I Guess I Was Right

I was surfing around my old files earlier today and came across some of the old posts here on Wanderings. Back in October, 2005, right as the White Sox were breaking their curse, I reflected on heroes. I said at that point that we need to have "real" heroes, not the easy way we throw around the term. In that post I referenced the "hero" of the game the day before who hit a home run in the 14th inning to win it. I said that in 50 years no one would remember him.

I was a little far off. It's only four years later and I didn't remember him. Hey, I hardly remembered the game.

Rosa Parks, who started the Montgomery Bus Boycott by refusing to move to the back of the bus, had just died. She was- and remains- a hero.

Here's what I wrote then:

A Little About Heroes
I said the other day that Rosa Parks was one of my "heroes." As I thought more about that yesterday I realized how easily we can use that term- and how few people really deserve it. Geoff Blum was the "hero" of yesterday's World Series game with a home run in the 14th inning. But in October, 2055, will anyone remember without looking it up in a record book?

Yet when Rosa Parks died just shy of 50 years since she didn't give up her seat, the headlines didn't need to send you to some obscure record book to find out what she might have done in 1955. Nor did anyone wonder who that Baptist preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. was.

For me that's one possible angle on being a hero. There's a lasting impact. Another is that the world has changed in some way as a result. It can be in BIG ways like Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela. It can also be the unsung heroes of 9/11 who were willing to give up their own lives for the sake of others.

Or it can be the everyday people who change our individual worlds. It can be the family who invited me to church over 40 years ago that led me into the Christian faith and ministry. My world was never the same, thank God.

All this brings me to realize that I need to be cautious about how I use a word like hero. I don't want it to lose its power and importance. I want to be able to say what I say and have it mean something.