I’m not getting as much time on Melanie’s March, our march from Philadelphia to Washington, DC for health care as I would like. I’m driving back to Philadelphia in the evening so that I can spend late nights and early mornings with a fast computer and internet connection that enables me to edit video, update this website and stay in contact with all the wonderful people who are organizing events down the line for us. I’m getting back to the March mid-day or sometimes later and only getting a few miles in.
But I’m there enough to know how hard the march is physically both because of the mileage and, especially on the first three days, because sidewalks were so often snow covered.
So, last night, as I had dinner with the marchers I kept thinking about how important they are to the health care campaign and how heroic they are for taking this task on. And I wondered about the source of their heroism.
And that wonder grew greater because I don’t think our marchers quite understand the impact they are having. They are worried about the day to day effort to make the march. They are not following the tweets and blogs and thinking about how they are inspiring so many people around the country.
There is a phrase, “the heroism of everyday life,” that kept coming back to me. That phrase doesn’t point to what the marchers are doing. Rather it points to all those good people who do the everyday tasks most of us do—getting up in the morning and attending to our kids and working hard at our jobs—really well. This is the hard stuff most people but not everyone does and that not everyone does with the love and devotion these task really require.
It is not everyday devotion to do what Bill, Amy, Iwonka, Athena, Antoinette, Dave are doing for eight days–and what Angeles, Cliff, Georgeanne, and maybe others will do for part of the March. It is extraordinary.
And yet as I talked with the Marchers last night, they didn’t seem extraordinary. They seem like most of the other people I know. They are all good people. I like them a lot. But I know a lot of good people and I like most people I meet. And most of them are not on the march with us.
They do have personal reasons for marching. I have heard them all speak now a few times and they know better than most people how Americans are failed or put in danger or die because of the lack of quality, affordable health care for all. But I know a lot of people who have similar personal experiences and they are not on the march with us.
I keep looking for signs of divine inspiration in our Marchers. I half expect to see them glowing or with brightened faces or faint halos above them, as in medieval paintings of religious heroes. But, while Iwonka’s face was glowing last night, I think that was mostly wind and sun burn. And no one else was glowing and there were no halos to be seen at alk.
(One of the marchers, on reading the first draft of this said, “I hope I’m not glowing because it will be a pre-existing condition as far as the insurance companies are concerned.)
So I don’t have an explanation of what make a Melanie Marcher. Somehow, for some reason, this group of people decided that they were going to take a stand, and put their bodies on the line for health care reform.
And the more I think about it, the more I’m glad that our marchers are not unusual or extraordinary people. I’m glad they are not glowing.
I do think they are inspired by a power for goodness that works through this world, a power that is a form of love, a power I sometimes think it makes sense to call God.
But I’m more and more convinced that this power is most often effective when found not in the few people who strike us as extraordinary, but in the everyday work of people just like you and me.
And that really inspires me. If our marchers are everyday heroes, then all of us can be everyday heroes. All of us can emulate them and take time out of our lives to do something for our friends and neighbors, for people we do not know, for the three hundred fifty million people whose common life we share in America, for a cause far greater than ourselves. All of us can expand our capacity for love from those closest to us to those who are more distant in time and space.
I hope that what Melanie’s Marchers are doing will, in whatever way, encourage you to share in their divinely inspired work.