But recently I heard a rote part of the flight attendant’s script as if for the first time. No doubt this will sound familiar:

Oxygen and the air pressure are always being monitored. In the event of a decompression, an oxygen mask will automatically appear in front of you. To start the flow of oxygen, pull the mask towards you. Place it firmly over your nose and mouth, secure the elastic band behind your head, and breathe normally. Although the bag does not inflate, oxygen is flowing to the mask. If you are travelling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your own mask first, and then assist the other person. Keep your mask on until a uniformed crew member advises you to remove it.

There’s an interesting principle here that might have a much wider scope. In the event of an emergency, if I am going to be able to help my neighbours, I first need to put on my own oxygen mask. If I’m going to be able to help the child beside me secure her oxygen mask, I need to first secure my own. What might look like an act of self-regard is actually the condition for being able to care for the other.

Like so many others devoted to seeking the common good of our neighbors, at Cardus we spend our time and energy concerned with renewing and strengthening the social architecture that fosters flourishing for all. Indeed, concern for our neighbors is our raison d’être. You might say we want to help others secure their oxygen masks by also making sure that the oxygen system is working well. Sometimes that means we engage in critique of society. Because we dream of a world where everyone breathes the oxygen of shalom, our work for the common good will sometimes require prophetic critique of our society’s failures.

But the flight attendant’s instructions might be worth listening to: if we are going to be able to help others, we need to tend to ourselves. We need to secure our own masks first. What might that mean, if we run with the metaphor?

First and foremost, I think it means that we Christians who are quick to offer help to society—pointing out what should be done, showing them how they should put on their masks—need to first tend to ourselves. Judgment begins with the household of God (1 Peter 4:17), and our “helpful” pronouncements about marriage or justice or charity will ring hollow if the church is characterized by divorce, dissension, and greed. We need to recentre ourselves again and again in the good news of Jesus Christ, and breathe deeply the oxygen of the scriptures. If we think we know what society ought to look like, we should first model it by being that “society” that is the City of God, in which the Son is the light. The people of God should reflect the light that dawns with the coming kingdom.

Second, it also means we need to put on our own masks individually. The work of NGOs, nonprofits, and Christian think tanks knows no bounds; it’s not like we could ever be finished! But this becomes a dangerous temptation to work incessantly as if we can save the world—as if Jesus was hovering over us, Janet-Jackson-like, asking demandingly, “What have you done for me lately?” But we need to secure our own masks first. Sometimes this is as simple as getting some sleep. It means being sure we are nourished by family and friends, recreation and Sabbath. In many ways it comes down to saying, “No!” You can’t say “yes” to everyone else’s request for help with their mask if you haven’t secured your own. Ultimately, that means trusting the One who breathes into us the Spirit of life.

Last week, Lord Conrad Black said to a Cardus audience:

I am a capitalist because it is the only system that’s basically aligned with the human ambition for more.

I mean it is a myth, and we should acknowledge it’s a myth, that people really fundamentally want to share things. I mean they do, up to a point. Of course they do. They want to be generous. They want to take care of their family and their friends, and some people are more interested in that than others. That is an instinct. In general, people want more. That is the motivation, that is the engine for progress.

I too am a capitalist, and Cardus is on record both theoretically and in the nitty-gritty policy world of being in favour of free markets, but I’m not convinced that Lord Black’s quote provides us—at least those of us who try to work out of 2,000 years of Christian social thought—with a sufficient basis for supporting free markets. We need, ahem, more than that I think.

I should first acknowledge the basic grain of truth in Black’s statement: growth—one way of describing “more”—is inherent to economic activity. This doesn’t always imply bigger, it can also imply “better”, but there is a sense in which growth and development seems inherent to many aspects of our lives, and especially to economic life.

But thorns arise if growth or more becomes the end of economic life, or more succinctly, if “more” or “progress” becomes the rational for our support of structures of economic life. “More” is an ethically, religiously, and morally loaded term. The Dutch economist Bob Goudzwaard offers a robust and coherent articulation of how words like “more” and “progress” are laden with deeper meaning, and can reflect better or worse, depending on the rubric out of which those words are used. More can quickly move from being something worthwhile to being a golden calf.

More can be morally repugnant and worthy of protest if it comes out of the mouth of a factory owner in Bangladesh who wants to add more floors so he can give work to more workers so that he can make more shirts which he can sell for more money. More might be a fact of life, perhaps, but it can also be evil.

When used cautiously, though, more can also be the cause of much good. Take it away, Oliver!

It’s possible that I am misreading Lord Black, or that I’ve missed something in his large body of writing which would lend more nuance to his position described above, and I remain willing to be corrected on this. However, as it stands, his position on markets leaves me, and should leave us, wanting more.

“Harper government had to know $90,000 payment to senator crossed all sorts of ethical red lines”—May 20, 2013 Andrew Coyne column.

“NDP at a loss to explain Mulcair’s contradictions, silence about bribe attempt”—May 20, 2013 Edmonton Sun column.

“Alleged Rob Ford video raises ethical dilemma”—May 20, 2013 Global News report.

For those of us who make it our business to counteract the cynicism with which most view contemporary politics, it’s been a tough week. The cumulative effect of major scandal stories involving our leaders is reason for us to step back and ask serious questions regarding our democratic system. Does politics only attract those with dubious ethics? Would the situation really be different if the political opponents of those currently holding office were in power?

It is discouraging to read stories regarding blatant ethical questions involving the President of the United States, Prime Minister of Canada, the Canadian Leader of the Opposition and the Mayor of Canada’s largest city on the same day. Although the natures of these purported scandals are quite different from each other, the bottom line reduces to the same—can we count on our leaders to carry out their office with the basics of integrity and transparency? Whatever the facts are regarding the specific cases, at a minimum it must be said that those involved in each of these cases have been less than forthcoming in explaining themselves. If the events themselves don’t merit the scandal label, the lack of explanation almost certainly does.

Whatever partisan likes or dislikes I have regarding the four leaders presently in question, it stretches credibility to suggest that they all have simply tossed their principles once they achieved their office. So what is it? Why is the compass that guides decision-making seem different when viewed from the perspective of leadership?

Alice Wooley, a legal ethicist at the University of Calgary, suggests that insularity is part of the equation. Speaking of how PMO lawyers may have participated in an arrangement which seems to be an elementary breach of the rules, she writes:

Why? Why didn’t they see it? My own guess is that the insularity of that kind of office can make you blind to even the most obvious of ethical issues and answers. That you only see how things are or seem from the perspective you occupy, and you lose the ability to see how they will seem from a different perspective.

There is something to this. Familiar with many good people who have held public office, I can attest that it is hard work for them to resist the “insider-talk” and attitude which makes them sound more like an apologist for government to their electors than a voice of their electors to government. Some succeed better than others.

Add to that the basic rule of democratic politics—winning is necessary in order to achieve your agenda. The imperative of power results in clouded judgement where the smaller means are justified by the greater ends.

Compared to the greater cause, many things seem trivial and a nuisance, and those who insist on them seem small-minded and petty. Everything becomes hyper-partisan. A confession that, “Yes, I’ve messed up and pledge to do better next time,” along with genuine contrition becomes politically difficult.

There is no system of regulation which can manage to keep government on the ethical high road and few and far between are the leaders that are able to rise above the ethical landmines that tempt them. That does not mean regulation should be avoided—in fact, the present controversies do speak to the value of rules and disclosures. It also speaks to the wisdom of our federalist system, in which power is divided between various institutions and there are checks and balances—institutional processes—designed to hold our leaders accountable. While the current headlines may fray our confidence in our leaders, the fact that there are headlines on matters that our leaders would prefer be kept silent speaks to the important different tasks of society’s institutions.

Back in 1997, the American magazine First Things raised significant controversy with its End of Democracy issue in which judicial activism was highlighted as such subversion to democracy that conscientious citizens might no longer be able to morally support the existing form of government. I’m a long ways from suggesting any alternative to democracy in our present context but the current version of democracy isn’t looking all that attractive right now either.

It was not exactly breaking news that my old colleague Bob Fife broke the news about how Sen. Mike Duffy managed to repay $90,000 in improperly claimed living expenses so quickly.

When I worked with Fife at the Toronto Sun parliamentary bureau in the 1990s, he was already firmly established as the best consistent news breaker on the Hill. He has, of course, since gone on to greater glories first with the National Post and now as CTV’s Ottawa bureau chief.

What made, and makes, Fife one of the three purest news reporters I’ve ever known, never mind worked with, is actually simple. He simply asks questions, usually starting with a bevy of freshly plucked expletives. Indeed, having known Fife for so long, I am willing to bet some portion of $90,000 that this is exactly the question he asked and began doggedly pursuing the moment he first heard that the senator had repaid in full all misallocated funds owing: “Where in the (ahem) world does (ahem) Mike (ahem) Duffy come up with (ahem) $90,000 just like that?”

The pity is that no other reporter—much less overpaid opinion columnist—in the parliamentary precincts appears to have done the same. Or perhaps they did and just weren’t as fast, dogged, and connected as Fife is in tracking down stories.

My sense, though, is that they did not largely because the fundamental craft of asking simple, basic questions seems to have become a lost art in national journalistic circles and, in fact, in journalism generally. The practice was the sine qua non of journalism. I am never sure exactly what has replaced it, but that is an entirely different point to ponder.

In this case, if the spirit of inquiry were as robust as it should be, at least two faults would have been avoided. The first, obviously, is that we would likely never have been led to believe that Sen. Duffy paid the money back himself so quickly. We would have known the truth, which still counts for something, yes? More, we would have been spared the career execution of Nigel Wright, Prime Minister Harper’s chief of staff, who, as most know, lost his job after acknowledging that it was he who helped the good senator pay off his debt.

Put another way, had the first question with regard to Sen. Duffy’s means been properly, promptly, and widely asked, the second question upon discovery of Nigel Wright’s generosity would have been: “Yes, and what exactly is wrong with that?”

For in all the smoke, light and noise that drove the prime minister’s chief of staff from his post, no one has ever said precisely what it was that he did wrong.

There have been references to parliamentary codes of ethics and what gifts it is proper for a senator to receive but surely those apply to the senator in question. Surely it was his obligation to decline the help, however well intended.

No one has suggested in any way that Nigel Wright’s gesture was anything but well intended. It came, or least appears to have come, from his own pocket. There is no hint that any sort of quid pro quo was attached, which makes sense given that Sen. Duffy is now such a persona non grata on Parliament Hill that it would be, ipso facto, ludicrous to expect a return of favours from him anyway. What could he possibly hand over: a desk drawer full of chiseled expense accounts not as yet submitted?

With a couple of simple questions, a man whose moral compass seems to have been tossed overboard would have been called to account much sooner. And a man who sought only to do the right thing would have been spared vilification and job loss.

Journalism matters because questions matter. Just ask my old colleague Bob Fife.

Most of us would also intuitively limit the expression of belief that is clearly deeply racist or hateful.

But would we also limit speech and belief that, while hurtful, also happens to be true?

Perhaps the Supreme Court of Canada has drawn a line in the wrong place. In February’s Whatcott decision, Canada’s highest court found that even speaking the truth in a manner that is ultimately judged to be hateful can run Canadians afoul of provincial human rights codes. More important, it is not even necessary for it to be shown that such “true but hateful” speech caused any demonstrable harm.

Using the Court’s reasoning, to succeed in a human rights complaint for hateful expression, a complainant need not show that that the statement or writing actually exposed a vulnerable group to hatred. He or she need only convince a judge that the expression may “tend to expose” a group to hatred.

What follows is in no way a defense of what William Whatcott did to land himself before the courts. For those interested, the details of the decision can be found at Lexum.

The Courts’ decision itself is as convoluted as the history of the case, and rings alarm bells for those concerned with protecting freedom of speech and belief. It is of concrete concern to people of religious faith, especially, who might try to discern whether (for example) Scriptural proscriptions of particular behaviours might be judged “hate speech” when they are restated in a vernacular or conversational way.

An ordinary pastor, minister, priest, rabbi, or cleric should be able to look at the legislation and determine what constitutes hate speech without the need to become a Supreme Court jurist. This decision falls short of creating a bright-line rule that is readily applied, even by those with legal training.

The Whatcott decision raises three essential questions that must become part of the debate on free speech and freedom of belief limitations.

1) What is the threshold to establish that a publication or speech has caused a harm that necessitates a legal remedy?

Previously a complainant had to demonstrate that the “hate” speech or writing actually exposed the vulnerable group to hatred. However, the courts now have reset the bar to permit censoring of expression that was merely hurtful or offensive.

The court has moved the legal test away from reasonable standards of justice focusing exclusively on the effects of that speech and toward assessing the motive of the speaker in determining culpability. This violates long-held principles of justice that require the state to establish motive as a precondition of a guilty verdict. The connection between intention and liability is conspicuously absent from an approach that justifies censuring expression regardless of the intention of the writer-speaker.

As Kevin Boonstra, a constitutional lawyer, points out: “If there is to be a non-criminal prohibition on hate speech, it should be of such a nature that the targeted group is actually impacted, not just that a statement may ‘tend to expose’ a group to hatred.”

2) Can free speech that may or may not promote hatred be protected by the right to freedom of religious belief?

For religious groups the difference between permissible and impermissible communication of beliefs that “tend to expose a group to hatred” is dangerously ill-defined. Without such clarity, how can people of religious faith know when they must hold their tongues and when they are permitted to follow the principle of speaking the truth in love to communicate the tenets of faith?

And isn’t such confusion and uncertainty precisely what the Charter was intended to avoid?

3) Can verifiably true statements be considered as “hate” speech?

The Court has clearly muddied the waters with its rejection of the defense of truth to a charge of hate speech. It says explicitly that “truthful statements can be presented in a manner that would meet the definition of hate speech, and not all truthful statements must be free from restriction.” The Court has determined it may be necessary to restrict the articulation of truth to ensure that hate is not permitted to permeate social dialogue.

How can that be the limit of speech in a society that still believes itself to be free?

When it comes to any fundamental right, the ideal that we teach is that for me to possess a right I must also give that right away to others, even if I passionately disagree with them. In this sense, a society is only strengthened when we don’t lose sight of the fact that we must tolerate expression that we despise in order to preserve our own right to vehemently disagree with others.

Even in a time as distracted as ours, a clear and present threat to such an age-old principle of democratic freedom must receive more attention—before it’s too late.

In the mid 1950s a German socialist named Victor Gruen, feeling more and more concern for the isolated lifestyle that the car, subdivisions, and miles of strip malls were creating, envisioned a new type of community—or rather a reworking of an old one. It would allow its inhabitants to live independently of the car, to live, study, and work in their neighbourhood, and its crowning jewel would be an indoor air-conditioned shopping mall at the centre, complete with gardens, parks, cafes, and shops—a community centre.

The mall was inspired by the streets of Vienna with their outdoor cafes, open shops, and bustling pedestrian streets. In 1956 Gruen’s dream of this utopian space was realized in Edina, Minnesota with the Southdale Mall. Exterior store fronts of a street were turned inward to a large interior space. It was a perfected downtown—no dirt, no traffic, no rain.

When Southdale first opened, thousands and thousands of people flocked to see it, even Frank Lloyd Wright. He, however, was unenthused. He said, “You tried to bring downtown here. You should have left downtown, downtown.”

The centre, the downtown of Gruen’s perfected community was complete, but rather than building the other necessary pieces of his vision—the homes, schools, and offices—the developer turned the land surrounding the mall into an ocean of parking. As Gruen put it later, the shopping mall was a “bastard development.”

Perhaps both Wright and Gruen caught a glimpse of what this new, isolated shopping mall would do to cities across North America. With the centre of commerce moved up to a clean, air-conditioned building in the suburbs, downtown centres lost their appeal and their business.

But more was lost than business. Among many other things, we lost the public spaces available downtown, the neutral places where democracy actually happens: the cafes where people gathered; the parks where families met; the public square where people could debate, demonstrate, and discuss. These were no longer filled with people. And these are not things that can simply be relocated to the indoor mall.

Public spaces are important for just that reason—they are public. The mall puts on a nice façade of being a public space where you are free to move about as you please, to have a coffee in the centre, and to shop, but it is still a privately-owned space. Public demonstrators will be quietly escorted to the door by the security personnel. It is a controlled space.

However, downtown centres are making a revival. People see the value and importance of having a thriving city core—a central space where commerce and debate can exist together. Downtowns are attracting shoppers, diners, workers, and residents. Forbes recently highlighted “15 U.S. Cities’ Emerging Downtowns,” stating that those who are moving downtown want to live in “tight-knit urban neighborhoods that are close to work and have lots of entertainment and shopping options within an easy walk”. These are the same things that Gruen hoped to include in his utopian community, but the difference now is, the desired structures already exist in downtown cores and won’t be paved over with parking lots anytime soon.

If you were ever in doubt about the heights of lunacy which governments committed to a high-modern conception of secularism  can reach,  I present to you Exhibit A of the latest valiant effort from Le Parti Moustique.

The government’s Minister of Democratic Institutions (yes, you read that right), Bernard Drainville wants to revoke the understanding between orthodox Jews and the city of Montreal which “allows orthodox Jews who do not drive on holidays, and who often live close to their synagogues, to avoid tickets if they are unable to move their cars when a holiday coincides with a day designated for street-sweeping.” Get that? The city does not tag the cars of the religiously observant in the rare chance that street sweeping and an orthodox holiday happen to take place on the same day (how often are streets swept in Montreal, exactly?). Good heavens, a small group of a small group (the Orthodox Jews make up about 14% of the Montréalaise Jewish population and only 1% of the city’s total population), which has been practicing its religion for millennia, and has held this understanding with the municipality of Montreal for nearly three decades, wishes to not get tickets! Anarchy on the streets of Montreal!

Well, that’s what Mr. Drainville thinks. Here’s what he had to say:

We cannot start saying we are going to change the highway code and the parking signs according to different religions. It will never end. We will have parking signs for Jewish holidays, then we will have parking signs for Catholic holidays, and after that parking signs for Muslim holidays. It makes no sense. We cannot manage a society like that.

I had to read that twice too. All I heard the first time was this. I wonder what the PQ would do if a real riot were to take place? Tanks? Wait.

The key words here are “manage society”. Mr. Drainville sees society, like every other apparatchik of his particular ideology, as something to be managed.  And we all know religion is particularly hard to manage, especially since its calendars overlap so often with the calendar which sets the dates on which cigarette butts get swept up into the Madvac LT500.

Luckily, there remains a solid set of Quebeckers who are guided by more wholesome—I want to add more Quebecois—values. A Montreal constitutional lawyer, Julian Grey, notes “We have to have a system of law that allows for discretion and for exercise of ordinary human neighbourliness. There’s nothing wrong with what they did.” The city councilor for Snowdon, Marvin Rotrand, adds “The idea of meeting requests from major ethnic and religious organizations on our territory, when it causes no prejudice to other citizens or to the city, is something that is natural for us and has been for nearly 30 years, without incident.”

The key words here are “ordinary human neighbourliness” and “something natural for us.” God bless Messrs Rotrand and Grey for confirming what anyone who’s visited Quebec knows: that a remnant of people who respect the role of faith in our common life remain. As for Le Parti Moustique? Well, it deserves a fate worthy of all mosquitoes.

Tragedies of this sort are theological and practical challenges for me, as I seek to live out of my faith in the midst of a society that does not share it. Why does God allow evil of this magnitude to take place? Although there are “right” theological answers to that, owning those answers is difficult—and is even more difficult for those far closer emotionally to the situation.

At times like these, we may be well advised to follow the example of Jesus, who when he came to the graveside of Lazarus, observed the mourning that was taking place, “was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled,” and publicly wept alongside the other mourners (John 11:33-35). Away from the graveside, there was a place to explain to Martha the gospel of the resurrection, which in Lazarus’ case would be demonstrated in an immediate and miraculous manner, but at most times of tragedy is represented only in consolation.

The Bosma family is not alone in dealing with tragedy, although theirs is a case that is presently of public profile. Tragedy of this magnitude happens every day somewhere in the world, and it is impossible to become emotionally involved in every case. For me, although I live 3,000 kilometres away from Ancaster, Ontario, the proximity of overlapping social media networks and a shared ethnic and religious community provided a connection to this case. But that too speaks to the importance of community and institutions to which we belong. As a fellow citizen I feel the pain when I become aware of difficult circumstances being faced by any of my neighbours but when I share closer connections, usually through shared sense of belonging to the other institutions of society, I am more affected but also bear a greater responsibility.

2,000 years of Christian social thought can sometimes bear only technical and theoretical fruit, but in weeks like this, we are reminded that this tradition provides us so much more. In the darkest moments of life, there is Christian hope and comfort that can be held on to and shared, even when that faith seems to contradict the evidence immediately before us. It is especially at these times that the various institutions and communities that comprise society serve their most important role. The strong family, church, and neighbourhood communities that the Bosmas are supported by cannot take away the pain, but can support them through their agony. Even as I write, their church is the site of a press conference for Tim’s widow Sharlene, and for information on a trust account for her and her daughter.

Though many of us are far away or distant, we can still pray and weep alongside them. It’s a day to carry out our calling “with heavy hearts.”

At our Cardus Convivium dinner last week in Calgary, where Black was the marquee attraction, he asserted, responding to a question, his innocence in the criminal case brought against him by the U.S. government.

Again responding to a question from Convivium Editor-in-chief Father Raymond J. de Souza, he was steadfast in his conviction that the resulting time he served in an American prison was the outcome of injustice.

Just as stoutly, he insisted, digressing while answering a different question from Father de Souza, that his ill fortune be placed in proper context. He said:

“I don’t want anyone in this room to imagine that I think that there aren’t a great number of people…who haven’t had greater problems of a different kind.

“I do not want anyone to imagine that I’m presenting myself to you as a uniquely beleaguered person. What I went through was certainly no day at the beach, but it does not compare with people with terminal illnesses. We’ve all had them in our families and amongst friends. It’s a terrible crisis, the worst crisis. I want you all to understand that while it was a very difficult time, I don’t represent it as unprecedented or anything like that.”

Though he had earlier insisted that ”even my worst enemies don’t accuse me of carrying modesty to a fault,” it was a moment of connection-through-humility that showed why Black is one of the greatest living Canadian showmen. Perhaps one of the greatest showmen we’ve ever had.

I use the noun as high praise. I mean it in the sense of someone who understands, as a craft master, the way language reaches an ear and so an audience but, more, who has reconciled his fate as a player in his own travelling one-man show, accepted the reality of life as theatre; not theatre as a synonym for pish-posh and facile flim-flam but as means for crossing toward a point that just might contain the truth.

There are those, chiefly on the left, who love to see Black as the Simon Bar Sinister of buffoonish bombast. There are those, trending toward Christian conservatism, who enjoy the frisson of considering him a stiff-necked sinner idling at the gate. We all wear the comfy slippers of our own caricatures.

To whatever miniscule degree Black’s persona corresponds to either of those cartoons, or to a mixture of them both, he rises, in public and in person, gigantically above them. At our Cardus Convivium event in Toronto on May 3 when we hosted Governor Mark Carney, I had the good fortune to be seated beside Black during the luncheon, and sat with wine glass suspended above the table linen as he explained what Hegel really meant with his aphorism that no man is a hero to his own valet. This touched off a kind of brown bag Hegelian Improv in which Black opened wide the gates of memory to cite things other famous people have said that other less famous people have famously misconstrued.

I felt as if I should be raising my glass in a toast, and never once wished to echo Margaret Thatcher’s tart corrective to him: “That will do, Mr. Black; that will do.”

Yet my small moment of witnessing a prodigious mind tumbling forward in the sheer joyful rambunction of being able to speak itself as part of convivial table talk paled in comparison to his feat from the dais at last week’s Calgary event when he essentially covered the sweep of Western history in responding to Father de Souza’s questions. Here is an example, quoted at full length for the same reason we refrain from putting water into wine:

“I think a very important part of what we’ve been talking about is the issue of moral leadership of secular leaders, especially when they conduct themselves in a way that embraces, broadly-speaking, a spiritual role. It is unfortunate that this occurs usually, and for obvious reasons, in the greatest crises of life and death.

“We’ve been speaking of Abraham Lincoln. When he said the line I quoted, which is a line of poetry, about hoping the war would end soon, he added, ‘But if God wills that all the treasured piled up by the bondsmen’s 250 years of unrequited toil should be sunk, and that every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be repaid by the sword, so still it must be said that such a judgment is true and righteous altogether.’

“He was saying that he would see the war through, no matter how many people died, to abolish slavery. In that case, there was a secular leader, the president of a nation, speaking in what amounted to a religious way and enunciating a religious truth, and it was a truth.

“In our own times—there are people in the room who probably remember—the address that President Roosevelt gave on D-Day, began ‘Our sons, pride of our nation, have embarked upon a mighty endeavor of liberation.’  He said: ‘They yearn but for return to the haven of home; some will never return. Accept these, Heavenly Father, Thy most heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.  They will build the peace, invulnerable to the dealings of unworthy men.’

“That was spiritual as well as secular leadership. Now, we don’t need it on that level now because we’re not at war for the lives of our countries and our children, but we need something more than the pretty dubious and cynical and mediocre leadership that the United States have been afflicted by for some time.”

There is, in those four paragraphs, a 50-plus word citation from Lincoln and another of the same length from Roosevelt, set down as the foundation for the larger thought, extempore, simply drawn out of memory on the spot to perfectly serve the purpose while the rest of us rustled in our seats trying to keep up. For the lines cited were actually an addendum to Black’s responses, politely interjected at the end just to clarify and emphasize his earlier answers.

It was wonderful oratory and remarkable showmanship played not by a victim but by someone who genuinely deserves his fellow Canadians’ applause.

Her words have been on my mind since I saw her at breakfast. Seated on the verandah of her retirement home, in between sips of tea and nibbles of toast, she uttered a phrase that I had heard from her many times before: “I just want to be a real person again.”  She talked longingly about her life outside of the retirement home; her eyes lit up as she described the willow trees in the park steps away from her old condo or the days spent bustling around the streets of Toronto. What does it mean to be a “real” person? What is it that provides us with a sense of certitude about our own personhood?

It is the rare being who can be fulfilled by the Descartian notion “I think, therefore I am”.  Throughout time, we have chosen to see our image reflected via our possessions or our achievements. For my friend, her “realness” is inextricably linked to freedom. The freedom to live life on her own schedule, to walk without assistance, to make her own tea and toast. Recently, for me, my freedom arrived on four wheels in the form of my first car.

To come and go as I please affords me the independence to go, to seek, to find, to do. Yet ironically, my going, seeking, finding, and doing comes at the price of a litre of gas.  In order to sustain my newfound independence, my freedom is subject to my paycheque.  When I turn the key in the ignition, I question whether my new possession is truly liberating, or have I become ensnared by a new reality?

The allure of shiny new things fades fast; more lasting is the seductive power of personal achievement to define a person’s reality. The euphoria that comes with gaining the next promotion, gold medal, top score, or accolade can certainly make one credible. Yet this euphoria is only sustained by constant achievement, and that credibility is so fragile that unexpected failure can cause us to question our very purpose in life. So how then do we become “real”?

All bodies age, all minds become foggy, and all hearts will eventually stop beating, but when it is my turn to sit on that verandah, and contemplate my “realness”, all I can hope is that my life will have been lived to prove that my realness, my dignity exists through my participation in the “light and power” of a Spirit far greater than I. Whether I choose to grasp it or not, freedom is always within my reach.