Still a level 4 lawful good human paladin

My D&D alignment, class, race and level, then and now (stats have changed somewhat; given my lack of common sense, and practice carrying Ellie around, this seems to be about right):

I Am A: Lawful Good Human Paladin (4th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-14
Dexterity-12
Constitution-15
Intelligence-19
Wisdom-11
Charisma-13

Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment when it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Paladins take their adventures seriously, and even a mundane mission is, in the heart of the paladin, a personal test an opportunity to demonstrate bravery, to learn tactics, and to find ways to do good. Divine power protects these warriors of virtue, warding off harm, protecting from disease, healing, and guarding against fear. The paladin can also direct this power to help others, healing wounds or curing diseases, and also use it to destroy evil. Experienced paladins can smite evil foes and turn away undead. A paladin's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast. Many of the paladin's special abilities also benefit from a high Charisma score.

From Easydamus’ D&D Quiz

Interestingly enough, my wife turned out to be a level 3 true neutral elf druid-sorceress. Who’da thunk?

Encapsulated in DC, the modern world

One of GK Chesterton’s best-known quotes goes thus: ‘The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.’ It is among his best-known simply because it is one of the best-evidenced. And nowhere is that evidence prevailing more than in Washington, DC.

The Affordable Health Care Act is a manifestly bad law. It’s an utterly convoluted, technocratic mess whose benefits are not readily visible even to those it purports to cover. It lacks the sort of public insurance option (something like Britain’s NHS) which could have helped most to ensure competitive costs – and the evasion by the Administration that the political capital to pass such an option didn’t exist doesn’t pass the smell test, because the Administration expended exactly zero effort to build it.

But more distressingly, it is little more than a bandage designed to hold together a centralised rentier system, and deepens the collusion between insurance companies, service providers and big pharma in ways which, even though they may cut costs for care in the short-term, will nonetheless fail to control them in the long run. In essence, it is a taxpayer-supported direct subsidy to private insurance companies, who will continue to leverage their status under the law to derive profit. The insurance companies depend upon a base of customers who share costs, and the AHCA essentially assured them a much broader base than they already had. This, in turn, opens up a far broader consumer base for the large pharmaceutical corporations which already do multi-billion dollar business in the United States alone. There is no reason to believe this is a bug rather than a feature.

A law which could break the stranglehold of big pharma and big health insurance over our current health system on the one hand, and ensure protections for local options for direct service provision (a guild system for doctors, perhaps) on the other hand, would have gone a long way in the right direction. This wouldn’t entirely solve the intractable problems of the sort of tremendous medical school debt which drives doctors into the arms of big pharma in the first place, however, or our broken patent system with its insane absolutism regarding intellectual property, which keeps generics from becoming widely available. The American health system is something of a Gordian knot that way, and a comprehensive fix will have to involve a sea-change in the culture such that more focus is placed on preventative care and direct community involvement. And for that to happen, costs have to go down first, which requires a change in the culture towards care… and so on, ad nauseam. But there are good fixes and bad fixes, and the AHCA cannot be said to fall into the first category.

All of the above being said, though…

Shutting down the government over a refusal to fund the bill is simply not the proper response. Not only is it infantile. Not only does it demonstrate to the public a dearth of ideas on the part of the GOP. But it encourages the perception – and therefore influences the reality, in that curiously cable television- and Twitter-influenced postmodern way that ‘seeing is believing’, and therefore ‘being is but being seen’ – that American partisan politics is an existential zero-sum game. What’s more, it is seen to be an existential zero-sum game between institutionalised caricatures of what Americans actually believe and want. The only reason the GOP thought that they could get away with this sort of thing was because they were given the impression that it would win them votes.

And while good people – as many as eight hundred thousand of them, including members of the military – who do honest and productive work in the public sector (yes; such a thing does exist, as do the people who do it) are being furloughed, the same people responsible for this entire mess are still drawing their six-figure paychecks.

A slightly less well-known quote by GK Chesterton – but one which, if this sort of nonsense continues, is likely to become much better-known in the near future – is: ‘It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.’

EDIT: Although, it appears I may have spoken too soon, and some clemency may be in order; the House has voted to give furloughed federal employees back pay. Still doesn’t excuse what brought about the need for it, though.

Free Wu Guijun

If you would, gentle readers, please consider signing the petition here. Fundamental labour rights in mainland China often go unrepresented by ‘reformers’ and ‘public intellectuals’ (whose interests are visibly more oriented toward the ruling class), let alone by the official trade union federation here, but they are incredibly important nonetheless, and the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions is doing an invaluable service by mobilising for Mr Wu.

To:
Mr. Xu Qin, Mayor of Shenzhen City,
Mrs. Luoli, President of the municipal federation in Shenzhen

We are writing to ask the Mayor of Shenzhen City and the municipal federation in Shenzhen to step in and give assistance in cases of Wu Guijun from Diweixin Product Factory in which worker are criminalized for the industrial actions they took to claim their labour rights. Wu was arrested by unknown reason more than 130 days! Illegal detention of WU Guijun for more than a hundred days

On 23 May Wu Guijun and nearly 200 workers from Diweixin Product Factory located in Shenzhen were arrested by the anti-riot police on the way to petition the Shiyan district government. They were asking the government to intervene in the one-month long severance negotiation with their employer which was closing down business for relocation from its Shenzhen plant to Huizhou city. Few days after the arrest, the factory management terminated the negotiation with the workers and sacked all the representatives including Wu Guijun. Since his detention on 23 May, Wu was denied free access to his lawyer and family. He is likely to be criminalized and charged by the public security for “assembling a crowd to disturb public order”.

Free Wu Guijun!

We regret to find that in this case, Wu and other worker leaders were alone in their struggle without receiving support from the trade union. We are concerned that industrial actions taken by workers for claiming their legal rights were put under criminal detention and charged. Although strike is not protected in the domestic laws, freedom of assembly is protected in the PRC Constitution.

Our demands:

1. Defend the Worker’s Right to Strike!
2. Protect the Worker leader in the Strike!
3. Urge to give pressure to the government for the release of Mr. Wu and provide all the needed assistance to Mr. Wu and his family.

致：深圳市市長許勤; 深圳市總工會主席羅莉

深 圳的一千多萬外來工為深圳創造了三十多年的繁榮，但待遇和地位卻不相稱地一直處於弱勢，部份黑心老闆竟公然漠視法規，在政府主導的珠江三角洲地區改革發展 規劃綱要(2008-2020年)中提出的產業轉移和升值的大潮中依然拖欠工資、惡意侵吞工人應得經濟補償金。此時此刻，在中國政府決心邁向國際社會之 際，我們相信深圳市政府、深圳市人民檢察院是不會讓中國製造光環背後的勞動者進一步為資本欺侮。深圳政府必須通過釋放吳貴軍，向這些逃奔責任的投資者傳遞 一個嚴正的訊息：

“社會大眾絕不會辜息以卑鄙手段侵害勞工權益的老闆！”
“政府絕對保障工人爭取合法合理權益的行為，罷工無罪！”

罷工無罪, 要求捍衛工人合法權利

迪 威信傢俱用品（深圳）有限公司是1998年在深圳成立的 “三來一補”港資企業。2006年，工廠老闆夏海歐在惠州設廠，並逐漸將機器等資產轉移到惠州。2010年夏海歐在深圳另立“迪威信（深圳）傢俱用品有限 公司”，進一步為搬廠方便資產轉移。2013年2月，迪威信（深圳）傢俱用品有限公司 (下稱廸威信)訂單、工人加班的時間減少影響工資等眾多問題出現後，工人逐步減少至 300人左右，剩下的300多工人意識到關廠問題的嚴重性。 2013年初，廸威信工人聯名寫信給深圳當地的勞動部門和法院法官要求行政部門和司法部門要求介入，希望在企業搬遷變動的情況下工人的合法權益能夠得到合 法的保障和合理的經濟補償。然則，廸威信工人連署爭取無果。2013年5月，廸威信把最後的機器搬走。

2013年5月7日，迪威信工人為阻 止工廠把機器搬走，正式開始罷工，要求老闆就搬廠事宜和對工人的處理作出說明和交代，並依法發放因搬廠而需要賠償的經濟補償金。就此，工人多次與工廠、石 岩勞動站和石岩派出所交涉談判無果。在罷工兩星期期間，工人多次要求政府部門和工會介入事件，協助工人爭取賠償。工人也曾兩次集體到該區政府部門上訪，可 惜最後得到的，只是老闆賠償每名工人每工作一年補償人民幣400元的決定，這一標準遠遠低於法律的賠償標準（按《勞動合同法》經濟補償金應以一年一個月工 資的標準發放，而當時工人的月工資是2700元左右）。

2013年5月23日，工人在百般無奈之下向深圳市政府尋求幫助，惟300多名罷工工人往市政府途中遭遇深圳市公安部門圍堵， 200余名工人被抓捕。其中20余名工人被拘留13天，兩名工友被拘留37天，另一名工人──吳貴軍至今仍然被關押，至今已超過100天。

按 中國《勞動合同法》第46條的規定，工廠如果搬離本巿（即案中的深圳市），而工人又不願意跟工廠一起搬遷的話，用人單位應要補償工人經濟補償金。迪威信工 人罷工要求工廠按照法律規定給與賠償, 這是合情合理的。參與罷工的每一個工人只為爭取自己的合法權益, 並非違法行為，本應無罪！工人「有冤無路訴」的時候，工會在哪裡? 如今吳貴軍被起訴，更成為深圳市政府一直推動成立工會，維護工人權利旗幟中的一大敗筆與倒退。本年又正值廣東省總工會成立60年之盛事, 廣東省總工會力當為受屈冤獄的工人代表───吳貴軍頂起頭頂的一片青天。

要求釋放工人代表

我們作為在香港及國際社會致力推動 勞工權利的組織，嚴厲譴責地方公安此等抓捕手段, 刑事拘留打擊工人罷工權利的行為！我們看到, 罷工工人以及吳貴軍都只是爭取自己的應有勞動權益，並沒有破壞公共財物和私人財物，我們希望深圳市總工會為證工會保護工人權益的責任，積極介入支持吳貴軍 及其家人，幫助其免於被起訴並儘快無罪釋放吳貴軍！工會最主要的責任是保護工人的權益，我們希望深圳市總工會盡工會之責，亦同時緊急呼籲 廣東省總工會盡速查辦此起工人合法維權反被起訴的冤獄事件。

就此次事件，我們要求深圳有關當局:

1. 保障工人罷工權利
2. 保護罷工工人代表
3. 介入支持吳貴軍及其家人，幫助其免於被起訴並儘快無罪釋放吳貴軍

我們也希望，中國政府持久地全力保障深圳打工者的合法勞工權利，嚴厲查處任何以侵害勞工為利潤的不法資本，讓國際社會看到中國政府對捍衛勞權的決心和行動。同時，不斷擴闊政府、資方、工人平等溝通的管道，以共建公民社會。

Dude, Patriarch Kirill completely slays! He even has a Viking beard!

You seriously don’t want to mess with this guy. He knows his Augustine.

The Russian Orthodox Church might get as bad a rep (if not worse) in the secular West than the Catholic Church did under Benedict XVI. It’s certainly as badly misunderstood. The media of the West settled on the figure of Patriarch Kirill only after his statements about Pussy Riot, and then only to descend into uninformed and bigoted histrionics like these about how corrupt the Orthodox Church was (with as much attention lavished on Patriarch Kirill’s left wrist as on Pope Benedict’s ankles) and how it served only as a doormat for Putin. But viewing Patriarch Kirill in this way is simplistic and wrong-headed in the extreme. I had been only vaguely aware of how Kirill was breaking open dialogues between Russia and Georgia and with Syria back in 2011, but I didn’t know he was gaining a reputation as an aggressive peacemaker.

His resume along those lines is quite impressive. He has been very active in the Middle East and in the Balkans at their most dangerous, making visits as an Archbishop to the Levant and to Yugoslavia (also here) as a mediator. Just as his predecessor Patriarch Alexiy II had done, he has expressed repeated concern for the Christians of the Middle East, and more recently has entreated President Obama to back off of his sabre-rattling in Syria. He has also been active in the World Council of Churches and in correspondence with Benedict XVI (with whom he had a warm relationship), and was instrumental in drafting the Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, which in many important ways brought Russian Orthodox social teaching closely into alignment with the Catholic.

But he hasn’t been unwilling to criticise Russia’s economy or its internal policies at all! Take a look at what he said on Interfax-Religion.ru:

‘Современная экономика построена в значительной степени на очковтирательстве, создании денег из воздуха. [Деньги - это] эквивалент человеческого труда и ценностей, которые Бог дал нам, таких как уголь, руда, нефть, наш интеллект, физический труд, культурный и духовный. [Однако сегодня] каждое предприятие выпускает свои собственные деньги в виде акций, которые, поступая на вторичный рынок, превращаются просто в не понятные никому ценные бумаги, которыми можно торговать и спекулировать. Если на этих фантиках зарабатываются миллиарды, не подкрепленные ни трудом, ни реальным капиталом, то как такая экономика может существовать? Вот и расплачивается сегодня простой труженик, который ценности производит, за весь этот мыльный пузырь! [Нам необходино] справедливой экономической системы, чтобы деньги и капитал являлись эквивалентом и выражением реального труда.’

‘The modern economy is built largely on fraud, creating money out of thin air. [Money is] equivalent to human work and the riches God has given us: namely coal, ore, oil, our intellect, our physical labour, our culture and our spirituality. [But today,] every company produces its own money in the form of shares, which in the secondary market, rather than acting as simple securities, are used as items of trade and speculation. If these spectres earn billions, not being backed by real labour or capital, how can such an economy exist? And what becomes of the simple worker, who produces the value behind this entire bubble! [We need] a fair economic system, where money and capital are equivalent and are the expression of real work.’

And not only that! Take a look at what he said ten years ago, highlighting both the responsibilities of the individual and of the state in light of the teachings of the Church, as well as taking a shot at the Russian government and lawmakers (and he even made my inner existential personalist squeal with glee by quoting Nikolai Berdyaev!):

Any person on the street whom you ask about the reasons for the public confusion in the country, will point first to economic problems. Indeed, the material component largely determines the social, cultural and even partly the spiritual dimensions of human life. It is clear that poverty provokes vice. A system which unfairly distributes material goods, which are accumulated as a result of the labour of society’s members, can also create social and political tensions, and thereby provoke vice in both public and private life.

Thus, the region’s economy is not merely to be considered in terms of material interests. The outstanding Russian philosopher N. A. Berdyaev outlined both projections of economic relations in the sphere of our lives in this way: ‘Bread for me is a material question. Bread for my neighbour is a spiritual one.’

[ … ]

The modern value-system, which encourages people to apply greater efforts to the continuous improvement of private material consumption, is sinful and depraved. The Church reminds people that economic activity can be justified morally and religiously only if the person is working not only for themselves and for their loved ones, but also to help the needy. This motive for working may be called the spiritual dimension of the economy. The Church encourages people to work effectively for maximum return such that the surplus may be transferred to those who are unable to earn a living, or whose labour for public benefit ought to produce no material gain. The ethics of Orthodoxy postulates a very important principle: the economy must be efficacious and fair.

[ … ]

How is it possible today to transition into morally justifiable and efficacious economic relations? Education should play an enormous role in this process. Our Church’s participation in the learning process will help equip children with the high ideals of the Orthodox work ethic. One of the goals of teaching the ‘Bases of Orthodox Culture and Ethics’ is to familiarise students with the moral norms of Orthodoxy, which embrace not only the rules of private and family life, but also are able to develop a moral approach to participation in public life, including politics and economics.

Charity plays an important role in the redistribution of surplus wealth. From the history of pre-Revolutionary Russia, we see the importance of the place occupied by charitable organisations in the public life of the country. However, it must be recognised that to achieve an equitable redistribution of wealth to support the poor, to provide programmes in the public interest, to requite those whose activities do not produce economic value, through charity alone is impossible. Here, a special role belongs to the state. The state should assume responsibility for a just distribution of the fruits of labour – which is to say, for the realisation of the spiritual dimension of the economy.

Taxation and fiscal policies take a special place in this process, which is designed to redistribute public goods for the benefit of the weak, and to support institutions which are required for a normal existence in society. Therefore, the upbuilding of such policies is an obligation which is not only economic, but moral and even religious. By developing fair and effective legislation, state officials are performing a godly duty, and their actions have an obvious spiritual dimension.

The Church calls upon her children to abide by the law, but it cannot be denied that compliance in good faith with all the laws, regulations and administrative statutes drives the entrepreneur to the brink of ruin. The Church reminds legislators that their duty is to create a system of laws which do not impose upon the people ‘heavy burdens, hard to bear’. But until then, a man cannot create surplus wealth without breaking the laws on the books.

But if the current legal code pushes even the most decent of people to cheat the state, is it even possible to call the prevailing economic system in Russia moral? The situation does not help Russian entrepreneurs to form concepts of business and economic ethics. If the situation remains unchanged, in five or ten years it will be difficult to find an entrepreneur who wants to do business openly and honestly!

[ … ]

We need to remember that, from the religious point-of-view, the sole legitimate owner of all earthly blessings is God, who is Creator of the world, and we only temporarily make use of them. We should not forget that, since God has given us these blessings, He can take them away from ‘he who lays up treasure for himself, but is not rich towards God’.

This is real heavy theology. Patriarch Kirill is not only critiquing the mainline of Russian business practice and public policy together, and defending Russia’s small businessmen (it’s notable that he uses the word людей in the original, with all its populist shades of meaning) with more than a bit of Chestertonian flair. He obviously has no objection either to non-exploitative business practices, or to government which understands its obligations to enforce justice. But he’s no worshipper of state power, as the latter part makes clear, and he’s certainly no ally to the Yeltsinist Russian right (SPS, Yabloko and so forth)! And as with his close collaborator Fr Vsevolod Chaplin, his perceived support of Putin aside, he holds economic views considerably to the left of the President – particularly with regard to his support for progressive taxation and fiscal policy. And that last part? It’s pure, sweet, unadulterated Saint Augustine, with all its native radicalism intact.

We need to start paying attention to this guy – and certainly to more of him than just his left wrist!

Why are we surprised?

Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, has merely articulated the position that Iran’s government has held for a very long time. Our government and news media have done the people of America a grave disservice by pretending otherwise, that the views of Ahmedinejad on the Holocaust, on the Jews and on Israel were the position of the entire Iranian government or people. Even within Iran, Mir-Hossein Mousavi condemned Ahmedinejad’s statements about the Holocaust. The Iranian government had not denied the Holocaust before Ahmedinejad, and the surprise that it is not doing so after Ahmedinejad is either ignorant or in bad faith.

Remember that the Iranian Jews have reserved permanent representation in the Majlis – alongside the Christian Armenians and Assyrians who have lived there for millennia. By and large, Iran is a country whose Jews do not want to leave, in spite of the repeat attempts on the part of the Israeli government to resettle them. Iran still preserves the burial sites of Esther, her kinsman Mordechai, the prophet Daniel and Ezra the Scribe – holy to both Jews and Christians (or rather, the Christians of the region who know and care about them). Neither Iran’s Jews nor Iran’s Christians want any war to ‘liberate’ them, since any such war would have disastrous consequences for them in particular, of the very same sort as we have witnessed arising from Western meddling in the homes of other ancient Christian communities, Iraq and Syria. Indeed, the oldest Christian nation on the face of the Earth, Armenia, shares a deep and long cultural affiliation with Iran, and wholeheartedly supports the efforts of that government to pursue peaceful applications of nuclear power.

Iran, being the primary route of the Silk Road, has been for millennia the crossroads of cultures, and the loom upon which the warp of the East has met the woof of the West. From these threads was created a beautiful tapestry which has enriched and inspired civilisations on either side for almost as long as human civilisation has existed.

The Iranian Zoroaster was among the first prophets, along with Abraham and Zhou Dan Gong, to articulate what was then, and apparently is again now, the radical social doctrine that it is not the absolute and untrammeled private right of the wealthy and the powerful to dominate the poor and the weak. He preached, indeed, that the treatment of the poor and weak, whether good or ill, would have eternal consequences, correspondingly good or ill. Zoroastrian magi were the tutors of Pythagoras, and through Pythagoras Socrates, Plato and the entirety of classical virtue-ethics. Zoroastrianism also spread east along the Silk Road and went on to inform parts of Chinese Buddhist and Daoist philosophy. The Zoroastrian ethics of sacral kingship motivated by a preferential option for the poor managed to transfigure the raw libido dominandi of early Islam into a faith with not only a deep respect for scholarship but also a radical social dimension – including the ‘Red Shi’ism’ of Dr Ali Shariati.

What we are seeing now in President Hassan Rouhani and the ‘charm offensive’ is a confluence of these strains, which have been so long obscured from the Western public consciousness – both by the Iranian regime’s own extremism and by the attempts going all the way back to the ‘50’s by American hegemony to exclude and isolate the country from international discourse. Hard though the Grey Lady tries, there is no real distinction to be drawn between the Rouhani who didn’t shake Obama’s hand and who spoke up on behalf of Palestinians and against the American imperium, and the Rouhani who decried Nazi crimes against humanity on American television.

We should welcome Rouhani. And with that welcome we ought to take the opportunity to re-evaluate our stance on Iran more generally. It would be, quite frankly, uncivilised of us to do otherwise.

Pointless video post - ‘Beneath a Veil of Crying Souls’ by Tad Morose

Yes! It’s finally here! The whole song! It’s been ten years since they released their last album, Modus Vivendi, but now they’re back with more mindblowing melodic thrashpower with extra power to spare! Okay, yes, I am nerding out here. But this is Tad Morose here, one of the greatest groups of unsung (at least in the US) geniuses in heavy metal! The new vocalist, Ronny Hamlin, has some big shoes to fill since Urban Breed left the band, but his Dio-esque hard rock wailing fits Tad Morose’s musical phrasing perfectly. And all the raw energy and thick bass-drums groove we came to expect from their previous albums is here in spades on this song - they were most definitely not slacking off this past decade!

Do yourself a big, big favour

Please, gentle reader. Don’t go to the New York Times, with their misleading headlines and watered-down excerpts, served up expressly for an audience with a notoriously narrow hearing range. Please go to America magazine and read the entirety of their interview, ‘A Big Heart Open to God’, with Pope Francis. It is deep, wide-ranging and - most importantly - gracious and intellectually beautiful, and it shows us that, though the Roman Church had lost in the former Holy Father Benedict XVI a man of sterling intellect and analytic acuity, they have also gained an intelligence which, though it works in a very different style, is hardly inferior. And it absolutely tickled me pink as an expat and Chinese history geek that he mentioned the Chinese rites controversy within the Society of Jesus (over whether or not, essentially, Confucianism was a religion) - perhaps the task of exploring that anti-capitalist and alter-political common ground between Confucianism and Catholic social teaching hinted at by Han Thomas Hong-soon is not as far off as I had thought, at all!

It is disheartening to me, incredibly so, to see that, just as most American news media just don’t get it when it comes to religion generally, the New York Times just doesn’t get it when it comes to Catholicism. The central message of Pope Francis - which is one that Jesus has already saved us, and that the job of the Church is to follow his example, to actively go out and seek out that salvation in every person, and to cultivate it even in the midst of great uncertainty - appears lost on the Times, which engages in a textbook case of projection when it obsesses pruriently over Pope Francis’ stance on sexual ethics. On which topic, by the way, as he makes clear in the interview, he is simply following the Catechism and does not diverge from the Church of which he is head at all. But the Times sees a Papal praxis whose essence approaches grace, and - failing to understand that it is the orthodoxy of the Church which inspires and informs that praxis - attempts to squash it into the indifferent and static mould of ‘tolerance’.

The fact remains, though: this Pope is bringing a fresh breath to Catholicism, the same way (to me) first Kierkegaard, and then Lewis and Chesterton brought a fresh breath to my faith in Christianity. He is living an adventure that is orthodoxy; to him, the Papacy is something dynamic and challenging. To him, God is all promise, and that promise is there for all people, where they are.

God bless Pope Francis! May his reign be long and fruitful, and may there be many more like him.