G is for Greatness

"Later lesser" cannot help but be a put-down. Following a great shows you to be a lesser.

But perhaps there is a compliment there, too, for us later lessers, since at least we recognize greatness well enough to follow it! If you cannot have greatness, to know greatness is not a bad second-place. It shows you have taste, at least. Maybe also cleverness: we later lessers do not get the leaders' limelight. But neither do we have their labor, though we followers do get to enjoy the fruit of it. So maybe successors can succeed after all: succeed by building on the benefits of those they succeed.

I, for example, am no rwb, but I am a student of his. (I learned from him in seminary as well as in graduate school; his fingerprints are on my clerical collar and on my doctor's cap.) I cannot do what he does. But I learn from what he does to do better what I do. His is a tough act to follow: the comparison will not favor me. But just think how much worse I would be if I did not follow him in the sense of learning from him.

tbcm