Independence Day on a Tilting Planet

It's a strange year to be celebrating Independence Day, to be thinking about the founding of the country and what it means for the future.  And it's not just citizens of the U.S. doing that.  The world seems to have tilted in the past two years, and I think we're all still in a tilting world, and it's unclear where we'll end up.  More liberty or less?  It's not just the U.S. voting on these ideas.  The Supreme Court has weighed in, and I think that the founders would be aghast at giving a President so much power.  The founders had seen the problems with having a king, and they wanted to avoid that.

I have spent time thinking about humans during past times of hardship:  life in communist Russia/Europe, people trying to survive the U.S. Civil War, all the ways that life unraveled during the long, slow collapse of the Roman empire, among others.

When my brain spirals that direction, I try to remind myself of the times when humans have rallied, worked hard, left the planet a better place than they found it, or at least left their little part of the planet a better place.  I'm thinking of the Civil Rights movement and all the movement for human rights that it birthed.  I'm thinking of those founders of the U.S. who signed their names to a document that was treason, in the eyes of their government.  They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.  Each July 4, I think about my own life, my own beliefs.  To what would I pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor?

Most days I'm just trying to fly under the radar of all the powers and principalities that would keep me in bondage, in fear, in slavery of all sorts.  I'm trying to take care of friends and loved ones and my immediate community.

I can't resist posting this picture of me and my dad, dressed up as colonist and British soldier, standing in front of a painting of British soldiers:

I have always been amazed that the rowdy colonists could pull off this defeat of the greatest empire in the world at the time. I don't think it's only that they were fighting on their home territory that helped them win. Plenty of people fight to defend their homes and don't win.

Each day I try to prepare for whatever the future may require of me.  My apocalyptic brain thinks it might be a grim scenario, but perhaps it will be wonderful.  The other night, my spouse and I spent a delightful hour imagining what we would do if we bought the lottery and convinced Lenoir-Rhyne University to sell the campus of the Columbia seminary to us.

In this time of political elections, let me close this way:  I've always told my students that they should plan what they would do in leadership positions, because they may very well find themselves there some day, and it might be sooner than they think. I tell them about Nelson Mandela, and that the reason that he was prepared to be president of South Africa was that he spent all that time in jail (more years than most of my students have been alive) planning for what he would do if he took over the country. He didn't nurse anger or bitterness. No, he planned, along with his compatriots, who were jailed with them.

Then I give them a copy of an interview (in the fabulous book We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews) with Jello Biafra which has this challenge: "It's time to start thinking, 'What do I do if I suddenly find myself in charge?'" (page 46 of the first edition). Many of my students find this idea to be a wonderful writing prompt, even as they're doubtful that they would ever be allowed to be in charge of a national government.

Maybe today, as so much conversation swirls about the future of the U.S. and who should lead it, maybe today would be a good day to think about that question:  if you found yourself in charge, what would you do?  And how can you do it now, even if you're not in charge?