Two weeks ago, at the Birmingham Public LIbrary reading for Lee's friend, Kathryn Tucker Windham, I had the pleasure of meeting Harper Lee and chatting briefly with her. I was pushing a fellow Friend (Quaker) , a wheelchair bound amputee from the front of the stage to backstage and he and I both ended up in the same elevator together.

Ms. Lee's presence is still very prominent, but she is noticiable wizended by age and makes for a most pathetic site. And by that I mean no condension, rather the fact that death will come to all of us in a time. Rage though we will against the light, we will all go gently into that good night.

But I must say that I understand why she is so reclusive. As we left the auditorium, someone came to her from the crowds--someone full of exuberence and desirous of making her view known.

"You are SUCH an inspiration!", she gushed.

Lee raised her eyes at her from her wheelchair just long enough to say, "I'm here to support a friend, I'm not here to be idolized".

The woman went away, much like the rich young man from the Biblical parable, disappointed.

And it can get really obnoxious when we deify ordinary people. They are just as human as we are and I stopped being starstruck many years ago.

May we be our own heroes. May we write our own novels. May we shape the course of our own existence.

Use what Harper Lee did but don't let it stop just with reading the book. Write your own book. Be your own salvation.

As Tolstoy put it, the Kingdom of God is within you. You are your own salvation, and as Plato and Socrates said, the preservation of a republic is only possible when self-sacrifice and diligence to a cause is paramount.