Three Times a Hero

Three times my most unlikely
boyhood hero Albert Schweitzer
three times a doctor
first of medicine
and then theology
and last of all of music.

I met him first in music. The great tale of
him playing a great organ. Magnificent
cathedral. Being asked if he
was not afraid of playing a wrong note.
God does not hear wrong notes, he said.

Straightway I thought: I like this guy!

Then came his book, the famous one*
The Jews that God intended as the leven,
the saving remnant that would justify
mankind by righteousness, had proved unworthy.
Successively the remnant shrank,
first to a single tribe,
then through the twelve disciples,
to arrive - an act of consciousness was this -
at Christ Himself.

God's only Son became
God's Son in an exclusive way.

It seems a little boring now...
just setting it - or reading it - in verse
makes clear how dull, but at the time
some hindrances to faith were kicked to touch.

But most of all he was my hero
for giving up his life in music
for giving up an academic life
to spend the rest of his in Lambaréné
in The Gabon, tending to the lepers there.

Albert Schweitzer's piano at Lambaréné

And the operating theatre there.

* The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Written for Victoria C. Slotto's dVerse Poets Pub prompt Heoes and Heroines