Don't let anyone choose your heroes for you.
Maybe your heroes will choose you.
Never let anyone choose your heroes for you. In fact, maybe you shouldn’t choose them for yourself, exactly. I believe our true heroes past and present unwittingly choose us; a real hero would never ask to be embraced as one.
We initially take note of a potential hero because of a combination of admiration, gratitude, inspiration, a perceived probable connection to someone we’ve never met, and the inability to get her or him out of consciousness. Across the room or across town, across the country, across the oceans, across time, we find that replays of what our could-be hero has said or what she or he has done are often in the forefront of our thoughts, but never further away than in the back of our minds.
I began thinking about this when the First Felon and his sycophants decided to force the late Charlie Kirk as a hero on all U.S. Americans. The adult in me, the democracy lover in me, the fierce independent in me bristled. TACO and his sidedishes were not going to tell me who my heroes will be!
Sadly, there were too many on and off Capitol Hill who were happy, delighted even, to have the election stealer tell them to deify Mr. Kirk and then comply. But Mr. Kirk didn’t captivate me or positively stir me as he lived, and his bequeathals, his composite contributions, certainly aren’t calling to me now that he has left Planet Earth.
My Heroes Present
By “present” I mean living in this realm.
Many of my heroes are family members and friends. My greatest heroes are my children. Fortysomethings now, I have stood in wonder and delight from the moment each was born. I will say why in another context.
Besides them, four heroes top my list; their examples inspire and challenge me to grab hold of life, even when there appears to be nothing left to grab onto, and invest my life into goodness.
One of my great friends beginning when we met during undergrad studies 50ish years ago had an impressive career in higher education administration. A development VP, she raised more money than someone these days trying to come up with sufficient funding to bribe or buy Taco Trump. Her full-time job these days is being lead caregiver for her beloved husband who was overtaken by Alzheimer’s Disease a few years ago. Even with paid helpers around the clock she lovingly and meticulously oversees everything and does what they forget or neglect. Never a complaint. Never a poor-me. She presses on no matter what, yes—through the tears when they come.
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I met a young realtor in another state from where I now live when I initially began retirement-house shopping. Though I ended up moving to a different locale after a lot of showings and a couple of inspections, a friendship evolved. He’s superior in his real estate work and has a built-in, pay-it-forward mentality. It was a while before he let me know that he had experienced a health scare right at the end of high school that led to a lupus diagnosis. Believe me when I tell you he never missed a beat. Not one.
He made some fast track beginning career choices. He assembled an excellent healthcare team, and they along with the support of family members and friends have traveled with him to his enviable orbit today. I’ve known him three years. He’s approaching 30. Challenges for him are steppingstones. (If I sound here like Robert Schuler preaching at the Crystal Cathedral, shoot me! I say that symbolically confident that no ICEholes will read anything I have to say.) And his level of positivity plus determination is unmatched.
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As a pastor in the liberal Protestant tradition, many parishioners have inspired me across the years; some are standouts. This next hero on my present-tense list was a popular professor of hotel and restaurant management at a large, highly regarded state university. While pondering early retirement her twin sister became very ill suddenly, and in a relatively short period of time was on her deathbed. My parishioner traveled back to the Bible Belt where she had grown up to be with her sister during the sister’s last weeks on Planet Earth. Shortly after the sister died I got a call telling me what had happened. This is remarkable. When the end was at hand my now-hero said it suddenly dawned on her that since the two of them had come into this world together her sister should leave this world with the same physical connection so she climbed into the hospice bed and lay beside her until the one with whom she had shared womb space for nine months allowed her essence to move along to the next world.
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In addition to being a pastor I also had the good fortune to be a college and seminary professor. One of my preaching students who had stunning natural communication gifts in the pulpit and a strong preaching base of uplift and hope had as an 18-year-old kid without much family support sold marijuana on the streets of Philadelphia now and then to get by. He was arrested and thrown into jail, and long before Noem-Trump abuses began with shiny Supreme Court signatures on them, he was “lost” in the system. There was no one to try to do much about it. Did I mention that he is African American? For something like three years, it might have been longer, he was in prison for the diabolical offense of selling a few ounces of pot. I can’t imagine how anyone could ever get over that, and we know there are those who have suffered the same ungodliness much much longer. Not discounting their abuses, my student’s plight affected me differently; I knew him. Finally, with freedom restored he could have become an angry relentless scourge on society. Just the opposite occurred. He was one of the most gifted students I ever taught and an inspiration outside the pulpit as well. Talk about spiritual and emotional buoyancy!
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Coming up. Part 2. Heroes who are now in God’s more intimate embrace.