It is a familiar story. Under a hot, dry blazing noon sun, the hero comes. This western hero, we don’t usually know much about why he is the way he is.

But we really hope he won’t disappoint us. There are so many reasons he might.

The shop owners and the townspeople hide in their doorways. Some danger has come. Something that could destroy their plans and their future, and it must be stopped.

They don’t have the courage. They have desperate need for a rescuer to come.

And here he comes on a beautiful horse. Or maybe with a brave word spoken at the right moment. All heads swivel to the one. It will be he who takes care of everything.

All hopes rest on him. No one else can do it. Maybe even he will fail.

This is the start of almost every Western.

These have been an American story that has caught on. There are familiar parts to the story that can change a bit, but this story is very comforting. We know what to expect. We don’t exactly know what will happen but we know what should happen.

There are some rules.

There are laws of the frontier that keep everyone safe.

Much is unsafe on the frontier. But things have to be protected. Life and property have to be protected. Where would we be without those essentials?

On the frontier, it is all stripped down. The street is not busy.

On the audience side of the performance each person has their world they need to keep together.

It will take courage and a big action. Who will take it?

I am not in that town. I have my seat and my bowl of popcorn. But I need the courage too. When the hero makes the choice, walks into the town ready to take a bullet to keep everyone safe—then things are right with the world again.

With my soft seat and popcorn bucket I know for sure I don’t want to take a bullet. I am the townspeople—“Save me!”

But when I contemplate the story, filled with admiration for that hero on his horse—and I find deep in my stomach there is a big action I need to take. There is courage available to me that I hadn’t realized.

I am seeing someone do what I’ve been afraid to do.

A time comes in everyone’s life that courage is needed to take the big action. When it’s my turn to helps to remember the stories of others who have done it. I can imagine myself in those boots as I take the stop forward.

Heroes are required. I must be the hero. But I don’t have to be the only one.

rt station wagon was the first car I owned. Bought from an ad in the Anchorage paper for $900 of my own money. It took me to work, to my apartment and to school. It wasn’t fancy but it was enough.

It burned oil—about a quart a month. I made sure to put a quart in every month and we got along fine.

I was buzzing around between the places I needed to go, full of freedom.

UNTIL

I took a road that wasn’t really a road and bottomed out the radiator. This wild patch of non-road ripped a hole and the water poured out of the radiator.

This was not good. What was I gonna do about this?

I calibrated it as quickly as I could:

If I filled up the radiator RIGHT before I drove anywhere, I had just enough water in the system to cool the engine to get to work. Just barely enough, but enough

For a few months anyway. Until the day that the whole engine seized and it was done.

That was the first car in my adult life, and I’ve learned a few things about cars and life since then.

I didn’t have much when I had that car. I had to shrink down to the head of a pin to make it all work.

I figured out pretty quickly that I don’t’ want to live small like that. I don’t want to limit myself to just barely enough. That’s a bad sign. As a brand new grown-up, I had to learn that barely enough is not enough.

It’s something I’ve had to learn over and over. Nature itself works in excess. Plants make far more seeds than get planted. Fruit trees make so much fruit it can’t all be used.

If I don’t have enough and to spare, that is not really enough. I had to buy a car that could take me further than just barely to where I needed to go.

It had been a year since school ended. They’d let everyone back just for the morning but with masks. One fifteen minute recess

It was her last year of elementary school. Veronica had ridden by the school while it was shut down and saw upgrades and repairs being done on the school.

“It makes me sad,” she told her mom. “I would like to use those new art easels on the playground but I don’t think I’ll be able to go back.”

But here they were after all. Veronica didn’t mind the mask, but it was hard to know what to say to the other kids. They had to line up and have their temperature checked and rub hand sanitizer on with no parents.

This continued for a few weeks. And it got to seem usual, if not necessarily normal.

Then one recess she saw it. The dark spot in the hollow by the fence. It would have been hard for the teacher to see. She walked over to it, trying not to draw attention to herself. It was her discovery, only hers.

She finally got there and saw what it was. A black bird—a dead crow was in the grass. She got up closer—not too close—and saw it was lying there peacefully. But it was dead.

Very dead.

This was something that had to be shared. Veronica waved over to some of the kids on the edge of the playground. They came over.

“It’s a dead crow!” she told them. The other kids walked over. More started to come.

They began to discuss it:

“How did it die?”

“It looks so still”

One kid poked it with his foot.

“Ew!” Veronica said.

Now a kid was bringing a teacher over. Why did someone have to tell?

The discussion continued. “It couldn’t’ have fallen from the sky. There is a tree here. How did it get here?”

The teacher made everyone step back and then a janitor person came over with a bag and a grabby claw on a pole.

Everyone stayed to watch. Once the crow was lifted off the grass its head flopped to the side.

Everyone gasped. Its neck was severed almost completely. The formerly beautiful thing was placed in the bag and taken away.

The mystery had deepened. How had the crow been killed? What would cause its head to be cut like that?

But now recess was over.