The Spiritual Meaning of House Shopping

Dwellings are spiritual things. Space is sacred, because we inhabit it on a daily basis and so it shapes our daily lives. As Adam and I start to look at houses here in Bolingbrook, we're thinking about these things.

We've actually played around with the idea of buying "beneath our means." In part, this is because we're not sure what Adam will be doing to make a living next year. But what would it mean to look at -- or choose? -- a house that was smaller and less polished than what the market tells us we can afford?

Oh, but it's hard not to go out and think only in terms of the lofty ceiling of our price range -- ooh, fancy pants kitchen! three bathrooms! brand new construction! Two car garage! And the higher you buy, supposedly, the larger return on your investment.

But isn't that what got so many people in trouble recently? Buying above their means? A woman at church told me that she and her husband purposely bought a house they could support on one income, just in case.

And perhaps there are spiritual reasons to consider a house smaller or "less perfect" than what the bank says you can afford.

Adam often says: "I don't want more space so that we'll go out and buy more stuff to fill it up."

If we had less space, we might have more cash to spend on furnishing it with furniture we REALLY LIKE (instead of all IKEA, all the time) and actually moving my childhood piano out here from my parents' house. Or we could make the house ultra energy efficient (Adam's parents have geothermal heating). Or we could travel more (the bishop says he wants to organize a trip to the Holy Land in a year or two). Or maybe we would simply pay more attention to what home means to us, since every square foot would count. Or maybe pay less attention, since there would be LESS roof, less plumbing, less wiring, fewer windows, etc. to think about. Not to mention less space to heat.

I'm not sure where this journey will take us, but it is making me re-examine what's important to me. I'm sure I'll learn a lot about myself in the process.

(But gosh, it's embarassing how SILLY LITTLE things catch my attention: "ooh, a birdbath!" "ooh, cool light fixture!" "ooh, a cherry red bedspread!" Things that have NOTHING to do with the overall quality or value of the house.)

lentil soup report

I'm sure you're all waiting with baited breath:
Adam thought it was alright, but doesn't really care for the texture of lentils.

News at 11.

Coffee, cold, and lentil soup

Some friends came to visit last week, bringing some very strong coffee beans with them. Like I mean, beyond anything you could buy at Starbucks if you asked for it. Boy was that coffee good (Adam didn't like it much). But this is the second day I've had to fight a headache in the morning. No more of that! I'm off coffee entirely until maybe next week.

Cold cold cold is settling in. We watched the sun set through a sky hazy with blowing snow. Now it's dark, and the main road, which I can see from the window, is almost empty. This is unheard of during rush hour! We're all hiding inside to be safe and warm.

When I've lived a life that had more walking in it, winter was less of a burden. Being out in the cold just means you get used to it -- and you get more sun and exercise, too. Alas, this is not much of a possibility in the 'burbs. You can't even walk in the forest preserve without snowshoes (And I gave mine away a couple years ago. Dumb). I do have a dusty pair of backwoods xcountry skis in the closet...

I'm going to make lentil soup. Adam says this will be interesting, because he's never tried a lentil soup he liked, and yet he's never had a soup I've made that he didn't like. Stay posted for results.

A New Year

I've been at the Church of St. Benedict for a year and a month.
I've been married for four months and a day.
I've been living in this apartment for almost five months.
I've been living in Bolingbrook for almost 14 months.

2008 was a year of many changes for me. Most of my energy this year has gone into just weathering all those changes. It's been wonderful and exhausting. I'm ready for a year of doing things for the second time (although not the getting married part!), and putting down some roots. We'll probably buy a house and get a dog. And I like the advice of the Dalai Lama on living well: eat less, sleep more.

But perhaps I should pay more attention to the intangible things I want to do this year. I'm going to pray on that a little. I think prayer actually is something I need to deepen in my life. Maybe bible study, too. It would be a solid foundation for my ministry work each day, but I also find spiritual routines difficult because I have a terrible weakness for distractions! My aunt sometimes says she things everyone in our family had mild ADD. Sometimes I think most Americans have mild ADD these days. Perhaps with the exception of the Amish?

I've thought for many years about becoming an oblate -- an associate of a Benedictine monastery. Yesterday, I got a letter from a monastery I've been connected to for years, Holy Wisdom in Madison, WI, inviting me to consider their oblate program again. It's a big commitment, but I wonder if it would be a good discipline for me. Not a decision to take lightly.

And if we get a house in 2009, I will have a garden. This is both a concrete and a deeply spiritual joy for me. To have a relationship with a piece of dirt, to grow some of our own food, to plant flowers, to see worms and bugs... wow. That will be what I remember when I get flustered with house showings and layouts and numbers of bathrooms. In some way, having that sunny backyard will overshadow anything about the inside of the house. Stay tuned....

My bagger at Jewel saw all the vegetables I was buying and told me he's never eaten celery. Wow.

"I mean, I've heard about the whole peanut butter thing, but I just never tried it."

I think I don't realize how sheltered I am from the world out there.

Christmas reflux

When I was little, in the week after Christmas, my dad and I would exclaim over the Christmas trees that had already been abandoned in our alleyway, waiting for the garbage trucks. Now, my parents weren't like the couple in the beautiful brownstone two houses down who left their (gorgeous) tree up in their big bay window until early February, but the Haverkamp tree was up into the second week of January, usually.

Adam and I put our tree up in early December. I loved it. I put little rainbow lights on it, a few gold balls, and the half dozen ornaments we have so far. But today it's December 27, and I'm sick of the tree. The needles on the floor. That it blocks the window. That there are still wrapped presents under it for folks we haven't see yet. But Adam has convinced me to leave the tree up until we get back from Iowa on Tuesday.

I have become the people my dad and I scorned.

Maybe it's because this is my second Christmas as a parish priest? Christmas is a little more intense when you're responsible for producing a liturgical experience to mark its significance. But even if I never went to church, the secular world produces an intense Christmas cloud of color, music, and stuff stuff stuff.

I'm also tired of the colors red and green. So, I really appreciate the liturgical colors for Christmas: white and gold is clean and simple, but rich without giving me aesthetic indigestion.

I'm ready for some emptiness. White. Clean surfaces. Foods without copious amounts of butter.

After church tomorrow we're driving to Iowa to have a few days of Christmas with Adam's family. There will probably be red-and-green, decorations, a tree, ham and/or turkey, foods containing butter, and wrapped gifts in the neighborhood. It will be a great time, but my hunger for emptiness may need to wait a little longer.

Well, I may as well go eat another raspberry Frango.

God makes us and remakes us...

We did not make ourselves,
it was the Lord who made us,
and it is the Lord, too,
who has remade us

From a letter by St. Paulinus of Nola, found at Episcopal Cafe, daily reading for Dec. 17.

One of my parishioners, a long-time student and teacher of the 12-step movement, is slowly recovering from her cancer treatments. Healing is not easy, as she is teaching me; being remade can be painful. But she told me, quoting a 12-step phrase she used in her social worker days: "Every day is a new beginning."

I am often struck with how powerless I feel as a priest. Ironically, this happens most often on my day off. On Fridays, when I take my sabbath day, I suddenly have time to breathe and sometimes all that time gets me brooding: about what I could do better, or ways I have come up short.

The best way to bring myself back is through prayer -- filling the stillness of my sabbath day with a sense of the presence of God, instead of the busy buzz of my own fretting. Especially in the holiday season, where so much is going on and so much needs to be done, we do well to let go of own own agency in it all and remember to let God move through us. This doesn't mean doing nothing. (Although sometimes praying, to me, feels like doing nothing, which I know is wrong.)

We do have power. How will we use it? How will I keep worry or fretting from driving my ministry, rather than what the Spirit is calling me to?

God has made us and remade us. Jesus is coming into the world to be born. Every day is a new beginning. Thanks be to God.

from the Christmas pageant files

This was posted on the Christian Century website, Theolog. It's from Christian Coon, the pastor of a church in Deerfield. Here's his blog: GenXRev

"Who Wants to Be Mary?"

Our music director asked a group of seven-, eight- and nine-year-old girls this question a couple weeks ago, as children from the church gathered for their first Christmas pageant rehearsal. A handful of would-be Marys eagerly raised their hands, each wanting the chance to stand up front with a (probably uncomfortable) young Joseph and hold the baby-doll Jesus

After a bit of deliberation, the director chose a second-grader named Sophie. Sophie's eyes opened wide behind her glasses, and she whispered in joyful disbelief, "Me?"

Sophie's a bright young girl, the child who always has just the right thing to say during the children's sermon. I delighted in hearing about this scene. But some of the girls were disappointed. Elizabeth, also a second-grader, was told that she could be a lamb. She was silent for a moment as her brow furrowed; then she looked at one of the pageant coordinators. "Well," she asked suspiciously, "what does the lamb do?"

Just the question I would ask. "Lamb 1" is hardly a consolation prize for being Mary.

I was Gabriel three times as a child. No joke.

I finally got to be Mary in a living tableau when I worked at Gould Farm. The Farm stages a nativity in one of the barns every year, or used to. A group of staff and guests (or patients) would dress up and stand in the cold cold barn for a couple hours on Christmas Eve night, and people would drive out to come look, and listen to one of the board members play the recorder, hidden in the hayloft. Bucolic, huh?

It really was, actually.

The year I was Mary, I was also supposed to drive the 15-passenger van full of shepherds, wise men, and Joseph down the hill to the barn. And I was in a hurry -- getting a group of people dressed in costumes takes more time than you think. I hopped into the driver seat, dressed in my long, blue robes. I waited for everyone to hurry up and get their seat belts on, and then I threw that van into reverse and backed RIGHT into the minivan of the recorder-playing board member. WHAM! And rather than ponder these things in my heart, I'm afraid Mary swore, even with the baby Jesus doll lying right next to my seat. It was a story told about me for many months after. My friend Monica still likes to remind me of it, 10 years later.

Luckily, both the Farm and the board member had insurance.

My mother leads prayer

My mother teaches middle school kids at a private Catholic school in the city. She leads her homeroom in prayer every morning. My mother in many ways is a very patient woman. However, she has little patience for some of the "special intentions" her students make during prayer time, many of which, I'm afraid, cause her to roll her eyes at the sheltered lives her students lead.

For instance, once a girl asked to pray "that my grandmother have a nice birthday at the Bulls' game tonight!"

My mother said: "Well, is there any chance that she WON'T have a good time at the Bulls' game tonight?"

The girl thought about this and said, "Well, no."

And my mom replied, "Well then, I'm not sure we should pray for that, then."

Over the years, my mom has also heard many prayers for animals and pets. She created a separate category called "Prayers to St. Francis," to keep prayers for animals in a different category from prayers for people, or say, an end to war, famine, and pestilence, for example. (Not that her kids every pray for those latter things.)

Mostly, my mom keeps her cool about these things and lets them go by. But not always, as you can see from the story above. And this week, she told me, a girl prayed "that my kitty will stop climbing the Christmas tree."

My mother lost it: "I'm afraid in this case, [Sally], St. Francis can do nothing to help you."

[Sally]: "Oh, ok. My mother gets mad."

Mom: "Just tell her to relax."

On the Alternative Anglican Province for North America

You may want to read this first:
Episcopal Split as Conservatives Form New Group

On the Proposed Formation of an Alternative Anglican Province in North America

The Very Rev. Matt Gunter, Dean in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago

As members of the Episcopal Church and of the World Wide Anglican Communion, we are saddened by the creation of a supposed alternative Anglican Province in North America. We regret that some members of the Episcopal Church have decided they are unable to worship God with us or to bear witness with us to the Good News of Jesus Christ. We are diminished by their absence from our midst. We suspect they are diminished as well. We need the encouragement and challenge of one another in our diversity in order to more fully live into our call to be the body of Christ in these times.

Contrary to what some claim, the Prayer Book and the doctrine of the Episcopal Church remain solidly in line with traditional creeds of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. It remains the official Anglican presence in the United States. The Episcopal Church does much good in reaching out in service to a hurting world in the name of Christ’s kingdom. It is a church where the scriptures are read and the sacraments celebrated. While there is considerable disagreement on a range of contentious contemporary issues, we remain a comprehensive church which includes members of Evangelical, Catholic and more Liberal convictions. There are bishops, priests and laity who, while sharing some of the concerns of those who are leaving, are unconvinced that splitting the church solves more problems than it creates.

We are saddened by the cycle of provocation and reaction in the church which all too often mirrors the polarized rhetoric of our society. As sharers in Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, we all need to find better ways to engage one another over serious disagreements that reflect forbearance and charity toward one another if our witness to a broken and divided world is to have any credibility.

In the Episcopal Church:

All are welcome (and welcome back)

All will be encouraged.

All will be challenged.

All will be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Or, then there is this Response:

Top Ten Reasons to Start Your Own Non-Geographical 'Anglican' Province

10. Frequent travel to warmer, more exotic climes: The Southern Cone, Africa, etc.

9. Evangelicals get to triumph the 39 Articles and Anglo-Catholics get to ignore most of the 39 Articles and everyone else doesn’t really care as long as there are no LGBT people around or women leading worship (neither of which is mentioned in the 39 Articles).

8. You get to pray with your own prayer book – or not – and in your own way: standing up with your arms raised; or head bowed and on your knees; or with prayer beads in hand; or, while listening to traditional hymns played on an organ or contemporary songs accompanied by a praise band.

7. Never any confusion or need to consider the ‘real meaning’ of scripture – a male, orthodox priest, bishop or primate will tell you what it means.

6. You know the ‘Way, Truth and life of Jesus’ and no one else does, and you don’t have to share it with anyone unless they agree to sign the Jerusalem Statement.

5. You have sole ownership of the ‘faith first delivered to the saints’.

4. No yucky female bishops or primates thinking they can tell you what to do – female priests in the former Diocese of Pittsburgh, however, are in impaired communion with the former Bishop of Fort Worth (but the male priests, apparently, are not).

3. No LGBT people in the pews or in vestments, unless they are healed and celibate and tithing – and even then . . . . .

2. You can really believe that Jesus loves you best, even if the Archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t.

And, the number one reason to start your own non-geographical Anglican province:
1. The folks over at TEC will always leave the porch light on so you can find your way back home.

by Elizabeth Kaeton

Our Christmas Tree

Adam grew up with artificial trees, only. I grew up with real trees, only. He was gracious enough to let me have a real tree for this first Christmas together! We bought it today, from some Michigan guys who camp out in a church parking lot every December, sleeping and eating in a cold trailer.

It's a bit mis-shapen. Maybe you wouldn't notice that kind of thing. But my dad was very particular about our tree every year: it's shape, fullness, and symmetry... He still wanted the CHEAPEST tree possible, but each tree (in for example, the Home Depot parking lot) was carefully examined for quality.

I saw this tree, and I liked it right away. It's sort of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, though. This isn't its best angle -- it actually looks a little less skinny-on-top and fat-on-the-bottom in person. For some reason, I like that it's uneven and has holes in it. It's seems like a very honest tree.

We haven't decorated it. In this way, I am still like my dad. You let the tree "rest" for a day or two first, so the branches can "settle."

Here we are, in our apartment parking lot, bringing the tree inside.

Adam couldn't get over how weird it was to him to bring a real tree into our house. Or even to carry it. "It feels like I'm holding a bazooka!" he said. And so, he aimed it accordingly...

Sedan Chairs

Not that I'm getting any ideas, but a friend and I were talking about these things, and how unsteady they must have been. Watch Pope John the 23rd wobble about.

This is what church dorks talk about.

And earlier today, someone DID say to me: "Everything is on YouTube." This video makes me think that must be true... commentary in Italian and all.

From the sermon cutting floor

So, I collect all manner of scraps and threads when I'm writing a sermon, but I never can use all of them. And I just can't stand to throw them away! Here are a few from this week, late on a Sabbath Eve:

Tony Campolo, a well-known author and speaker, said once in a sermon: “Frankly, the argument against believing in God or against placing one’s trust in Jesus is every bit as persuasive as the argument for it. So I chose to choose to believe and trust. And that choice has made all the difference.”


Nicholas of Cusa, a dialogue between a Christian and "a Gentile" (or nonbeliever), circa 1444:
—translated by William F. Wertz, Jr..

Gentile: I wish to know, who are you?
Christian: I am a Christian.
Gentile: Whom do you adore?
Christian: God.
G: Who is the God, whom you adore?
C: I do not know.
G: How can you so earnestly adore, what you do not know?
C: Because I do not know, I adore.

In Iowa

Adam and I are in Iowa for Thanksgiving, with his family. We're having a slow, quiet day, waiting for the festivities to rev up.

I decided to talk a walk this afternoon, to loosen up my legs and look around the neighborhood. Adam's parents live on a road of farms and homes on big tracts of land. The local government is building a new sewer line out here, so there are huge mountains of dirt, big earth-moving machines, and lots of trucks around.

As I was walking of of those dump trucks drove by, and the driver waved. A big wave! So I waved back.

And then another truck drove by. And that driver waved, too. So I waved again.

And then began a slow parade of never-ending, jovial, friendly truck drivers. Some waved, but not all -- but something in me felt like I should wave to all of them. That it was my neighborly obligation. And I began to feel a little stressed out.

I finally turned around and came back. The city-girl just couldn't handle it.

Advent Conspiracy

This is pretty cool. You know the usual, "Jesus is the reason for the season" stuff. This takes it a little deeper (and it's a well-designed and edited video, too).

And who doesn't want to join a CONSPIRACY?

Economic crisis and personal morality

An article from slate.com that I thought I'd share.
Don't get depressed, It's not 1929

Here's my favorite quote:
Instead of workers with 5 o'clock shadows asking, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" we have clean-shaven financial-services executives asking congressmen if they can spare $100 billion.

It's true; there are many differences between this economic crisis and that one 80 years ago. And yet I think the commonality that has so many of us looking back to the 1930s is the sense of the unknown -- the failure of institutions that we didn't think could fail. And now gas prices have plummeted. It's just weird. It feels like something more is happening than just a plan ol' little recession. Time will tell.

Regardless, many clergy I know are saying that the crisis has motivated them to focus their churches on the things that are really important in our lives -- family, God's love, service to the needy. I have preached that, too. People are responding to that message; it's hitting home for most of us right now.

But sometimes I romanticize the Great Depression, because there are so many wonderful stories along the lines of: "we didn't have much, but we had each other!" Or stories and statistics I've heard about the genuine joy and happiness of people in third world countries, even though they live with dirt floors and water an hour's walk away. Does poverty make human beings better, more moral, and happier people? Christianity would say no: the potential to sin is always present in us, we are human.

This is also a quote from the slate article:
...wealthy Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, saw the downturn as a force for good ... "People will work harder, live more moral lives."

Eek. Easy for Andrew Mellon to say! He was one of the four richest people in America in his time.

But I sometimes long for a community where people are interconnected and share what they have, where we can find enough in very little. I think of the early Christian communities. (Acts 2):
42They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

But am I being simplistic? How does the coziness and simplicity of small, interdependent (closed?) communities (large interdependent communities, in my opinion = communism, which is beyond the scope of this blog post) compare with the freedom, creativity, and fertility of relative wealthy communities? Education, communication, pluralism, ease of travel...does it makes us better citizens of the whole world, and not just our immediate communities? (To say nothing of our ample food, sturdy shelter, clean accessible water, health care...) Am I saying the community of Acts 2 was provincial and judgmental of the outside world? Well, the Bible can be pretty judgmental of nonbelievers or those who don't conform to the immediate community. (Ananias and Sapphira, the insular Johannine community, Matthew's sheep and goats, routing out the original inhabitants of Canaan...)

I don't know. I'm still sorting it out.

Gratitude and thanksgiving

We studied these verses as our devotional at the bishop's committee meeting last night. (That's what we call our church board, as a mission parish in the Episcopal Church.)

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘Thank you,’ it will be enough.”
- Meister Eckhart (Dominican monk and mystic, 13th century)

(2 translations of 1 Thessalonians):
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
- St. Paul, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, New Revised Standard Version

Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.
- St. Paul, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, The Message (Eugene Peterson)


People has some interesting reflections. One of us said "Thank you" didn't seem like enough -- she talks to God about everything. Other didn't like Peterson's translation of "rejoice" as "be cheerful." It sounded superficial, like "Keep smiling."

The whole idea of giving thanks can start to seem trite around Thanksgiving. It can be a Pollyanna exercise, or a list-making, or something that shuts down our valid feelings of grief, anger, or fear. And yet, it's a pretty powerful spiritual discipline to try to find something to thank God for in all circumstances. As one person said in our meeting, it's a discipline that opens you up to God's presence, instead of closing you up in despair or anger. "Giving thanks in all circumstances," while not always easy, might actually make our lives better.

But the wording: "thanking God no matter what happens" sounds more like a directive or a forcing of gratitude. And spiritual disciplines can never be like self-punishment and be effective. Sorry Eugene -- so often I find your translations to open up God's word, but here I think they close it in.

Daily rituals

Sometimes I wake up early enough that I see a man who lives across the street from us on his balcony. It's always at about 7am. He stands on his little balcony with his coffee cup, looking out at the morning. After a few minutes, he goes back inside. Sometimes Adam and I make coffee in the morning, mostly lately, we don't. Sometimes I wake up at 6:30am, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I pray, sometimes I read the daily office, mostly I don't.

Since moving to Bolingbrook, I haven't quite settled on a morning routine. So many things have changed for me this year (moving, a new job, ordination, getting married, and moving again) that finding something that looks like "normal" or "routine" has been the journey of the year for me. And then the wireless internet in our apartment tempts me away from things like prayer to things like blogging, Facebook, checking email, and reading news sites.

I'm reading Kathleen Norris' new book Acedia & me: A marriage, monks, and a writer's life. I've been meaning to read it for weeks, and finally a blog post by my friend, Tripp, pushed me to actually go and pick up a copy. In the second chapter, Norris talks about the repetition of daily activities as a form of self-respect. Things like brushing your teeth, wiping down the kitchen counter, taking a walk, and taking a shower "enhance the ability to take pleasure in oneself, and in the world." In other words, they can be ways to "pray without ceasing," as Paul tells (1 Thess. 5:17). I like that.

But does Facebook do that, too? I'm not exactly sure.

I think I'll go take a shower.

another quote I like

“Prayer doesn’t change God, it changes me.”

- C.S. Lewis in the movie "Shadowlands" (not sure it's really in any of his books?)

a new president

I find it hard to blog about huge events: Easter, my wedding, and presidential elections, among other things. It's easier for me to post photos than to try and reflect on meaning or "what happened."

But I have no photos to post about election night, which blew me away. Nothing seemed cliche -- red states going blue, McCain's concession speech, Grant Park bursting at the seams, Obama's acceptance speech. I admired McCain's choice to talk about race and American history, and his evident deep emotion and personal responsibility for his campaign. He was solid and collected, and perhaps too hard on himself.

I cried, because I can't believe after centuries of American racism -- the conscious or subconscious belief that black people belong at the financial or emotional bottom of our society -- a black person is our president.

I will be frank and say that I voted for Barack Obama. I think he is a truly gifted leader, a phenomenal orator, and a visionary realist. But I am somewhat apprehensive for his presidency. I'm afraid so much hope could easily be disappointed. I'm afraid for his personal safety, as a black man in the most powerful position in the world. I'm afraid that a Democratic presidency and Congress could make a lot of rash and bully-pulpit decisions.

But I hope that Obama's history of calm and grounded responses in the midst of crisis, his amazing skill for oratory and communication, and his choice to jump right into to choosing his presidential advisors and staff show his commitment... and somehow, a lack of self-centeredness, in my eyes. I haven't seen much back-slapping or triumphalism this week.

It's also sort of amazing to have a president who is from my neighborhood of Hyde Park and the South Side of Chicago, who is part of my generation, and who spent so much time at the university that shaped a big chunk of my life -- the University of Chicago. He's an intellectual! We haven't had an intellectual president since... the early 19th century???

I hope we have just elected a president who cares more about this country than he cares about his own fame or power. That may be naive idealism, but I feel like we have someone who does his homework, who cares about history and the constitution (his specialty at U of C law school), and who doesn't bask in the light of his own power. He and our government will remain in my prayers.