Becoming Someone’s Hero

In this sheltering season, as we try to stay healthy, we’re all tempted to conserve our energies. To look inward and to make our world small. It’s a strategy that my generation, the Boomers, has lived by, in the process becoming the richest group of people in the history of the world.

But it has come at a price: Where we were raised as free-range children, we put up fences to protect all that made us worry. The unintended consequence of this approach to life is to make our world small and to invite fear to fill it.

So perhaps it is time for a new strategy. I believe that our sons and daughters hold the answer – a more courageous way to live. I believe that as this crisis deepens and begins to change us, they will lead us out into a world where courage is practiced.

It will take years and it will gain traction as we begin to follow Jesus’ pattern, seeing others as more important than ourselves, loving a world in need. I’ve been writing poetry to try and animate this dream. Here is one for you. 

Becoming someone’s hero

The narrowing world

Wants to shrink to the size of your dinner plate, 

To the size of your golf ball,

Till you become a dim shadow 

Of some original delight.

There’s a better way.

What if yours was a new story seeking birth?

What if you were someone’s hero tomorrow?

Just that possibility is enough to stand on.

It’s enough to say no

To all that wants to give way to entropy –

That’s the start we’re looking for.

From that brave platform you can

Seize the day.

You can listen for the thunder of revolution 

Rumbling from distant mountains,

And the muffled cry of a child

You will fight for one day.

The assignment of your adopted grandmother

Is to die alone, trapped by her age. 

You will make sure her tears 

Are not wasted.

Loaning them your courage is your

First step out of exile.

What will you do?

The world waits for you, 

The hero of the story, to arrive.