Holding Out for a Hero

I am considering the idea of heroes... We are hungry for heroes, but in our need for a rescuer, we think they must be perfect. They can never do anything that causes us to lose faith in them. They can have no flaws. They dare not be complex individuals... they need to adhere to a specific description in our own minds, and if they vary from that, well, we toss them aside.
We paint our villains with the same brush. We don’t like them, so nothing they do can be good or right or correct. I mean, they are wrong, inherently. They could not possibly be complex, with a back story.
We do this with everyone... Our elected officials, our teachers, our ministers, our parents. Anyone who crosses our paths becomes flattened by our judgement. If we saw them as good, and they do something “out of congruity” then we dismiss them as not good enough. If we saw them as bad, and they also do something pleasant that surprises us, we see it as an exception - an accident of fate.
And all this keeps us from seeing deeper into what is going on, and not seeing our own complexity as a blessing. We are not perfect, and never will be, in terms of our behavior. We are human, and we are learning, and we are on a journey.
I just bought a book (yeah, another one) from the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. "In the Hands of the People." It describes Jefferson as follows: “why turn to the slave-owning Thomas Jefferson for counsel on how to live in the diverse world of a global age? The author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom was a patriarchal white supremacist; the third president of the United States and the founder of the University of Virginia had little interest in securing the rights of women and played a critical role in the dispossession of native peoples from their lands. And yet, and yet — so much of our history can be summed up in the phrase 'and yet.' For all his faults, Jefferson repays our attention.”
How much do we miss, on both sides of the aisle, by refusing to acknowledge that not everything a “good” person does is going to be good, and not everything a “bad” person does is going to be bad? We need to let go of absolutes and judgements and fear in order to discover where we are all on the same page and how we can reconcile our differing viewpoints.
Every Superman has his kryptonite. Every one of us is multi-dimensional. We are complex stories and experiences, and we have something to offer one another. Thanks for reading this far. Bless you!

The Writer

When I was 9 years old, I decided I wanted to be a writer... I wanted to write books, stories, ideas. And I do that in journals, and articles for the newsletter at our Center, and letters to friends (yes, I still do that) - and other than a chapter in an anthology, I have no "published books" to my name. 
Author and teacher and friend, Kim Hermanson, entered my life through her book, Getting Messy, and she came here and did a workshop which included the most wonderful exercise of using metaphor as a writing tool; picking the topic and writing about it from the first person. 
Of late, I am seeing that I have been setting things up for this to be the year writing really begins - we shall see. So I wrote about the writer.

I am the writer - I capture the story from life, from mind and heart and the dreams of the ancestors, and I put it where those who need its lesson most will find it. Layered between the actions and experiences is a gentle tug - a nudge - an invitation to follow the lead and explore what it is to learn and apply and live the lesson. I am Writer - I, of myself, hold no meaning, yet I can lay it out for people to discover. 
What I really want to say is there are volumes of words and worlds that yearn to be expressed by me and I have yet to find a way to effectively and regularly (even religiously) let them free to dance in the minds and hearts of others.
A treasure locked in the closet where no one can celebrate it is no treasure at all. The gift only exists in the giving of it.