I’m having trouble today writing this blessed blurb. The image on my computer monitor is quivering like frightened bunny rabbit. Or maybe it is shaking with rage like a rattlesnake. I don’t know which. Either way it is almost impossible to read what I am writing. I think my monitor is simply about to give up the ghost. Or maybe it has decided to become a maverick. That’s a word the current political season has aroused for us. Senator McCain and Governor Palin are claiming the maverick mantle for their campaign. It sent me to the dictionary to refresh my mind on what a maverick is. Maverick: “A free range animal, especially a calf that has become separated from its mother, traditionally considered the property of the first person who brands it.” (The Free Dictionary, online) Maverick is a term of endearment for many Americans. In the 1970’s the Ford Motor Company first branded an auto a “Maverick” and it became their biggest seller ever.

     Most of us Americans come from maverick stock—separated from our ancestoral mother countries. I was reminded of this while attending my family reunion last week. We celebrated the memory of our family members who first came to America in 1738 from Germany. They were Lutherans looking for liberty in a new land. The first thing they did when they got settled near what is now Virginia Tech University was start a Lutheran church. When the Revolutionary War broke out, they revealed their maverickism by enlisting in the Virginia Militia. The other half of my ancestory came from England and they displayed the same revolutionary inclinations and became revolutionaries. By the time of the Civil War the family had migrated to eastern Tennessee and given up their maverickism. They had become intensely dedicated to the idea of the “United” States of America. They were fiercely devoted to freedom for all people and opposed to the idea of slavery. So,

they joined the Union Army. All except one old cousin, a free range maverick, who became a Confederate, rebel soldier. We don’t know much detail about all of this except that family lore contains the following line about one old granddad: “He was captured, imprisoned, and starved to death by Democrats (meaning Confederates) during the Civil War.”

     In every generation following the Revolutionary War era, our crowd has been overwhelmingly an unmavericky bunch. We have struggled mightily to defend the “unitedness” of these States of America. Still, we treasure that maverick spirit of independence that marked our family at the beginning of our nation. We do this for mostly spiritual reasons. We love the words in Galatians 5:1: “For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage.” (American Standard Version) This comment in its biblical context is, of course, a reference to spiritual bondage. However, we Americans have morphed it into a hybrid religious/secular/political truism. It is good for an election campaign to stimulate us to consider these things. For everything there is a season, reminds the writer of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. Today, he might say, there’s a season for overturning and breaking, a season for rebuilding and renewing.

     I wish this monitor screen of mine would quit trembling so I could see more clearly what I have written. It is important for us to know what we think—especially in an election season--lest we be like the wit who said: “Sometimes I don’t know what I believe until I read it on a bumper sticker.”

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