Our heros

This week on facebook I asked my friends who their heros are. Many are family members who have modeled what real strength is. I met one of my heros not too long after moving in 2000. I don't know his name. It was during a public forum sharing information and resources after a devastating episdode of pedophilia was revealed. (I met my friend Bud when we were both on the panel.) When the question and comment time came, a young man, in his early thirties, stood up and faced the theatre. None of us knew him. He had driven some ways to stand and give the parents, teachers, and community members there a message to share with the teens. He said, "I'm all right now." He had been one of this man's first victims. And after years of healing and with the help of loving family, he was all right. He had survived, and thrived, not by ignoring the pain, but by overcoming it. Life was good. It had been bad. But it didn't stay that way. It was the first time he'd spoken in public and was bravest thing I had ever seen anyone do. It made him even stronger
Many of us know someone who needs to hear that message. You can survive. You can thrive. There are many reasons. This video is the sharing of another brave soul. Please remember to pray with thanks for those who stand up in the face of the awful and witness to what is possible.

Americans love underdogs! Underdogs aren't willing to settle for the reality confronting them. Today in worship we read about one of Jesus' underdog stories, the persistant widow and the reluctant judge. Holy unhappiness!

Hero of the Day

I've been watching for heroes, every day and extra-ordinary (wonder what the difference is, really).  Who's yours today?  Add them to the comments and maybe we'll name enough to have a hero of the day all the way through the sermon series that starts tomorrow.
     The Kennebec Journal, our local newspaper, ran one of those thought-provoking juxstapositions of articles last Monday.  Both articles were rare glimpses of hero making in progress.

Kim Jong Un was the first article's subject.  His dad has named him to be the next leader of North Korea's dynastic government.  In order to actually reach that status, though, he has to distinguish himself as a hero.  A massive publicity campaign is marketing him amid firework spectacles, patriotic music, dancers, and military parades.  "Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported that the parade included three never-before-shown types of missiles and launching devices."  (AP article 10-11-10)  Kim Jong Un even has a new, heroic nickname, "Young General." Every hero needs an evil adversary it seems, and his is the U.S. the "People's Army's enemy."  By rallying the troups, military and popular behind him, North Korea's leader in the making, the newest four star general, begins chapter three of the family legend that is North Korea's governing myth.  Soon we should be hearing divinity stories like those that legitimized his father and grandfather's power.

On the other side of the world, recorded in the KJ article directly below, 33 Chilean miners were arguing about who would be the last to rise to the surface after two months in their underground prison.  It ended up being foreman Luis Arzua. The miners prepared for their big debut on the world stage quite differently than Mr. Kim seems to have.   The 34th member of their captive community helped, "God has never left us down here."  Some came to know God in new ways, others made commitments to hard changes in their lives, all contracted to equally share any profits from their story.

There is authenticity in acting heroically rather than trying to become a hero. It makes me think about how often Christianity turns into a hero making machine rather than a heroically inclined, even underground, community.