Who Is Your Spiritual Hero

[Leon]

We hear too much about the villains of history, such as Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Pol pot, Nero and Saddam Hussein, to name but a few.

The good guys are often overlooked. The question is, who is your spiritual hero, who has made a mark on humanity in the history of this world?

[gruntal]

This is really awkward, at least for me, because I tend NOT to think of myself as very spiritual and don't trust people whose only claim to fame is that they are. I do admire people who are just business men or craftsmen but manage to do something of significance while managing to conduct themselves with benevolence, grace, and dignity. I can think of Benjamin Franklin (18th century scientist and printer); H Spencer Lewis (founder of the 20th century incarnation of the Rosicrucian Order); Kerry Livgren (late 20th century musician of the brand KANSAS); Gregg Braden ( 21 century geologist and book author). All these people and more did enfluence at least some of us to think and be in a way that transcended what we were before they existed.

Perhaps the greatest enfluence was people who never managed to directly enfluence anyone all that much. They never claimed to be the messhia but after they were gone we sure did miss them and tried to make sense or appreciate what they said or did. Mayby heroes are not all that desirable to begin with - if we could just get away from all the villains and why we created villains in the first place. So the greatest good guy to me was the poor anonymous fool who did the right thing at the right time and place for no reason other then to see it happen and to feel good about it.

[Ishtahota]

There is one man that is like a mentor to me, someone that I look up to, someone that I never knew personally. His name was Vernon Johns and he was a preacher in Montgomery Alabama during the 1960'S. The deep south was the center of racial injustice. There was trouble almost every day. Hangings were almost common place in those days. Vernon Johns tried like hell to get the black people stirred up enough to protest and stand up for their rights. The people at his church were fed up with Vernon and scared of what his beliefs would bring to their community, so the deacons of the church voted him out as preacher. They went out and found a new preacher for their church. They picked MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. the father of the civil rights movement. Vernon Johns was over looked by history, but he was one of the first to hear Spirit's call.
Spirit wants what spirit wants, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

[sparklekaz]

Hi Leon

Reading your question, I sat and thought long and hard about the people who have stood out and made a deep impression on me. After all, there are many such as Ghandi, The Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa. All wonderful human beings who individually have done much to promote love, peace and compassion for our fellow man. People who have tried to make a difference in the world to help others, especially those who are less fortunate. Indeed I admire them all very much.

My spiritual heroine is Helen Keller. Helen Keller was born with her senses of sight and hearing, and started speaking when she was just 6 months old. She started walking at the age of 1. In 1882, however, Keller contracted an illness—called "brain fever" by the family doctor—that produced a high body temperature. The true nature of the illness remains a mystery today, though some experts believe it might have been scarlet fever or meningitis.

Within a few days after the fever broke, Helen's mother noticed that her daughter didn't show any reaction when the dinner bell was rung, or when a hand was waved in front of her face. Keller had lost both her sight and hearing. She was just 18 months old.

At the recommendationn of Alexander Graham Bell, her parents contacted the Boston Institute for the Blind and Anne Sullivan was sent to tutor Helen. The book 'The Story Of My Life' by Helen Keller chronicless their early years together, and of Helen's remarkable psychological and intellectual growth. A remarkable thing for any women of her time, let alone a blind and deaf one, she graduates from Radcliffe college in 1904.

Helen dedicated her life to helping the blind and handicapped, raising funds for the American Foundation for the blind and lobbying for commissions for the blind in thirty states. She was also a women's rights activist and wrote three other books.

If you close your eyes and the world is dark, at least you have your hearing to guide you. Imagine if you closed your eyes and you could not hear. How do you begin to communicate, how do you get a sense of the world around you. My admiration for this women knows no bounds and many of the quotations I love come from her. Here are just a few of my favourite ones. Knowing how handicapped she was, for me it makes them all the more poignant.

"Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content".

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do"

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us".

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart".

Love and light
Kaz