The members of Order of Malta, or at least its American branches, concluded their annual one-week pilgrimage to Lourdes yesterday, and your intrepid Jesuit reporter was among them. As in the past few years, I was as a guest of (and chaplain for) the "Federal Association" of the Order, which makes its home in Washington, D.C., but which draws its membership from even farther afield. Accordingly I shared Masses, Marian Processions and meals with a diverse and accomplished group of men and women from Maryland and Virginia, to be sure, but also from Texas, Georgia, and Florida.

This year is also a "Jubilee Year" in Lourdes, marking the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Bernadette Soubirous, a young girl living in squalor in the small town in Southern France. Signs of the Jubilee were everywhere--mainly in the gargantuan number of people. Yet despite the massive crowds, life in Lourdes was, as always, cheerful, calm and well organized. (Compare that to my first sight of Penn Station in New York yesterday afternoon, where, despite far fewer numbers, people seemed much grumpier, and your appreciation for what happens in Lourdes deepens considerably.)

Lourdes is a marvelous mix of pomp and simplicity. For the former, there are few places outside Rome that can match the pageantry of the Pontifical Masses celebrated in the vast underground concrete church (excuse me, The Basilica of St. Pius X). That worship space, the site of the largest Masses in town, is saved from looking like a 1960s-era parking lot only by the immense banners with pictures of saints from around the world. (I seem to forever find myself seated under one of St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei.) Besides 25,000 pilgrims (yes, you read that number correctly) and hundreds of priests and deacons, the assembled hierarchs included Cardinals Pio Laghi and Roger Mahony, not to mention Archbishops George Niederauer of San Francisco and Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee, and Bishops William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., William Murphy of Rockville Center, N.Y., and Michael Cote of Norwich, Conn.

Other prelates, despite the long list of the episcopal personages on the handy program remained somewhat mysterious to me. Where are John Allen, Rocco Palmo and Dave Gibson when you need them? I could have used one or all three of them after I walked up to a bishop and complimented him on his lovely homily, only to find out later that he hadn't spoken at the Mass at all! (Fortunately, he spoke little English and so gleefully accepted my words of praise.) At Sunday's Mass, Fra Matthew Festing, the Order's new Grand Master, offered the prayer of the Order of Malta, in Latin, and though the good-natured Englishman confessed that his command of the language was no better than that of an "idle schoolboy," it sounded good to me.

Speaking of language proficiency, while my French miraculously returns each year in Lourdes, my Latin did not, for the simple reason that I don't know any. Nonetheless I celebrated (or rather, concelebrated) my very first Latin Mass (the "Novus Ordo") last week in Lourdes, which is a fine place to ring in the old. Another Jesuit, Brian Frain, and I were pulling one of the "malades" into the underground basilica, got stuck in the crowd, and ended up at the tail end of the procession. Ironically, there were a few extra seats in the first row, and I was politely pulled up front into the very first seat. (Yes, the last was truly first.) The priest behind me laughed and muttered, "I hope you know your Latin, because you'll probably be brought up onto the altar."

Which I was. Fortunately, all the official liturigies in Lourdes in Lourdes are astonishingly well organized, and the French m.c. silently handed me a little Mass booklet, so that when Pio Laghi peered at me over the stone altar, I could look like I knew what I was doing.

As in the rest of the Catholic church, in Lourdes the personal makes its home alongside the public, and the powerful rubs up against the powerless (though who is who is always a good question). At the center are those whom Bishop William Curlin, retired bishop of Charlotte, N.C. always calls "our beloved malades." (The term, which means the "sick person" is not pejorative in Lourdes.) On our pilgrimage this year I met dozens of faithful malades, their families and friends, as well as the Knights and Dames of Malta, who were there to help accompany the malades to the "baths," push their carts so that they could get a good spot in the Grotto of the Apparitions for Mass, fetch them a drink of water, make sure that they got their coffee and croissants in the morning, and, most of all, pray with them.

To mark this year's Jubilee, Pope Benedict XVI issued the granting of a "plenary indulgence" for those who, while in Lourdes, visited four sites: first, the Grotto at Massabielle; second, Bernadette's home at the time of the apparitions (called the "Cachot," after the French word for "jail," which is what the place served as before the Soubirous family took up residence); third, the church of her baptism; and fourth, the "hospice" where she made her first Communion. This two-hour-long pilgrimage (along with confession) seemed, while arduous, more than worth the complete remission of punishment for my sins.

It was the object of some humor that the sole street that the town seems to have chosen to repair this year is the one leading to the Cachot, which meant not only that the helpful white line painted along the streets to enable pilgrims to find their way simply stopped, but also that wheelchairs and carts would find it hard to make their way to one of the central spots of worship in the town. "Gee," said a friend, "why didn't they repave the Grotto while they were at it?"

My own plenary pilgrimage was completed on a hot day, and I felt happy when I finally received the last of four stickers to affix to the little blue paper disk that I had been given an official in the Sanctuary. (I imagined presenting my little disk to God when I got to heaven, saying, "Does you accept these here?") The next day at Mass, though, we all received an indulgence, courtesy of the Bishop of Tarbes, Jacques Perrier. Which made many of us wonder what we would do with two plenary indulgences. The answer from a Jesuit friend, Jim Mattaliano: offer one to a deceased person. This I did, for my father.)

The best part of the trip? That's easy: being with the generous Knights and Dames, the volunteers and companions, and especially the malades. Each of the malades comes to Lourdes for different reasons and were at different places with their illnesses. (This year I heard anger for the first time, which struck me as bracingly honest and real). But all were hoping for some sort of healing---physical, emotional or spiritual. With all the good humor and faith of the malades, it's sometimes easy for me to forget the deep emotions that lay just underneath the surface, but conversations can quickly turn serious over breakfast, lunch or dinner, or while you're waiting in line for a bath. Tears come quickly at Lourdes and flow as fast as the Gave River, which flows silently past the Grotto.

Spiritual healings come frequently at Lourdes, but people always ask me about any physical ones. So: any miracles? Yes, though maybe not as dramatic as the 66 authenticated ones. For example: One man in our group had suffered from the injuries that occurred during the first Gulf War, and, as a guest of the Order of Malta, had come to Lourdes seeking healing. His eyesight, never good, had deteriorated since being injured. As he told me while we were waiting in line for the baths, as soon as he landed in Lourdes his eyesight somehow got even worse. Someone suggested he take off his eyeglasses to let his eyes rest. A few minutes later, he told me, he could see perfectly well. "Look," he said, "I can read your nametag from here." And he did. "I haven't been able to see that well for 25 years!"

What do you make of that? Well, as one character says in "The Song of Bernadette," for those without faith no explanation is possible; for those with faith no explanation is necessary.

James Martin, SJ

The State of Israel celebrates its 60th birthday today. All Americans should take a moment today and think about this anniversary and why we too should join the celebration.

Palestine was stuck in the Middle Ages in 1948. The Ottoman Empire had ruled the area for centuries until its collapse in World War I. A British Mandate governed the territory until 1948 by which time Israel had become a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. But, throughout the centuries, pious Jews had prayed at every Passover seder "next year, in Jerusalem." Israel may have vanished from the political maps. It never vanished from Jewish consciousness or, for that matter, from God's Covenant with the Jews.

As Catholics, our relationship with the Jewish people could hardly be more complicated or more shameful. Antisemitism had flourished within and without the Church. Pogroms in Catholic Poland betrayed this hatred. The Dreyfus Affair in France was largely the work of reactionary Catholic monarchists. And, of course, the sad history of the Spanish Inquisition showed before the Holocaust the irrational extent to which hatred of Jews could lead a people and a nation in Catholic Spain.

The Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II changed all of that. The Council denounced the charge of deicide against the Jews and brought about a new appreciation for the Covenant with Israel and the Hebrew Scriptures. John Paul II went to the synagogue in Rome and called the Jewish people "our elder brothers." (That ghetto had been created by his predecessors to "protect" Christians from the contamination of Jews although, in an odd twist, many Jews who fled the Inquisition in Spain came to Rome because Jewish life was less threatened there.) Of all the visual images of John Paul's rock star-like trips, the most poignant surely was of a bent over, aging Pontiff placing his prayer note into a crevice in the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. He also finally ended the diplomatic scandal of the Vatican's previous unwillingness to maintain formal diplomatic relations with the Jewish State.

As Americans, we have a different reason to celebrate Israel. She is our best ally in the world. Part of this is strategic: ever since Harry S. Truman, over the vigorous objections of the State Department, recognized the State of Israel 11 minutes after David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the state's existence in 1948, Israel and America have been in a strategic partnership. In an often chaotic part of the world, we had an ally that was stable and secure.

But, there is a deeper reason than strategic necessity for the alliance. It has to do with shared values. Israel may have been born physically in what was once Palestine but it was born intellectually in the heart of the West. Its founders were European liberals and socialists, people familiar with the Enlightenment and its views on the proper role of government. In 1948, if you wanted to know what pre-war central Europe felt like and sounded like, the best place to go was not the war-ravaged remains of Berlin or Warsaw, but to Tel Aviv.

Part of that cultural inheritance was a respect for the law of civilization. During the war that followed Israel's declaration of Independence, the fledgling Jewish army was in desperate need of guns. The Irgun, a group of Jewish terrorists, filled up a boat, the Altalena, with weapons and ran the blockade outside the harbor in Haifa. Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel faced a dilemma. His army needed those weapons. But accepting them meant doing business with terrorists, albeit Jewish terrorists, who demanded their share of the weaponry. If he took them, he would be complicit in their crimes. If he refused them, Israel might not survive.

Ben-Gurion ordered the Jewish Defense Forces to sink the Altalena. The order was carried out by a young captain, Yitzhak Rabin.

The first premise of public morality in a civilized society is that might does not make right. In 1948, the fledgling Jewish state joined the ranks of civilized nations and she still stands there. It is a reason for all of us to celebrate.

Michael Sean Winters

Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency had received reprieve after reprieve in New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Unable to surmount Sen. Barack Obama's lead in the delegate count, she needed to at least keep the narrative going: "he can't close the deal, she keeps winning races, don't give up the ship."

The voters of North Carolina and Indiana sent a clear signal last night: It is time to give up the ship.

Obama gets a large share of the credit for his big win in North Carolina and the virtual tie in Indiana. He retooled his message in the past couple of weeks, refusing to get drawn into the daily sniping and negativity that characterized the campaign in Pennsylvania. He showed a steady hand when his former pastor's nationally televised meltdown threatened to derail the campaign again. He undertook a series of more intimate campaign events, Iowa-style, that further emphasized the return of the winning campaign-style of January and February: upbeat, change-oriented, hopeful.

Clinton bears more than her share of the blame for giving Obama the chance to take charge of the race again. Her proposal for a gas tax holiday stands out as the dumbest tactic of the 2008 campaign season. First, it took the media lens off Rev. Wright. Rule #1 of political campaigns: If you opponent is wrestling with an issue that registers all negatives for him and has no impact on you whatsoever, let him keep wrestling. Second, by pandering so shamelessly, Clinton permitted Obama to cast himself anew as the change agent, the candidate who understands that poll-driven quick fixes are what got America into the messes we have and only courageous political leadership will get us out of them. Looking ahead to his race with "straight-talking" John McCain, the gas tax debate positions Obama perfectly as the guy who really does tell Americans what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear.

Clinton may not drop out immediately, but the course for the Obama campaign is clear. They should resist any word or gesture that even hints at disrespect or condescension towards Clinton. If the Clintons try to resurrect Michigan and Florida, Obama should let Howard Dean and other party elders handle that issue. He needs to start unifying the party behind his candidacy and reaching out to the two demographics that have been the core of her support: women and blue-collar, white ethnic Catholics.

In the summer of 1932, looking at ways to sway Catholic voters, Franklin Roosevelt was tutored by his campaign manager Ed Flynn on the principles in Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII's seminal encyclical on social justice. Obama would do well to consult the remarks of Pope Benedict XVI as he reaches out to Catholics in the weeks and months ahead. On a variety of issues from immigration to the Iraq War, Obama will find in the pope's words a language that will fit nicely with his own hopeful vision for a more enlightened, less craven politics. Quoting the pope will not be enough to win Catholic support in November. But it is a start.

Michael Sean Winters

I was recently asked on short notice to give a public lecture for the Newman Center at the University of California, Davis on the topic of "The Religion of Young Americans." Being a sociologist, I quickly reread what I take to be the best, state-of the art data on the topic. Let me list the works and then make a quick observation about the scandal of the lethargy and inaction of the Catholic Church in its ministry and outreach to young adults.

Christian Smith and Melinda Denton's Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers ( Oxford Press, 2005) is our best current data set on the topic of young adolescents' (age 13-17) religion. Religious illiteracy is high and young Americans, while they say religion is important to them, have a difficult time articulating what their religion is. Catholic teenagers seem less devout, less likely to belong to a religious teen group than their Protestant peers (surely because fewer Catholic parishes have them and, compared to Protestant congregations, fewer Catholic parishes have a full-time youth minister!). As the authors note, "One finds little evidence that the agents of religious socialization in this country are being highly effective and successful with the majority of their young people."

Jumping ahead to the current population of young adults, ages 21-40, I turned to Robert Wuthnow's study, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty and Thirty Somethings are Shaping the Future of American Religion ( Princeton University Press, 2007). Wuthnow's careful data shows that in the period between 1972-76 (when the baby boomers were 21-40) and now, when the millennial generation is, the biggest net gainer religiously has been in the category "non-religious." Young adults who are unmarried do not go to church very often. More disturbing, there are few religious institutional supports for young people as they make core decisions about marriage, childrearing and careers. Young adulthood is the prime time for religious switching or dropout. As Berkeley sociologist Michael Hout has argued, the main difference between religious families which are declining and those holding their own lies in differential retention rates for their young adults.

A third study I worked over, The Pew Religious Landscape Survey of 2008, retells a melancholy story of massive losses in Catholicism. While 24 percent of those surveyed currently say they are Catholic, 31 percent claim they were born and raised Catholics. Two studies specifically looking at the Catholic sample, William D'Antonio et al., American Catholics Today ( Rowen and Littlefield, 2007) and Dean Hoge et al., Young Adult Catholics: Religion in a Culture of Choice ( University of Notre Dame Press, 2001) did little to assuage my anxieties about the church's effectiveness with young adults.

Hoge ended his book with a strong plea for a "preferential option for young adult Catholics." For such an option to be real and not just empty rhetoric, it needs to be translated into diocesan and parish budgets, ministerial personnel, imaginative programs. Resources and energies should be directed toward helping young adult Catholics feel wanted, welcomed and actively involved. Being welcoming to young adults must mean more than hospitality at the parish level (they are not there, anyway!) but entail a vigorous outreach beyond the parish.. In the Hoge sample, young adult Catholics complained of the absence of programs and activities for single young adults.. Perhaps any given parish may lack resources for imaginative outreach programs, but a consortium of neighboring parishes or a diocese could pay for and sponsor them.

I am deeply disturbed by what seems the sheer complacency I see around me in dioceses on this issue.

John Coleman, S.J.

Cambridge, MA. Several months ago I mentioned that I was teaching a seminar on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. This fundamental yoga text, from nearly 2000 years ago, is brief -- 195 very succinct verses -- but it is the reference point for all the later yoga systems. I promised to report on the results of the seminar (with ten fine students) at its conclusion (this week), and so here (and hereafter) I offer some reflections. Given the great popularity and accessibility of yoga -- I was told recently that 20 million Americans practice some version of it -- it may seem a bit too academic to go back and study the Sutras, but I was convinced by my seminar that this is very much worth the effort, even necessary if we are to know what yoga is all about. Yoga is extremely supple in its ability to take on various rationales -- nondualist, devotional, health-oriented, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. -- and my impression is that even expert teachers of disciplined yoga practice are rather fluid -- sometimes unhelpfully vague -- in their explanations as to what it is all for. The Sutras help pin down a succinct attitude toward the practice and its purpose. Consider these select verses (in my own somewhat loose translation, indebted to published translations which I've consulted along with the Sanskrit text): I.1-5 "Now, instruction regarding yoga. Yoga is the restraint of fluctuations in consciousness. With such restraint, the seer abides in his own-form; otherwise, the mind takes the form of the fluctuations. The fluctuations are fivefold: valid cognition, error, false conceptualization, sleep, and memory. They are afflicted or non-afflicted." I.12, 23 "Through practice and dispassion, the restraint of the fluctuations -- or by dedication to the lord." I.47-49, 51 "When there is clarity in the non-reflective state, there arises calmness with respect to self, and then there is truth-bearing wisdom, which in content differs from wisdom that is taught or learned by inferences; for its object is specific. But when even that is restricted, everything is restricted, and that absorption that is final." However physical yoga may be, it is, in Patanjali's view, primarily about the mind, its disturbances and distractions (fluctuations), and the way in which detachment, practice, and even devotion (dedication) can free the mind from what ails it -- with results unimaginable for those comfortable with the constricted, distorted mind. Only if such matters are clearly understood -- as explained in the first chapter of the Sutras -- will the physical practice, the breathing exercises, the expanded capacities and higher insights do the practitioner any good: unless you change the way you think, nothing you do will help you much. Each of these verses -- and the rest of the 195 -- merits close reading, since (in the Sanskrit at least) no word is superfluous, each makes a point. My seminar was all about this close reading, with about eight of the classical and modern commentaries as our guide. It was also, readers may recall, a comparative course, in the sense that I brought to bear on the Sutras insights from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which we read along with the Sutras. More on this in a later segment in this series of reflections, but I will close this one by observing that in linking the yoga to the Christian tradition, I am by no means a pioneer. Already in the 1950s Fr. Jean-Marie Déchanet, a Benedictine priest working in the Congo, published La Voie du Silence and, in English, Christian Yoga, in which he expounded the salutary practices and, with extreme caution, made the case how and why Christians could benefit from yoga. In the 1960, Fr. Gaspar Koelman, a Jesuit working in India, did a meticulous study of Patanjali, The Patanjala Yoga, that is invaluable even today. From a very different angle, in 1990 Ravi Ravindra, a Hindu scholar, published an insightful interpretation of the Gospel according to John entitled The Yoga of the Christ. And -- lest we forget -- there have been many columns, essays, and letters by Christian leaders cautioning Christians against being enchanted by physical practices that ultimately mean a whole way of life -- possibly or probably incompatible with Christian values. (See for instance, Laurette Wills' comments at http://www.praisemoves.com/ChristianAlternative.htm and, of course, the 1989 letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Some Aspects of Christian Meditation": http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/meditation.htm ) So the fruits of my seminar -- this latest "Jesuit Yoga" -- need to be carefully assessed, for the sake of the general question, How can we benefit from the ancient and wise tradition of yoga, as Christians? My hope is to add at least two more to this series of reflections -- Jesuit Yoga II and III -- to spell out a bit more of what I mean. I also very much welcome comments from readers who (for better or worse) have brought yoga together with Christian (and/or Ignatian) spirituality. Note to the studious reader: The Sutras are available in numerous translations, and those interested would do well to sample several, perhaps beginning with those by G. Feuerstein, C. Chapple and Yogi Ananda Viraj, or Barbara Miller. There are likewise numerous studies of the Sutras, and here I would recommend [for the determined reader] Ian Whicher's The Integrity of the Yoga Darsana; more popular and accessible works are works such as B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on the Yoga Sutras, and Feuerstein's several commentaries.

Readers of this blog will know that it would be inaccurate to describe me as a fan of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yet it is impossible not to admire her tenacity, the sheer gumption with which she has approached her ever-diminishing odds of being selected as the nominee of the Democratic party, her never-say-die spirit.

After her dismal third place finish in Iowa behind both Barack Obama and John Edwards, the press was virtually drooling over the prospect of her imminent collapse. Her "firewall" in New Hampshire appeared to disappear in a matter of hours, a poll showed Obama opening up a ten-point lead in the Granite state, and the fight for the nomination appeared to be ending as quickly as it had in 2004. But, then, a funny thing happened. Hillary got teary-eyed about the prospect and women turned out in droves to vote for her. They seemed to be saying "you can pick Obama, but do not, repeat do not, throw this woman to the curb." Clinton won New Hampshire.

After Obama pulled off 11 straight victories in February, and was seen to be fast closing her lead in the polls in Texas, Clinton again managed to pull out a victory in the Lone Star state, as well as in Ohio, and the nomination again appeared up for grabs. Within days, however, the hard math of the nominating process took hold of the commentariat, and they prematurely announced the collapse of Clinton's quest for the nomination. She pulled off a win in Pennsylvania.

Different people support Hillary for different reasons. Women especially feel a sense of loyalty to her, an identification with her cause, and recognize that while her gifts may have long existed in the shadow of her husband, they were gifts nonetheless and of an extraordinary character. Indeed, her tenacity mimicked nothing so much as the never-say-die spirit of Bill's 1992 campaign. Lesser politicians would have folded after Gennifer Flowers or the Draft letter, but not Bill, and lesser candidates than Hillary would have folded after a third-place finish in Iowa. The core of her supporters - women and working-class, ethnic Catholics without a college degree – know what it is to be counted out and dismissed and they, too, fought for their own future against cultural trends that marginalized their contribution to society. In Hillary, as in Bill, they found a vehicle for powerful emotions.

The political class never understood this about Bill Clinton. They were aghast at his penchant for women not his wife, his desire for fast food, his "Bubba" qualities. But it was precisely those qualities that made middle America warm to him. They liked his intelligence and his wonkishness. But they also saw how his Bubba-ness softened him and humanized him just as that tear-eyed moment in New Hampshire softened and humanized Hillary.

I have given up guessing what will happen on primary days in 2008. And, the truth be told, it really doesn't matter anymore. Hillary really can't catch Obama short of a meltdown on his part, and after weeks of incoming fire over Bittergate and Rev. Wright, it is hard to imagine what else might trip him up. Still, I have discovered a grudging admiration for Hillary that I did not have before. I still think she should have dropped out long ago for the good of the party. I still could never, ever bring myself to vote for her. But, I cannot help but acknowledging that she is a fighter and Americans like a fighter, and she has earned the right to stay in this race until all the primaries are finished.

Michael Sean Winters

Was that Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" yesterday? Instead of the usual offering of gotcha questions and decades-old quotes, all designed to put the interviewer's prey into a meltdown, Russert asked thoughtful, persistent questions of Sen. Barack Obama and even gave him sufficient time to answer.

It is a shame that most Americans were not watching because some of Obama's answers got at the heart of the choices facing the electorate. On the gas tax holiday, he cast the narrow issue of the efficacy of the proposal into the larger and more important issue of how politics has been practiced in Washington for the past several decades. In the event, Obama was right that it matters more to politicians to score electoral advantage than it does to actually solve one of the nation's problems. It is anyone's guess whether the persuasive phenom would be able to change the ways of Washington if elected. It is beyond guesswork that the person who most effectively runs against Washington, who casts him- or herself as the anti-politician, is the person most likely to win the next election.

Obama's finest moment came in response to Russert's questions about Iraq and Iran. Whatever you think about Obama, there is no denying the sharp learning curve of his political skills. One year ago, his answers to foreign policy questions were halting and often disjointed. Yesterday, he was fluent and fluid in his replies. More than style points, he diagnosed the original and ongoing strategic problem of the Iraq War – there was no way it was not going to strengthen Iran. And, in contrast to the open-ended commitment that Sen. McCain has proposed, Obama suggested that if the Iraqis could not learn to put their house in order in seven years, why should we think they would be able to heal their religious and ethnic divisions in fourteen or twenty-eight or fifty-six years? He did not go all the way and endorse Sen. Joe Biden's proposal to divide Iraq into three distinct groups, but it is difficult to see how he could make a withdrawal work without such a separation of warring populations.

There is something histrionic about some of Obama's more sweeping claims, his ambition to enlist average Americans and their voices in a campaign that will achieve large goals like universal health insurance, a goal that has eluded every Democratic president since Harry S. Truman. There is a great deal of self-confidence in his belief that he can change the political culture within the beltway, maybe a little hubris even. And, Lord knows, all Americans are well advised to be suspicious of such claims when we remember that George W. Bush promised he would be "a uniter, not a divider."

Still, there is still something authentic and real in this man's smile, and he clearly believes in the largeness of his promises in part because they are large. One of the ways to avoid being tagged as histrionic is by being genuinely historic. It is hard to believe Obama can deliver on the hopes he has raised and Americans have fallen in love with politicians before only to be disappointed. But, it is difficult to foretell what effect the election of the first black president would have on the nation's psyche, let alone that of the rest of the world. It was not so much Barack's performance on "Meet the Press" that suggested how profound those effects could be, it was Russert's. He was thoughtful in ways he is not always thoughtful, he listened in ways he does not usually listen. Whatever else he has done in this campaign, Barack Obama has elevated the political discourse in America, even for Tim Russert. Maybe we should dare ourselves to hope again.

Michael Sean Winters

I have just returned from seeing the rock group Rush perform a more than three-hour concert in Concord, California, thus marking at least the dozenth time (maybe closer to 15th or 20th?) that I've seen them live since my first Rush show around 1986.

After spending the evening with so many for whom rock lyrics are a kind of gospel--sung, shouted, dramatized, memorized, existentially rehearsed--and whose "adherents" are primarily drawn from the generations born from the early 1960s to late 1970s, I could not help but wonder about making a theological sense of the night.

The surrender to theatrical lighting; to musical and musicianly processions; to formalized gestures of exuberance, defiance, or witness; to communal recitations of philosophical fragments (as rock lyrics); in other words, the joy and freedom in and through a constellation of askeses, made me wonder whether my Catholicism made me more susceptible to rock, or my rock and roll to Catholicism.

I was also struck by the fresh spectacle of rock stars aging before our eyes, and their potential spiritual placements in lives of fans. The three members of Rush are now in their 50s, and as I watched guitarist Alex Lifeson enter an ecstatic guitar solo rendered as trancelike, blissful, mournful, and painful, I thought that those of us who have followed this band for decades, a band now approaching its 35th year of existence, need these musicians to inhabit our time in a particular way: to inhabit this span of time with and for the fans, bridging the 70s, 80s, 90s, and now, by both how faithful they are to their music, and at the same time how they play it now with the faces and hands and bodies of men more like 'us'. These aging rock stars school fans in inhabiting the passing years through profound 'spiritual' exercises for so many who live and move and have their being in 'secular' cultures.

Tom Beaudoin Palo Alto, California