, and some of it is the number of bird-feeders and available habitat, but it's no longer true that you should look for "the first robin of spring."

 

But whole families of robins? Maybe so. The snow buntings have started to pass through in the spring migration back north; meadowlarks and song sparrows are on their way across the Raccoon Creek valley, and phoebes, wrens, and warblers can't be far behind.

 

The red-shouldered hawks are easy to see in the still-barren tree branches, but the maples on my street are starting to bud. I watch for the lively explosion of litter onto the sidewalks and driveways when the buds are shoved aside to fall to the ground, for the extension of new life into the still frosty air.

 

Orion is starting to edge over closer to sunset after dark; the mornings just got shorter and the evenings longer thanks to daylight saving time, which isn't really my preferred choice. It does increase the odds, though, that some night soon on my way home I'll get out of the car and sniff grilled meats on the air – there's always a few intrepid souls upwind who get an early start on cooking out. I'm rarely home soon enough to try it, but I respect the chefs and enjoy the smells as a sign as sure as a crocus or daffodil.

 

From spotting the green spears through the worn mulch of last year to the trip down to the garden center for a new mower blade, the rituals of springtime are familiar, and fairly constant. Yet I am certain that every spring is just a little bit different . . . no, a great deal in difference from year to year, from where I sit or stroll.

 

Winter is a great enemy of outdoor exercise, just the round the block stroll let alone a jog or bike ride, but longer days and warmer evenings should make an opportunity for many of us. We get out, multitudes on the bike paths through our village, but other trails invite and welcome, to see the natural world a little closer up.

 

They keep doing studies to prove it, but there's not much we don't already know. From old adages like "stop and smell the roses" (give them time) to our gut level knowledge about the effects of sunshine on our faces, we are aware that nature has a healing effect on body and mind and spirit. Wandering the Bioreserve that Denison tends for us, hiking up Sugar Loaf where Scouts and the community have worked for years to keep a path winding around to the summit and the boulder monument there, or even down to creekside and subtle trails that ignore property lines, maintained by deer hooves and a few bold boots, we feel something calming, something soothing.

 

Or just a gentle, unhurried stroll around your house, not so much to look for the tasks undone (which are legion) but to the signs indeed of life. Where the soil and seeds and stirrings all around are a springtime show like no other before, and none other that will ever come again.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what Mother Nature is up to in your neck of the woods at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.