Pelosi’s talk

This occurred to me after the post just below. All the rhetoric and spontaneous combustion of the celebrations around Washington on Nancy Pelosi’s elevation to the highest position in the land after the President and Vice-President tells us a lot. And the new Speaker’s address to the 110th Congress yesterday had plenty of good soundbite statements that were genuinely intended to inspire hope and faith in the goodwill of the new majority party and its leadership.

We will be watching to see if they are genuinely practiced, and if indeed, it’s a new day of partnership instead of partisanship.

But this caught my attention in her remarks:

“And I thank my constituents in San Francisco for the privilege of representing them in Congress. Saint Francis of Assisi is our city’s patron saint, and his prayer is our city’s anthem: ‘Lord, make me a channel of thy peace; where there is darkness may we bring light, where there is hatred, may we bring love, and where there is despair, may we bring hope.’

“It is in that spirit that I was sent to Congress.

Couple of things. One, that prayer which has come to be attributed to St. Francis of Assisi actually goes like this (scroll down to the bottom). And two, St. Francis also told his followers to bring the light and spread the news of the Gospel to the people, and when necessary, use words.

So, I’m really glad she invoked the great saint. And I really hope she leads by his example.