We recently SpokaneFāVS posed this question to its team of writers:
Who are your heroes?
We’ll post our columnists responses throughout the week, and readers, we’ll hope you’ll chime in too!
I love this question because our answers always help us to understand ourselves better. I require seniors in our political science Vocations class to answer it, and of course they always want to know my own perspective.
I have three heroes. My mom grew up in a Midwestern farm community that today values President Trump and conservative biblical interpretation. But somehow my mom became a teacher who stood with Jews and African Americans in early 1960s Nashville. She taught the children of prisoners and brought me with her up into the Smoky Mountains to visit families in need. And, 40 years ago when I was an adolescent unnerved by a local gay couple who held hands publically she instructed me to let people be who they are.
Eleanor Roosevelt is my hero because she was an activist for the marginalized even though it cost her so very much. She was not considered attractive and her husband had a long-term affair that embarrassed her. But she put aside her own unhappiness and focused on her obligations toward those less fortunate. She gave her whole life to standing up for women who had little power and to working for the civil rights of others.
Archbishop Oscar Romero was an El Salvador priest killed because of his advocacy for the poor and his resistance to those in power who abused the rights of others. His life inspired my favorite poem: “A Prophet of a Future Not Our Own (by Ken Untener).” I read this poem to our students when we get frustrated by our inability to make a difference in a broken world. This poem reminds us that though the world is broken, it has been redeemed. And even when we feel frustrated we are to be the hands and feet of our God, working toward justice.
