Change the world by example, not your words

Molly Felder sings and then leads the crowd in a song of New Harmony. Photo by Dave Pearce

By Dennis Marshall

Bobby Bowden had the wins, the rings, the name and the kind of career most coaches never get close to touching. But at the end, he was not asking whether he had built a legacy. He was asking whether he had served God’s purpose for his life.

I have been carrying that thought into a new season of my own life, and it was with me during my first Fourth of July in New Harmony.

I have also been thinking about the story in Genesis where Jacob wrestled through the night with a figure he later understood as God, and he refused to let go until he received a blessing.

That story means more to me now because I understand what it costs to keep holding on. Jacob walked away with a limp, but he got the blessing. The past couple years took something out of me. I felt beaten down at times. But I refused to let go of my faith, and I believe God has blessed me because of it. I believe New Harmony is part of that blessing.

That is what I carried into my first Independence Day here.

So when Murphy Auditorium filled up, when Reverend Steve Angel prayed about love of country, when the Declaration of Independence was read in full, when Ryan Rokicki talked about freedom, responsibility, neighbors, service and communities, I was not hearing those things as separate pieces of a program. I was hearing them through the question I have been asking myself: what does God want me to do with the life He gave me?

Rokicki said the world is changed by your example, not your opinion. He said freedom is inseparable from responsibility. He said the future of this nation will be decided in communities like this one, not just in Washington. He talked about serving without needing credit. And he shared something a teacher once told him that stuck with him — that it’s a free country to do what you ought to do, not what you want to do.

It started feeling like a direct challenge to the question I’ve been carrying.

Angel opened the event with prayer, asking that people find the kind of love for country our forefathers had, the kind of love he said helped build this country. Jeanne Maudlin, president of Friends of the Working Men’s Institute, brought up Benjamin Franklin’s warning about “a republic, if you can keep it.”

Karen Moser read the Declaration of Independence in full.

That part stayed with me because I had never really listened to the whole Declaration that way. I had heard pieces of it. Most of us have. But hearing all of it read aloud made it feel less like a famous document and more like people making their case in public. They were not just talking about freedom. They were putting their names, futures and lives behind what they believed had to be done.

Then Molly Felder sang about New Harmony with the choir behind her, and I am not even going to act like it did not get to me.

I do not need to make that sound bigger than it was. She is talented, the song fit the morning, and in that moment the gratitude I already felt became harder to ignore. After everything I had been carrying into the day, it felt like one of those moments where God does not give you the whole answer, but He gives you enough to know you are not in the wrong place.

After the program, I rolled out on the golf cart for the parade.

There is no need to make the golf cart parade sound more complicated than it is. It is decorated golf carts, people waving, families riding through town and New Harmony being New Harmony. But after the morning inside Murphy Auditorium, it did not feel separate from the message. It felt like the local version of it.

This is how a town shows its personality. Not only in speeches or songs, but in the things people keep doing because they enjoy them and because they give the place a little more life.

The picnic at Maclure Park felt the same way. People gathered, ate, talked and stayed around for something that somebody had to organize, prepare and clean up after. That matters to me more than it used to. A community does not stay alive because people like the idea of community. It stays alive because people do the work.

That brings me back to Bowden.

After one of his players, Pablo Lopez, was shot and killed, Bowden called a team meeting the next day. Asked later whether he preached to them, he did not apologize.

“Doggone right I did.”

He wanted every player in that room thinking about where he would spend eternity if it had been him instead.

I understand why some people would rather not sit with that question. I also understand why Bowden would not let his players avoid it.

I am not going to avoid it either.

If my faith is real, then my work, my words and the way I live have to answer to something bigger than me.

Maybe the answer for me right now is simpler than I’ve been making it — maybe it starts with using the avenue already in front of me, the reporting, the writing, and the column space I’ve been trusted with, to point people toward Him.

I enjoyed my first Fourth of July in New Harmony. But I left with more than that. I left thinking about the measure of a life, about holding on after life has taken something out of you, and about freedom, responsibility, service and eternity.

And I left with the clear sense that New Harmony is part of the blessing God has given me.

Now the question is what I am going to do with it.