Faith Works 5-18-19

 

Faith Works 5-18-19

Jeff Gill

 

A flat of geraniums

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In the latter half of May, when we'd go to Grandma Walton's house for a weekend, whether it was Memorial Day or not yet we'd end up going out on Saturday with a flat of geraniums.

 

Decoration Day had roots well before the Civil War, up into New England when the first time you could plant flowers around gravesites was the very end of the month; mid-Ohio is more mid-May for our frost-free date, but in any case geraniums are fairly hardy, which is why I imagine they became associated so strongly in the Midwest with the first planting at family headstones.

 

The Civil War brought a new meaning to the end of May, starting in 1868, but whether you're thinking about the last Monday in this month, or just the first weekend with decent weather, Decoration Day is still hidden within Memorial Day as an observance. Memorial Day was more the wreaths and the salutes and Taps, but Decoration Day was personal.

 

We'd get in the car and head out across the downstate Illinois landscape, east to Fairview and Grandview and Hoult Cemeteries, looking for Newlins and Cartwrights and other relatives whose names I didn't know. We'd pause sometimes at crossroads with a sparse corner and a huddled few upright tilting stones. Then we might steer north to Greasy Point, east of Arcola, to tend Walton stones there.

 

At each halt, the flat of geraniums would come out, the apron, the basket with trowel and tools, a roll of waxy canvas for kneeling. Grandma would be in charge, whomever came along that year, whichever car (she never learned how to drive) and she had a plan and a kind of budget for which geraniums went where.

 

My recollection forty years later is that however we offered or asked or started out, Grandma planted most of them. Or at least put the final pats onto the soil when everything was in place. Most went close to the headstone, but not where they'd obscure the inscription, though no too far wide, either "or they'll get cut down by the mowers." She knew where they went. She'd planted geraniums there before.

 

There wasn't a great deal of sentiment, or sorrow, or standing around in a reflective haze. For the most part, there was always one more country cemetery to get to, so we jumped in the car and kept moving. It was the act, the work of planting geraniums . . . and the knowledge that they were growing there, long after you left . . . that was the purpose and the prayer. Consider it a kind of Protestant lighting of candles at a shrine, the planting of geraniums.

 

Not without a little guilt this time of year I think of her, and her grave, and those graves she took us around to tend. Most I've not visited for years, and they're all 300 miles and more away. Mostly geraniumless.

 

And I think about how best to maintain memories, and gratitude, and thankfulness. For my own family, known and unknown; and for a wider spiritual family, from church members to parishioners where I've served before, to inspirations farther afield. This week I'm remembering Jean Vanier and Rachel Held Evans who have recently passed on, to wide appreciation and ongoing consideration of their witness in the world; even the more secular fond memories of Doris Day and Tim Conway nudge their way into my thoughts. How do we honor and celebrate and hold in remembrance our own community of saints? We can't plant geraniums for them all.

 

Next weekend we have many ways to keep in memory those who have died in the nation's service. The color guards and buglers and parades keep us on task for Memorial Day. Each of us needs, though, a different sort of ceremonial to celebrate our own saints. Sometimes it's pictures on a wall, a screensaver on our computer, a list of names on a piece of paper in our Bibles tucked into Hebrews chapter 11.

 

It is a good time of year, for any of us, in any location, to think back over those individuals who have shaped us and brought us and sometimes carried us to where we are now. And to decorate their memories even if only in our minds, with prayers and appreciation, and maybe even to tell their stories to others for uplift and inspiration.

 

As I just did with my grandmother and her flat of geraniums.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's pretty sure he's not planted a single geranium since his grandmother died. Tell him about the flowers you associate with certain souls at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 5-16-19

Notes from my Knapsack 5-16-19

Jeff Gill

 

Graduations and commemorations

___

 

Denison commencement ushers in a season of graduation events all around us, from colleges to high schools, other programs (I still remember my son's preschool graduation better than many other events from more recently!), let alone the impending end of school.

 

Children will be afoot and a-pedal all around us, or at least I hope they will be, and we drivers and motivators on powered vehicles of any sort need to be a little extra on guard for their return to the weekday, daytime landscape.

 

The baseball games down at Raccoon Valley Park, Wildwood full of young voices, the longer lines for frozen custard downtown, all are part of telling us we're into summer, even before May ends.

 

My own feeling is that once the yellow daffodil flowers brown and fade, and the dogwood blossoms of whatever hue drop from their branches, then spring is over. You might say that summer has not started, but spring has sprung.

 

It's cool for sure on the bricks as the Farmer's Market opens, but there's coffee for that; even the afternoons still aren't too hot, but the sun is high enough in the sky to press warmth into the soil and trigger growth. Our frost free date is just past at mid-May, and the tomatoes may safely go into the ground. Memorial Day can be cool or hot, but rarely too hot, and that weekend also brings the first "Concert on the Green" up behind Bryn Du on May 27.

 

What I hope for in any family is more time outside. The rail-to-trail path along Raccoon Creek, sidewalks in the village, and the walking paths extending beyond; the Denison Bio-reserve trails, up Sugar Loaf, down Lancaster Road to Infirmary Mound Park or out into the township to Lobdell Reserve of Licking County Parks. They're all options, and "no child left inside" is still a call to our community to promote time and experiences in nature.

 

My own favorites times afoot are the hour before and the one after daylight; pre-dawn strolls I don't take often enough, and evenings I too frequently get home after dark, but those are the times I hope for to just get up and get going.

 

Animals are about, smaller than deer but not just the bugs. Possums and, yes, skunks; rabbits and groundhogs dash about. Raccoons I see less often than I might wish, but they're smart enough to avoid the roads more than their marsupial cousins. Foxes and coyotes, squirrels and chipmunks, even field mice and voles if you know where to look.

 

Whatever your age or education, this is the time of year to graduate from indoor classrooms to Nature's classroom, the learning environment without ceilings but plenty of canopy, lacking solid flooring but often good footing if you have the right shoes.

 

Credit is transferable from one ecosystem to another, and there are few pre-requisites other than basic safety and awareness (especially if you're walking or running before the sun rises). And I'd call it good news that you cannot, in truth, graduate from the school of the out-of-doors. There's no commencement scheduled, it's simply a curriculum for life long learning.

 

See you outdoors!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he does not walk as much as he should or would like to. Tell him your favorite stroll at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-11-19

Faith Works 5-11-19

Jeff Gill

 

Addiction and recovery

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Years ago . . . okay, decades ago, I was in college and for a stretch of time, I smoked a pipe.

 

My dad had smoked a pipe, and it was a contrary enough affectation at the time it appealed to my sense of self, so while many of my classmates were drinking I smoked a pipe. Cherrywood, some with a Sherlockian swoop and others more stolid and stodgy, burning shredded tobacco from a quaint shop I still visit in my dreams at times, filled with large glass jars and a variety of vanilla and spicy scents weaving through the dark smoke of burning pipe tobacco.

 

Then I met the woman who would be my wife, and at a certain point she expressed her displeasure with the whole tobacco thing in any form (my roommate at the time did lure me into the cigar humidor in the back of the shop on occasion, his preferred smoke), and over a New Year's holiday with friends I threw my pipe into a lake, and that was it for pipe smoking.

 

I missed it . . . some, but honestly, not all that much. Tobacco didn't have a deep hold on me, even though I'd probably been smoking it semi-regularly for two to three years. Out it went.

 

These reminiscences are told you, of an antediluvian age (it was in a different century, after all), because just a few weeks ago, I was going out of a funeral home, on a very sad and quite sorrowful day, with a fair amount of stress wrapped around the week, and as I left the building I walked through a cluster of people outside, sheltering from the light spring rain, smoking.

 

I caught a good lungful of something I think from a vaping device, but a cloud of it wrapped itself around me for just a moment, and I caught a scent of vanilla and tobacco.

 

And darned if I suddenly wanted to smoke again. Not a robotic, jerky legged unwilling stroll to the nearest tobacconist, but just an impulse from somewhere deeper than deep, inside of me, that cried out "more of that, now!" It wasn't something I couldn't push past, and I got in my car, and drove off, but for the next thirty minutes or more, the thought like a moth at a porch screen by night kept banging back into my consciousness: "I want to smoke." I batted it away, and mindlessly the long-buried impulse kept surging back into view, battering against my thoughts: "go find some pipe tobacco, now."

 

It went away, but to be fair, I haven't been around another smoker for a while, either.

 

As we struggle as a community with addiction and recovery, mostly meth, more frequently opioid painkillers these days, sometimes any one of a number of illegal substances let alone alcohol and other drugs (that's where the acronym AOD comes from), I hear people's frustrations with addicts and their failures of recovery. Of relapse, of falling off of the wagon, of re-using, of failure.

 

Experts vary, but it's a commonplace that it takes an average of seven tries for someone to beat an addiction. My experience with addicts and their families would sort out to something like that. Some stop "cold turkey" and do it in one, others try again and again, but the multiple failures to stop before an ultimate state of security in sobriety: that makes sense to me. Seven or not.

 

What I want to get across to people of faith, friends in churches and beyond, to the entire community, is that addiction is still a mystery, but recovery is a reality. People do stop using substances, and often after repeated attempts that end in a return to the habit they're trying to break. And for anyone who thinks "I don't get it, why do they pursue this destructive path," I offer up my own passing realization.

 

Pipe tobacco is socially acceptable, perfectly legal (if you're over eighteen), and not terribly harmful, though it has its own cancer risks associated with the practice. Plus my wife doesn't like the smell of smoke. But after literally decades of not smoking the stuff, and not thinking in any meaningful way about the practice, the underlying nicotine and the innate appeal of the habit could suddenly grab me on a bad day, with a modest cue, and stay stuck in my mind for longer than I'd have thought.

 

How much more meth, or opiates, or whatever stronger has once had a hold on someone? Don't give up on someone trying to stop just because they go back. Addiction is powerful stuff, still dimly understood. With faith and patience and love, recovery happens. In patient and outpatient, alone or in groups, all around us, every day, right here in Licking County.

 

For them, we pray to the Lord.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's interested in helping anyone find hope who's looking for it. Tell him where you found some hope at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-4-19

Faith Works 5-4-19

Jeff Gill

 

Who is everyone, anyhow?

___

 

 

You may have heard that EVERYONE is going to watch "Avengers: Endgame."

 

But are they? Everyone?

 

I made a reference at church, on a Wednesday night at Bible study, to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in an aside about Doctor Strange, then asked how many had seen a Marvel movie — 1 hand out of 50 in the room went up, so add me in for 2, or 4%. The same for having seen any Harry Potter movie in a theater (or on TV).

 

When I went to look it up, the Harry Potter movies were seen on big screens by 8 to 14% of the country (and that's not factoring for repeat viewings by devoted fans). Around 1 in 10. That means close to 9 of 10 have never seen any of them. Not everyone!

On TV, "everyone" is even smaller. 4% watched "The Sopranos" series finale, 3% the end of "Breaking Bad", and not quite 1% "Mad Men." Going back a bit, 24% of the country watched the conclusion of "Friends," 30% the Seinfeld finale (nearly all of us regretted having watched it, IMHO), 35% the 2010 Super Bowl between the Saints and Colts, 38% the 2015 Super Bowl between the Patriots and the Seahawks.

 

But 40% of the nation watched the conclusion of "The Fugitive" in 1967, and 45% of Americans tuned into the finale of "M*A*S*H" in 1983. I may not have this exactly right, and they claim higher ratings for a few Super Bowls over the "M*A*S*H" goodbye, but I'm just looking at the audience and dividing by the US population for that year.

 

Meanwhile, back to the movies… 

14% of the nation went to see "Iron Man" when it first came out in 2008; 23% watched "Black Panther" last year; a little less than that "Avengers: Infinity War." "Star Wars" captured about a third of the nation in its first few years, the more recent installments closer to 20% even with Mark Hamill back onscreen. At the most optimistic, the everyone who will go see "Endgame" in a theater is probably a third at best, I'd say less than 30% or so given the number who watch it again and again. 

How many is everyone, anyhow?

 

If this makes some of you feel a little less out of the loop, then I'm glad. I have seen most of the above, but I'd not say any or most of them are life essential experiences. And many of you have figured out that by paying attention and using a little everyday reasoning you can figure out enough about what people are talking about if it comes up in conversation.

 

Except for "Game of Thrones," which I've not seen a minute of. Another "everyone" experience, which in this case I've missed out on.

 

You hear these news stories about what everyone is doing, or that we all should be worried about. Coffee, cholesterol, fiber in your diet, bacteria on your doorknobs. You wonder if you're missing out on microgreens or aromatherapy or hot yoga, because "everyone is into them." Everyone?

 

Here's what keeps me writing this column, friends. And in ministry, too, for that matter. You know what everyone will experience?

 

Suffering. 100%. Pain and sorrow. Sorry, 100%. Some more than others, yes, but we all encounter them, rich or poor, young or old. The flavors and shadings change, but the essences: we all experience them, every last one of us.

 

And . . . yes, I'm going there. Death. For ourselves, and unless you die so young you're not reading this anyhow, for others. That is an everyone experience. It is part of life, and living. Death is. 100%.

 

Which is why stories of faith and hope and doubt and questing after a sense of meaning and purpose beyond the immediate moment have such appeal. Including in many of those not-everyone "everyone" media experiences mentioned above. No spoiler alert needed, but many of them involve confronting death, and whether it obliterates meaning, or if there's something that endures.

 

If I had a story to tell that answers that question for us, in our own real, non-CGI augmented lives, I don't think anyone would cover their ears and shout "no spoilers, please!" There's a story to tell, and there are our stories of encountering that Good News as it erupts and breaks into this life, about what's eternal, everlasting, and enduring.

 

One that doesn't end with Easter day.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; yes, he watched "The Fugitive," too. With David Janssen, not Harrison Ford. Tell him your piece of everyone's story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Avengers & Potter

We're told that EVERYONE is going to watch Avengers: Endgame. But are they? Everyone? I made a reference at church, on a Wednesday night at Bible study, to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in an aside about Doctor Strange, then asked how many had seen a Marvel movie — 1 hand out of 50 in the room went up. None had seen a Harry Potter movie. But when I went to look it up, the Harry Potter movies were seen in theaters by 8 to 14% of the country (and that's not factoring for repeat viewings by devoted fans). Around 1 in 10. That means close to 9 of 10 have never seen any of them. Not everyone!
On TV, "everyone" is even smaller. 4% watched Sopranos finale, 3% Breaking Bad's end, not quite 1% Mad Men. 24% of the country watched the conclusion of Friends, 30% the Seinfeld finale, 35% the 2010 Super Bowl between the Saints and Colts, 38% the 2015 Super Bowl between the Patriots and the Seahawks, but 40% of the nation watched the conclusion of The Fugitive in 1967, and 45% of Americans tuned into the finale of MASH in 1983. But back to the movies…
14% of the nation went to see Iron Man when it first came out in 2008; 23% watched Black Panther last year; a little less Avengers: Infinity War. Star Wars captured about a third of the nation in its first few years, the more recent ones closer to 20% even with Mark Hamill. At the most optimistic, the everyone who will go see Endgame in a theater is probably a third at best, I'd say less than 30% or so given the number who watch it again and again.
How many is everyone, anyhow?