Brave Knights And Heroic Courage

Thanks for tagging along with me this week on what has become an inquiry into old memories. It has been good for me at least; I hope falling along down the rabbit hole a bit has not been either too boring or too disorienting.

Throughout a week of Free-Falling Hopeless Romantics, an Ogre with a noble heart, and what Iaijutsu has done for my life, one thing has come through for me: the value of character.

Character is simply morals and beliefs lived out.  It is the practice of our beliefs in the real world, whether 10,000 people are present or there is no-one.  Our character may subvert itself - it may hit the wall of romantic reality and find itself in gallant attempts to rescue rabbits, for example - or it may continue to develop as we pursue a goal for years and years, but it is always there.

And it is always visible.

In a world where there is so much sadness and foolishness, unkindness and anger, every one of us that practices character is an example that there is something different - and hopefully better - in the world.  Where media says certain people are certain ways, we can demonstrate that those characterizations are no more than facades thrown up by people who desperately need us to be something other than what we are.  You can argue with many things, but you cannot argue with the evidence of a life lived with character.

As Lewis said,  children need to hear of Brave Knights and Heroic Courage in a world that is known to be cruel.  What they also need is to examples of that lived out daily - not in media shows or idealized situations but in the actual practice of life.  We can be that example.

For all that I have failed at and not accomplished, the world is still in need of Hopeless Romantics (who else is going to write the poetry that fires our hearts) and Courageous Knights (who else will defeat the evil dragons) and Swordsmen developing their character through their art.  And it is the same need of the gardeners and craftspeople  that pour their live into their art, and the writers that call us to something higher than ourselves and the religious that help us see farther than ourselves.

The world badly needs character as a foil to what it has become and is becoming.  

So I am strangely heartened at the end of this excurses.  As we should all be.  We - those trying to hold onto and keep character - have a continued and important role to play.

The windmills, of course, will not tilt themselves.