Notes from my Knapsack 7-3-2025

Getting a little ahead for the July holidays...

Notes from my Knapsack 7-3-2025
Jeff Gill

Democracy and other old habits
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249 years since the Second Continental Congress in a hot, stuffy room in Philadelphia put down on paper their reasons for declaring the colonies to be a group of states, united even, independent from Great Britain and her monarch.

It's reliably reported that George III's descendant, King Charles III (his great-grandmother's great-grandfather was George III), does not hold this against us. Much. Which is kind of him.

It was actually some years later, in 1787 as the Constitution was being finalized, that a lady not allowed inside the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall for those 1776 events), named Elizabeth Willing Powel had a question for Benjamin Franklin: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" She wasn't being sarcastic, she just wasn't sure what the Constitutional Convention had decided upon.

Franklin's response has entered American legend: "A republic, if you can keep it."

That semi-sardonic closer, "if you can keep it," has echoed through a dozen generations or so. Can we keep it? Franklin was saying to Mrs. Powel that the Constitutional Convention had not chosen monarchy as our form of American continuity, but if we want our governance to be done as a democratic republic, we're going to have to keep working at it. Working, in order to keep it.

The historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt perhaps helps Franklin make his point with her aphorism: "In every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them 'children.'"

Children come in a variety of sizes, and even ages in a way. Franklin and Arendt are just reminding us it takes an ongoing teaching effort to maintain an idea, let alone a complex interlocking set of ideas, in common currency.

The American experiment is based on democracy, but of a particular sort. We don't vote on everything, even if the vote of the people, or the "demos" is at the foundation of how we intend our government to operate. We don't have town meetings to decide on war powers or the amount of inside millage. We ask elected representatives to handle the "public things," the "res publica" if you'll forgive a little Latin, on our behalf. In a democratic republic, we vote in people to exercise wisdom and discernment, knowing if they govern too far off the popular will, we can vote again to remove them.

Polling isn't in the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence. I think the Founders would have been baffled by how much time we spend politically thinking about poll results, but they would have understood the basic concept. They knew in their day that maybe 15-20% of the Thirteen Colonies were Loyalists, wanting to maintain historic and legal ties to the British Crown, and maybe 15-20% were avidly for independence.

That meant 60-70% of the new United States were "yeah, okay, whatever" about independence. If it worked out for them, they were for it; if things went pear-shaped, they might change their minds. To govern meant to find a path where a working consensus could hold.

"If you can keep it." The challenge continues in 2025. To teach what democracy is and isn't, why a republic operates the way it does, and to vote (and sometimes impeach, or otherwise let elected officials know where they need to be wary) for the elected officials who will govern wisely and well. I think we can keep it, but the question will remain.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's found democracy in a republic to be a neat trick. Tell him how you see it working at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 6-20-2025

Faith Works 6-20-2025
Jeff Gill

Longest days, shortest nights, time in balance
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"To stand still" is the literal meaning of solstice, with "sol" added to the standing stillness, as the sun's apparent movement on the horizon stops.

Each morning for some time now, the sun has appeared from our perspective to rise further and further north. It arcs higher and higher in the sky, and the days are getting longer in ways you don't need to check your phone to verify.

Daylight is longer (and hotter) while nights are shorter (and often warmer themselves). This has been happening since March and the equinox, or equalness of night and day, the Sun rising due east. Now the light starts far to the northeast.

During the period around a solstice, the rise point is stable. Steady. But you know what that means. No one will thank me for pointing out that in a day or two further on, the Sun's appearances will start sliding south, to the east at the autumnal equinox in September, heading for the other solstice, winter's own, in late December.

Of course that's all far away. Half the year. For now, we have long days well into July and verging into August, but you will start to notice the change in the mornings. The angle of the sunlight on the bedroom floor, where your morning chair sits as dawn breaks . . . and daytime will slowly, steadily reduce.

For now we can hold onto what we have. The longest days of the year this weekend give us lengthy mornings, and evenings that go on as if we were in Alaska or something, the light only grudgingly retiring into night.

Our church calendars are focused on the darker half of the year, with Advent taking us into the darkest stretch of time, and Lent helping open up daylight from early spring towards Easter. Those seasons and celebrations from Christmas to Pentecost allow us to frame and manage the loss of light and warmth through our devotions and disciplines. The rest of the year is labeled "Common" or "Ordinary Time," but I'll dispute it enough to say there's nothing ordinary about the weeks we're privileged to be living through.

It is peculiar that we treat trees fully in leaf as normal, when they spend a majority of their time otherwise. My father taught me to know trees by their bark and shape, as well as leaves "because most of the time they don't have them!" An ordinary day might be spent running through sprinklers and sitting in lawn chairs listening to a concert on the green, but how ordinary is that sort of experience?

We all know that when things get stable and steady, like they are around a solstice, the next thing to come is change. And for most of us, we don't like it. This can deteriorate quickly into always mistrusting security or comfort or any simple pleasure, because the experience of it can become a signal to us it soon will end. That way lies discontent.

My mother, who just celebrated a major birthday, is content. She has lost most of her memory, and yes, that's a sorrow, one we children of hers feel often. What can't be denied, though, is that a woman who has spent many of her ninety years worried about what will happen next, not without reason given her memories of the past, is now happy. Sincerely, seriously happy. In ways we really didn't see coming.

Since she no longer remembers most of what has worried her in the past, she's delighted by almost any enjoyment that comes her way. The party, the cake, her kids and friends of theirs: she delighted in pretty much all of it. Not despite, but because she can't remember much. It's enough to make you think about forgetting some stuff.

We are in the time of solstice. If you recall, that means days will soon get shorter, and that can worry us. Or you could just forget it, and give thanks for the long warm sunny days we are getting right now.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has a list of things he really should just forget about. Tell him how forgetting helps you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.