Less than the Least

Harvard will be hosting a conference honoring Bill next weekend.  The conference will consist of four panels of speakers on Friday and Saturday, the first three on criminal law and procedure and the last on Bill's life and work generally.  The line-up is extraordinary (here's the Harvard announcement and here's a fuller description from Orin Kerr, one of many terrific speakers who will be there), and it promises to be a memorable event.  It's open to anyone who would like to attend.

Last week, the docs ordered another set of films; earlier this week, I heard the results. One of my tumors – the one on my liver – is growing again. This means the combination of chemo drugs I was on for the last seven-plus months are no longer working. So my oncologist put me on a new chemo regimen, which, so far, is about as nasty as the one it replaced.

When in Rome, I make a bee-line for the three great Caravaggio paintings of St. Matthew in San Luigi dei Francesi, just east of Piazza Navona. Standing in front of the paintings a few days ago—transfixed by the look of utter certainty on Christ’s scruffy features as he points a narrow finger toward Matthew in The Calling of Matthew [here]-- I realized that it was a good thing that none of my traveling companions had come with me. My gushing would have been unbearable. It occurred to me that this might make a nice topic for a blog post.

As she described Santa Maria delle Grazie, the Milan church that houses da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” our tour guide said she so much preferred the name in Italian to its English translation—Saint Mary of Thanks—that she would stick with the Italian henceforth. “Grazie” does seem a prettier word than “thanks,” but I also wondered later if the connection in Italian between thanks (grazie) and grace (grazia; and graces is grazie) also figured in the preference. Grace and thanks are not the same thing, of course, but they are inextricably connected: our thanks are a response to God’s grace. Although I would locate the grace in the work of Christ, rather than Mary, I love the idea that a church “delle Grazie” might refer (if I’m not confused about the Italian) both to God’s manifold grace (or graces) in Christ, and to the thanks of his people, the body of Christ—as expressed generation after generation in the joyous worship in the church.

Yesterday I found myself in an Italian language service in Milan. The church—the Chiesa Cristiana, which doubles as Milan Bible Church in the afternoon-- was a thirty minute walk through nondescript neighborhoods (a reminder that Milan was heavily bombed during World War II) from my hotel. I ended up in the Italian language service because of the timing of the services—certainly not because of proficiency in Italian, which is still years away.

Through a quirk of scheduling, I was in Amsterdam a week ago for a corporate law conference and (after a brief return home) am now in Milan and Rome for nine days with the twelve students in my Globalization of Corporate Governance seminar.   The combination of corporate law conferences and side trips to several of the world’s great art museums has gotten me thinking—however ill-informedly—about the relationship between markets and art.

Phil Ryken, the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, the church of which I and my family are members, was just named the eighth president of Wheaton College.  The first excitement came even before the official announcement, when the website of Christianity Today magazine released the news yesterday before it was public.  Dr. Ryken informed the elders of our church yesterday morning, at roughly the same time as the faculty of Wheaton was informed of the choice in a confidential meeting.  The plan was to wait until after the move was announced to Tenth’s congregation this morning before making it public. A vibrant debate ensued on the CT website as to whether CT should have posted the news.  Although it would have been far better for Tenth’s congregation if the news had not been leaked, I side with those who think CT acted perfectly appropriately in posting it.  Only in rare circumstances—such as national security threats—should journalists withhold breaking news.  If there are villains in the story, it is the people who leaked the information, not the reporter who published it.

Thanks to the East Coast blizzard, we’re now in day two of a six day weekend (otherwise known as an eternity) with our two high school sons. This means lots of spirited debates about how long the boys can stay on the computers. In our house, we’ve arrived at a rule that that they can’t go on the computer before 12 noon, and must get off by 10 p.m. My wife and I are pleased with this system (the boys are rather less enthusiastic, and frequently tell us so), but it still means policing the noon and 10 pm boundaries and lots of discussion about how long they can stay on during those hours in between.

James Wood had an interesting op-ed (here) in yesterday’s New York Times. Wood, as many readers may know, is a critic and novelist who was raised in an evangelical household but rejected the faith. He argues that that Pat Robertson’s suggestion that the earthquake in Haiti was a punishment suggests that “God is punitive and interventionist,” and that President Obama’s suggestion that “there but for the grace of God” we would have been the ones devastated makes God “as capricious as nature and so absent as to be effectively nonexistent.”

Although Wood is being a little unfair both to Christianity and to President Obama, I do think he wisely points out the dangers of trying to identify God’s will in a disaster. Jesus himself warned about this.  Referring to eighteen people who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell, Jesus said “do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you.” The real moral, Jesus said, is that we all need to repent. (Luke 13:4).

It’s hard not to think of Franklin Roosevelt (Roosevelt-and-water, perhaps) as President Obama criticizes the Wall Street banks, welcomes Paul Volcker (who argues that the banks should be partially broken up) back into his inner circle, and condemns the Supreme Court’s new campaign finance decision as a threat to democracy. Roosevelt did break up the banks (a successful reform), and he wanted to “pack” the Supreme Court with new New Deal friendly justices (a disaster).