Jacinda Ardern: Ordinary Woman, Extraordinary Leader

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
Tufts University, April 2024 (Photo: Alonso Nichols, Tufts Now)

As someone who studies and reads a lot of books and articles about political leaders, I have come to identify certain traits that are essential to positive and uplifting leadership. These include intelligence, wisdom, empathy, courage, the ability to listen to different points of view, understand people’s needs, acknowledge uncertainty, respect science and not be afraid to consult with experts, and prioritize the public interest over political advancement. In an ideal world, the best leaders also inspire kindness and decency in others. Although few people in history fit all these criteria, I believe that a genuinely compassionate and intelligent leader can govern a nation with kindness, empathy, and honesty while protecting the country’s interests and functioning as a trusted neighbor in the world community.

We live in a world dominated by oligarchs and strongmen. In the United States, we have a president who celebrates UFC fights and aggressive masculinity, demeans reporters, especially female reporters, and laces every speech and interview with insults and name calling. Our Secretary of Defense preaches that elevated levels of testosterone are the true measure of a man and essential to a warrior ethos while he systematically eliminates women from positions of senior leadership. From Russia and North Korea to dozens of countries in both hemispheres, political leaders frequently exemplify the worst traits of humanity.

Jacinda Ardern was a different kind of leader. As Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023, she proved that an effective leader need not sacrifice her humanity. Her honest, humane, and compassionate governing style was frequently described as an “antidote to Trumpism” and her popularity around the world reflected the sentiment. She was living proof that a head of state can be empathetic, sensitive, kind, and still be strong enough to lead a great nation with a proud history.

Recently, I finished A Different Kind of Power (Crown Publishing House, 2025), Jacinda Ardern’s refreshing and candid memoir about overcoming insecurities and self-imposed feelings of “imposter syndrome” to become the third woman to serve as Prime Minister of New Zealand. Ardern was only 37 when she became prime minister, the youngest person ever to hold the country’s highest seat of power. Her memoir, and the excellent CNN documentary “Prime Minister” released a few months later, depicts an ordinary, unassuming woman who became a consequential and highly effective national leader in difficult and challenging times. I came away from both with a sense of hope, for they confirmed my belief that kindness, decency, and compassion truly can make a difference in leadership at the highest levels of government.

A key ingredient of Ardern’s popularity and effectiveness as prime minister was her authenticity. She is extremely relatable. The daughter of a police officer, she learned at an early age that the ability to communicate, to use words effectively, was essential to establishing public trust. In New Zealand, police officers do not routinely carry guns. They are considered citizens in uniforms whose authority derives from the consent and cooperation of the community. As a young girl, she once saw her dad in uniform surrounded by a hostile group of men in leather jackets. As she walked across the parking lot, her father noticed her approaching. “Keep walking, Jacinda,” he said in a calm voice. Although she did as told, she worried about his safety. Later that night, her dad explained, “Jacinda, my words will always be the greatest tool I have.” It was a valuable lesson to her, and one she would use in later years.

As someone who grew up in a Mormon household, she valued its keen sense of community and understood from a young age how much personal connection mattered to people. Through its missionary work, she became comfortable with striking up conversations with people she did not know. Although she would later move away from her Mormon faith when it increasingly conflicted with her personal values, especially concerning the rights of women and LGBTQ persons, she always respected how loving and kind the people in her church were, and how focused they remained on service and charity.

Ardern developed an early interest in public policy and debate but never imagined herself capable or tough enough to run for public office. “I was the worker who quietly and steadily got things done,” she writes. “My elbows weren’t sharp enough; my skin was too thin. I was idealistic and sensitive.” And yet, she had witnessed two women become Prime Minister of New Zealand and the thought never crossed her mind that her gender would preclude her from becoming involved in politics. When she interned for a Labour Party MP during college, she fell in love with it. Parliament “was a place where laws changed and problems were fixed,” she recounted. Politics, when done right, could change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people for the better. And it could address issues that mattered to her, like poverty and inequality, climate change, repairing past injustices to indigenous populations, and advancing women’s reproductive freedoms.

When Ardern first became a Member of Parliament on the Labour Party ticket in 2008, however, she experienced a crisis of confidence when the opposition verbally attacked her during a hard-edged debate on the Parliament floor. She figured the only way to cope was to toughen up, to develop thick skin and roll with the punches, so she sought the advice of a fellow Labour MP, a veteran politician known for his hardcore tactics. “Promise me you won’t try to toughen up, Jacinda,” he advised. “You feel things because you have empathy, and because you care. The moment you change is the moment you’ll stop being good at your job.”

Ardern resolved to remain true to herself. When she talked with groups of students, Ardern frequently asked them to describe what they think leadership requires. The students consistently used words such as “angry” and “aggressive.” Ardern would never be that kind of politician. “I didn’t want to choose between being a good politician and being what I considered a good person.” And she learned from exchanges with certain members of the opposition that “it was possible to disagree with your opponent without getting personal.” 

It turned out that Ardern’s empathetic style indeed was an effective way to lead and govern. In March 2017, the Labour Party selected Ardern as its deputy leader. She shared Labour’s vision “that our country be a place where everyone has a roof over their head and meaningful work, where education is free, where children live surrounded by creativity, not poverty, where we lead the world on environmental issues” and build a country “even better than the way we found it.”

Five months later, she was unexpectedly thrust into the leadership role when Prime Minister Andrew Little resigned following Labour’s poor showing in the polls. With national elections coming, Ardern ran a campaign of positivity and Labour’s popularity rebounded. In October 2017, when the New Zealand First Party agreed to a coalition with Labour, Ardern became New Zealand’s third female prime minister.

Only days before, unbeknownst to the public, Ardern discovered she was pregnant. Her daughter Neve was born eight months later. Although she was criticized for being selfish, for trying to have it all, she showed that, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, “the job of looking after a country’s people — and the mix of love and steel required to personally care for a child — might just go hand in hand.”

Before her swearing in, a journalist who Ardern had respected since she was eleven years old, asked her, “What is it you want to do?” She said what immediately came to mind. “I want this government to feel different. I want people to feel that it’s open, that it’s listening, and that it’s going to bring kindness back.” In her memoir, Ardern explained further:

Some people thought kindness was sentimental, soft. A bit naïve, even. I knew this. But I also knew they were wrong. Kindness has a power and strength that almost nothing else on this planet has. I’d seen kindness do extraordinary things: I’d seen it give people hope; I’d seen it change minds and transform lives. I wasn’t afraid to say it aloud, and as soon as I did, I was sure: kindness. This would be my guiding principle no matter what lay ahead.

Both the CNN documentary and memoir bring to light private moments that show Ardern’s ordinary humanity as she dealt with terrible bouts of morning sickness and her struggles to breast feed her newborn while balancing the responsibilities of prime minister with her desire to be a present mother to her child. Although she received criticism when she became the first prime minister to take six weeks of maternity leave while in office, most New Zealanders supported her decision, reinforcing a fundamental truth, “that politicians are humans first, and perhaps the public hadn’t lost sight of that.”

Throughout her tenure as prime minister, she displayed top-down kindness as a thoughtful, intelligent leader determined to act when necessary. After a white supremacist carried out two mass shootings on the same day at Christchurch mosques that killed 51 people and injured 49 more, Ardern immediately responded with heartfelt empathy. She mourned and grieved with the Christchurch Muslim community. She hugged and supported them, cried and prayed with them. She made clear the entire nation condemned the attacks and supported them in their darkest hour. Although some of the Muslim victims had come to New Zealand as refugees, this was an attack on “our community,” she said. “They are New Zealanders. They are us.” She received widespread praise from the Muslim and international communities for her personally empathetic response to the shootings.

But words, hugs, and prayers were not enough. Over the next three weeks, Ardern orchestrated and led the passage of sweeping legislation that banned most semiautomatic weapons, assault rifles, and higher capacity magazines from New Zealand, a country with a high rate of gun ownership. Through an amnesty and buyback program, tens of thousands of military-style assault weapons were taken off the streets. Horrified by viral social media posts of the Christchurch shootings, she launched the Christchurch Call to Action, an international commitment to remove and eliminate violent extremist content from the internet. Her tears generated toughness. She would not compromise public safety.

Tragedy struck New Zealand again in March 2019, when a volcano erupted at Whakaari/White Island that killed twenty-two people and severely burned many more. In the following days, Ardern visited with the survivors and family members of those who died and personally thanked the first responders who risked their lives rescuing survivors. When a social media post claimed she was only visiting the community so she could be seen “hugging people,” Ardern acknowledged the criticism bothered her. But she would do nothing differently. “First of all, of course I’d gone,” she writes. “This was a major disaster in our country and I was prime minister. And criticizing me for hugging people? … I would rather be criticized than stop being human.”

Less than a year later, she would be tested in ways never anticipated. “Leadership is a test for which you can only partially prepare,” she noted. “If you’re lucky, the information you need is out there—somewhere, in some form.” But when the world first confronted COVID, there was little information to draw on. As an island nation, New Zealand had some advantages. Twenty days after its first documented cases, her government closed the nation’s borders to everyone except returning citizens and established isolation and tracing protocols. But the pandemic was moving too quickly, and if she did not take more drastic action, the data and science showed that tens of thousands of people would die. That would be catastrophic in a country of five million people. For Ardern, it was not an option.

In April 2020, Ardern’s government ordered a Level 4 lockdown, shutting down most businesses and schools as people sheltered in place. Within six weeks, New Zealand had no new COVID cases. A few weeks later, the government reduced alert levels so people could dine out again, invite neighbors into their homes, and return to the world. For the next two years, New Zealand would have long stretches of normalcy followed by occasional periods of rising alert levels. But compared to the rest of the world, life looked ordinary in New Zealand, as kids returned to school, restaurants were open, and families gathered for weddings and funerals. By the time vaccines arrived and the country had achieved a 90 percent vaccination rate, the crisis in New Zealand had been mostly avoided. While COVID raged around the world, causing millions of deaths (including over 1.2 million in the United States), New Zealand experienced only twenty-five deaths and an infection rate 80% lower than in the United States.

Ardern writes also of the threatening and ugly backlash she faced with a vocal minority of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists, fueled by disinformation from the United States. But she defends her actions to this day. “We came out of COVID with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and fewer days in lockdown than nations like the U.K., and during this time our country’s life expectancy actually increased.” That is what leadership is all about.

New Zealand is known for “punching above its weight” on the world stage and Ardern’s diplomatic approach represented New Zealand well within the international community. Domestically, in addition to enacting major gun safety measures following the Christchurch terrorist attacks, she took decisive action on climate change, committing New Zealand to carbon neutrality by 2050. She enacted pay equity and parental leave laws. She launched a mental health initiative and a Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy. Her government reformed the state benefits system to make it more accessible and friendly, built more state housing than any government in the last fifty years, expanded access to childhood education and health care, and invested in violence prevention programs. And for the first time in the country’s history, Parliament decriminalized abortion and advanced the cause of reproductive freedom.

But six years of nonstop work, pressure, anxiety, and crisis after crisis, finally took its toll. Ardern decided to resign from public life in 2023. She had done her best, and that was enough. As she wrote in her memoir:

[W]hen I was prime minister, I saw moments of true darkness. … But there’s an inverse feature to seeing the world at its most brutal, because those are also the moments that show people at their most humane. Those are the moments when I saw that it was possible for people to galvanize behind their collective humanity. Sometimes, those moments are small. Other times, they create a ripple that sweeps across the country.

Ardern continues to work for change and tries to make the world a little brighter. As she told a gathering at Tufts University in 2024, whatever her future holds, “I am going to talk about what it means to be human first, and a leader second, because I think we need more of that in the world.”

Jacinda Ardern is an appealing and refreshing voice in a world that increasingly turns dark and brutal. I hope that her example inspires other men and women of kindness and decency to enter politics and follow in her example. She challenged misperceptions and assumptions about young female leaders. And she proved that common sense combined with sensitivity, compassion, and empathy are towering strengths. We need a lot more leaders like her.

Seeing America Through Other Eyes

As the United States commemorates its 250^th anniversary, it seems appropriate to reflect on what America represents, to us and the world, in 2026. The document we joyously uphold this weekend declares, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These aspirational words inspired the American Revolution. We are the only nation on earth founded on an idea, an aspirational dream of liberty and equality for all. If there is anything that makes America exceptional, that is it.

That we did not live up to these aspirations for the first nearly 190 years of our young existence, however, should not take away from the ideas those words embraced. The Declaration formed the bedrock of Frederick Douglass’s famous speech on July 5, 1852, which appealed to our nation’s moral conscience and exposed the inherent hypocrisy between its founding principles and everyday governance. Abraham Lincoln used the proposition that “all men are created equal” to formally challenge the institution of slavery in America. Women did not secure the right to vote until ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. And in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr., invoked the founding ideals of equality and unalienable rights as a "promissory note" owed to Black Americans, a moral reckoning that came to fruition in his “I Have a Dream” speech four months later during the March on Washington.

Only when the long arc of the universe finally bent toward justice, with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, did our country begin to fulfill its promise of legal equality for all citizens. But the aspirational power of the words in the Declaration of Independence, what historian Jon Meacham calls “the Promise of America” in our ongoing project to secure a “more perfect Union,” is a beautiful thing worth celebrating.

America is also a nation of immigrants with a complicated past. For the vast majority of Americans whose families at one time arrived on our shores from foreign lands, we view ourselves as a land of abundant opportunity, a melting pot of diverse peoples and cultures united by a commitment to the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, and the pursuit of happiness. Americans proudly proclaim the United States a beacon of hope and light unto the nations, a place where people from all over the world come in search of economic opportunity, personal and religious freedom, and democracy.

Although our reputation as a place of refuge and asylum from a troubled world has been under extraordinary strain for the past 18 months, it is easier to preserve the myth of our own goodness than to reflect on more complex truths. Americans are a proud people. We see ourselves as the premier force for good in the world, for modernization and progress, as the arbiters of peace who stomp out terrorism and provide a pathway to democracy and civilization. Americans have long assumed that our intentions are pure, even if our actions are sometimes imperfect.

The rest of the world has a more nuanced view. They can see more clearly the hypocrisy of what America says and what it does. We leave our footprints all over the world. With over 800 military bases spread across more than 80 countries, we are the largest foreign military presence in human history. American corporate influence spans the globe, dominating international markets, technology, and pop culture. U.S. companies shape everything from global trade and digital infrastructure to local consumer habits worldwide. For some Americans, these are the things that instill pride and render America exceptional.

But for millions of people in foreign lands, a different picture of America emerges. During a talk in New York City in 2012, Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid noted what, to most foreigners, is an obvious truth: “There’s an America that exists inside the borders of the United States, which is a very different entity from the America that projects its force outside the United States.” There are “two Americas.”

One need only look to the long, dark history of U.S. covert operations and military aggressions on behalf of autocratic rulers, dictators, and anti-democratic forces in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. “No country,” writes Hamid, “inflicts death so readily upon the inhabitants of other countries, frightens so many people as far away, as America.”  It is something that most Americans think little about. We tend to be insular people. We rarely look outward, rarely consider what other people and countries think of us. And yet, we are surprised to learn that people in other parts of the world do not always perceive us as good and generous as we view ourselves.

Rescue workers at bombing site in Minab, Iran, Feb. 28, 2026
(Photo: Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News/Reuters via The Guardian)

Journalist and author Suzy Hansen reflected on these themes nine years ago in a beautifully written book, Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World. Hansen grew up in a small, provincial town on the Jersey Shore and, like most Americans, knew next to nothing about Turkey’s history, culture, and traditions when she first arrived there in 2007. But over the next ten years, through her daily interactions with the people of Turkey, and in her travels to neighboring countries, Hansen developed a deeper understanding of the countries, people, and societies in which she immersed herself.

Living in Istanbul and opening herself to the experiences and perspectives of the people she met along the way created for Hansen an “American identity crisis.” Not because she doubted her inherent Americanness, her love of country and connection to her homeland, but because she re-discovered America through the eyes of the people she encountered in these foreign lands. She felt compelled to re-consider her long-held assumptions and ask why these foreigners knew so much more about her country than she did of theirs, and why she knew so little about how profoundly America had impacted, not always for good, this region of the world.

Hansen recalled one conversation she had with an Iraqi man at a café in 2012. “Over the course of our conversation I asked him what Iraq was like in the 1980s and 1990s, when he was growing up. He smiled. ‘I am always amazed when Americans ask me this,’ he said. ‘How is it that you know nothing about us when you had so much to do with what became of our lives?’”

The Iraqi man had seen how U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s prolonged the brutal Iraq-Iran war that resulted in roughly one million casualties. He saw U.S. bombs nearly destroy Baghdad in 1991, killing thousands of Iraqi civilians. In 2003, he saw the U.S. invasion of Iraq severely destabilize the country and result in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, a deadly, prolonged sectarian civil war, an extensive and costly military occupation, and the rise of extremist groups like ISIS. And all Iraqis despised the U.S. imposed sanctions from 1990 to 2003, which as described by Hansen “destroyed the livelihoods of men and families, plunged people into poverty, and caused as many as five hundred thousand children to die. (About which Madeleine Albright—today a feminist icon—once said, ‘We think the price is worth it.’)” Hansen offered this additional assessment:

If as an American I merely ignored, was not incensed or heartbroken by American actions like sanctions, then it must have been because I somehow believed that those Iraqis were deserving of sanctions. What this does in the end is create a distance between myself and those foreigners I thought deserving of sanctions. It is one that cannot be bridged. The difference between us and them is that our country has created this universe in which sanctions are acceptable punishment for everyone except our country. It means that no other country can force my father to lose his job, or force my family to go hungry, or to break up my family, or to forever distort my future, but my country can do that to almost any other foreigner, including the man sitting across from you at a café.

At the time, most Americans perceived sanctions as a pressure-inducing tool of international diplomacy and assumed that life under Saddam Hussein was already terrible, which it was. “But what Americans likely didn’t know was that the Iraqi government had for a long time provided its people with adequate health care, schools, and social programs.” In the 1980s, Baghdad University had more female professors than did Princeton as late as 2009. Literacy in Iraq was at ninety percent. As Hansen explained:

While the Americans were promising a fantasy version of American life—all freedom and democracy—Iraqis likely envisioned a better version of Iraqi life, one rooted in history and reality. Americans never grasped that Iraqis might have their own idea of what a good life would entail. In the first days of the American occupation [post-2003]—and what would turn out to be the next decade—Iraqis were bewildered that the United States could not even provide them with electricity … In 1991, after the first Gulf War, Saddam got the lights back up within months.

Hansen had many such conversations with friends and acquaintances during her years overseas. The Iranians with whom Hansen spoke in her travels had never forgotten how the United States helped orchestrate the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1951, followed by U.S. support for the Shah and the CIA’s role in training agents of SAVAK, the brutal secret police service known for its severe torture techniques and violence against Iranian citizens and dissidents. Indeed, for most Iranians, “all the tensions that define the relations between United States and Iran today are rooted in the fall of Mossadegh.”

The Shah was a friend of the United States because we viewed him as Western-minded and a strong leader who supported “modernization” and was our ally in the Cold War. But to many Iranians, “modernity” meant American businesses profiting at Iranians’ expense in their country, the U.S. providing weapons to a brutal dictator, extensive poverty, and the terror of SAVAK. “Yet to this day,” as Hansen explained, “when a journalist like myself arrives in a foreign country, modernity is the measurement through which all standards of ‘success’ or goodness are judged, and the rejection of modernity by men such as the Iranian ayatollahs … is reviled as barbarism and backwardness, with complete disconnection from what modernization projects actually meant to that country’s hapless people.”

Hansen quotes Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, who has written about how the West has failed to understand the sense of “humiliation” it has repeatedly inflicted on Muslim men. “The real challenge,” according to Pamuk, “is to understand the spiritual lives of the poor, humiliated, discredited people who have been excluded from its fellowship.” What drives many of these men “is not Islam or this idiocy people call the war between East and West, nor is it poverty; it is the impotence born of a constant humiliation, of a failure to make oneself understood, to have one’s voice heard.”

Even in Turkey, a “pro-business” and “moderate” Islamic country that has embraced and adopted much of the West’s notions of modernity while avoiding colonialism, the people’s lives have been substantially affected by American actions and policies. One of Hansen’s closest Turkish friends was a woman named Rana, who said that America had defined much of her life in Turkey. As Hansen explained:

For someone like Rana, America defined her life in the broadest terms; it was an American world, with American-made international laws, American wars on her borders, American military bases on her country’s soil, American movies in her movie theaters, American songs on the radio, American monetary exchange rates, American economic policies … and four whole pages devoted to American news in the Turkish newspapers. As we spoke, I could see that foreigners grew up without the very thing that Americans cherished so much about their American selves—their self-made story.

Regardless of how one may judge the successes and failures of American foreign policy, the perspectives conveyed by Hansen offer important considerations and painful truths. Hansen did not intend Notes on a Foreign Country to be an authoritative history of the countries discussed, and there are important countervailing narratives she overlooks or ignores. Written as part memoir, and fused with historical insight and background, Hansen’s writing questions American assumptions of superiority and examines the distance between what America thinks of itself and what it is to the rest of the world.

I feel extremely grateful and fortunate to have lived my whole life in the United States. But I found Hansen's book educational and eye opening because we are a country frequently unwilling to see the world from an unfiltered, non-American lens. It helped me understand more clearly why U.S. assertions of economic and military power rarely end well for the countries involved, and why U.S. knowledge and expertise often fall short in foreign lands.

From American interventions in Vietnam to the Middle East to Latin America, the United States too often asserts its power in countries and cultures we know little about and then makes things worse in the countries it disrupts. Despite our affluence, success, rich democratic traditions, and history, we have a lot to learn from other people, nations, and cultures.

So, as we proudly and joyously celebrate America’s 250th birthday, let us commit to our ongoing quest to achieve a “more Perfect union” and the promise that is America. But let us also recognize that, as strong and powerful and successful as the American experiment has become, we are not alone in this world. We are not superior or exceptional to anyone. And we should consider how our actions and policies may negatively impact people who strive, like all Americans, for a life dedicated to the pursuit of happiness and equality and justice for all.

Are We Outsourcing Humanity?

Image created by artificial intelligence (Google Gemini)

When it comes to technology, I am frequently behind the times. To say I am a Luddite might be an exaggeration, but I have certain tendencies that lean in that direction. In the early 2000s, my adolescent daughters had cell phones for three years before I finally bought one. When smart phones came out, I held onto my flip-phone for several more years. Andrea and I still maintain a landline, even though we use it to talk only with our respective mothers at ages 95 and 103. I reluctantly send and receive text messages, although I acknowledge it is the primary means of communicating with people under the age of 40.

My technological deficiencies notwithstanding, recently I have been trying to better understand artificial intelligence, its benefits and risks, applications and pitfalls. In planning a recent trip to the United Kingdom, I used Google Gemini to craft an itinerary that would allow Andrea and I to explore the important sights and experiences of London, Oxford, and Edinburgh, while also helping us navigate walking and public transportation, time parameters, and nearby restaurant options that would accommodate Andrea’s dietary restrictions. Gemini immediately put together an impressively organized itinerary that addressed all our concerns, asked useful follow-up questions, provided travel tips and advice, and seemed eager to please. Although I made modifications and additions, Gemini helped me develop a flexible schedule that guided each day of our trip.

Gemini has also become an important research tool. It provides answers to my questions within seconds. It places a universe of information and data at my fingertips. And it provides links to the sources of information relied upon, which allows me to verify and explore the answers more deeply.

As noted by Ezra Klein in The New York Times, artificial intelligence has already proven incredibly valuable in the fields of mathematics, medicine, and science:

An OpenAI model just disproved a conjecture that had eluded mathematicians for 80 years. A drug for pulmonary fibrosis just became the first fully A.I.-generated treatment with proven efficacy and safety in humans. A Mayo Clinic team developed an A.I. system that can detect pancreatic cancers on a CT scan up to three years before clinicians can see them. DeepMind’s Graphcast model appears to generate weather predictions both faster and more accurately than the supercomputer systems that are used now.

These accomplishments are only the beginning. There seems to be no limit to what artificial intelligence may eventually be capable of.

But sometimes artificial intelligence tries a little too hard to please, as if it trying to say, “Relax. Let me do all the work.” It is an issue that is top of mind for professors and teachers throughout the country, as they contend with students using Chat GPT to draft papers, essays, and reports. Just because we can do something does not always mean we should.

At what point do humans risk becoming too reliant on artificial intelligence? When do human beings stop thinking for themselves? These are not philosophical queries, but genuinely practical questions of urgency. If, for example, students are relying on AI to draft papers, book reports, and essays, why are they even in school? Teachers assign writing projects not so their students can regurgitate information but because researching and writing a paper or a report forces students to think and learn more deeply about a topic, struggle with how to synchronize, organize, and evaluate information, and effectively communicate thoughts, ideas, theories, and conclusions.

Writing, like education, is about process. It requires that we figure out through trial and error what we are trying to say. It may be true that outsourcing our thinking to AI systems is easier and faster and could free us up for other activities. Many businesses are using artificial intelligence to draft emails, reports, and memoranda on assorted topics. Although I have my doubts as to the accuracy and reliability of an AI-generated report, the use of artificial intelligence to perform such tasks is potentially more efficient and allows more work to be completed with fewer people. But is this really a good thing? Should we not proceed cautiously before incorporating artificial intelligence into every aspect of life and work?

I could have drafted this essay with the aid of artificial intelligence, but what would be the point? I write essays for “Ehlers on Everything” because it keeps me engaged, sharpens my mind, and keeps me curious. Writing helps me explore more deeply the issues or topics I choose to write about and keeps my creative juices flowing. Writing is an important part of my life, not because I have millions of readers (I do not) or because I make any money doing it (negative), but because it brings me great satisfaction. Writing requires me to think critically and creatively, to figure things out. It is hard and challenging work. That is the point.

The writing process often involves deleting an unsatisfactory paragraph and rewriting what I am attempting to say with more clarity. Especially when I start with a blank page and a vague idea of what direction I wish an essay to go, writing forces me to think, analyze, and evaluate. Anything that eliminates the arduous work of writing undermines my ability to think for myself. If that begins to happen regularly in school, or at work, or in science and medicine, or in how businesses interact with consumers and employees, it imperils the utility of humanity.

I have more questions. Will the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence lead to massive job losses? What if governments nefariously use artificial intelligence to conduct surveillance, or terrorist organizations use it to create bioweapons? How do we prevent a small group of powerful and wealthy billionaires (or trillionaires) from controlling how artificial intelligence is used and applied? How will the public benefit? And how do societies ensure that the public interest takes precedence over the powerful private interests seeking to become even more incredibly wealthy from their ownership and development of AI models and applications? And who decides?

More fundamentally, how will artificial intelligence impact humanity, our ability to think, create, and make us vulnerable? Will the wide-scale adoption of artificial intelligence stagnate and flatline the ability of human beings to think critically and creatively? Meghan O’Rourke, creative writing professor at Yale University, said in a recent New York Times essay, it is “easy to imagine that in a world of outsourced fluency, we might end up doing less and less by ourselves, while believing we’ve become more and more capable.”

Pope Leo XIV addressed some of the above concerns and questions in his recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. I found the Pope’s encyclical to be a thoughtful guide for how humans should proceed in a world increasingly dependent on artificial intelligence and other forms of advanced technology.

Pope Leo acknowledges that artificial intelligence offers valuable applications in science, medicine, business, and other areas of life. But he rightly points out that AI models and applications are not morally neutral. He warns against the tendency to measure every decision based on how it impacts efficiency and profits. The most powerful technologies are not necessarily the best. If used unethically, or solely for profit and market dominance, the use of artificial intelligence risks undermining human dignity and the common good.

The Pope notes that AI models may become increasingly capable of imitating and simulating a human being, but these systems are not, and never will be, human. They do not possess a moral conscience, empathy, or relational and spiritual capabilities. “[H]umanity - in all its grandeur and woundedness - must never be replaced or surpassed.” While we should “embrace the technological progress that alleviates suffering and unlocks new possibilities,” we must “not abandon the very essence of our humanity, namely the capacity for relationship and love.” (¶ 126).

The Pope’s encyclical also addresses other areas of profound importance, including how artificial intelligence threatens to negatively impact the dignity of work; the environmental devastation and accelerated energy consumption required to build large, community-disruptive data centers; and the implications of using artificial intelligence in warfare (“Any technology that facilitates attacks without seeing the face of human beings lowers the moral threshold of conflict.”) (¶ 199). But all of it comes down to our need to remain human, and to not accede our humanity to automated systems of technology, no matter how capable those systems are.

In a 1981 commencement address at Colorado College, the late historian David McCullough said what I hope we never lose sight of:

Understanding the real world, being part of it and enjoying it, has mainly to do, I believe, with being a real person. That’s the point. It means taking an interest in other people, all kinds of people. It means enjoying people and trying to understand one another. It means kindnesses. It means doing what we can to move civilization forward, to make the world a little better place because we are in it.

When McCullough spoke those words 45 years ago, he had no way of knowing how radically transformed the world would become with the advent of computers, the internet, smart phones, and artificial intelligence. Despite these advances, McCullough continued to write all his brilliant books and speeches on an ancient Royal typewriter. He had no use for computers and artificial intelligence. And while McCullough may indeed represent a relic of the past, a remnant of what now seems like a slower paced, more genteel life, there remains wisdom in his words.

Susan Sontag, during a speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2003, said, “A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.” As the Yale professor Meghan O’Rourke suggests, “This attention to the world is worth trying to preserve: The act of care that makes meaning - or insight - possible. To do so will require thought and work. We can’t just trust that everything will be fine.”

I do not claim to understand all the intricacies of artificial intelligence. Few of us do. That is part of the problem. Artificial intelligence and large language models like Chat GPT have the potential to replace humans in many tasks that, until now, required work and thought and trial-and-error. I worry that relying on artificial intelligence will undermine our ability to understand, to figure things out on our own. Indeed, this is already happening. Human individuality flows from the life of the mind at work. For the sake of humanity, and for the future of our children, we must preserve the profound human need for individuality, connection, love, and struggle. We must never lose our capacity to pay attention to the world and to each other.

Profiles in Courage and Heroism in the DRC

Dr. Richard Lokuda, Director of Mongbwalu General Hospital
(Photo: Arlette Bashizi, New York Times)

Great journalism does not simply report facts and events as they occur. It allows us to understand another person's reality, empathize with their suffering, recognize when doing nothing is no longer an option. A well-written news story informs. It touches our emotions and allows us to ask deeper questions. But rarely does a newspaper article leave me sitting in silence. A story in the May 30 edition of The New York Times is one of those rare pieces.

The Times recently sent its chief Africa correspondent, Declan Walsh, and photographer Arlette Bashizi to the village of Mongbwalu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This is the epicenter of the Ebola epidemic that is spreading fear, tragedy, and death throughout this grief-stricken region of the world. In words, photographs, and a nine-minute video summary, the article takes you inside the understaffed and under-resourced hospital that is trying in vain to treat growing numbers of Ebola patients in Mongbwalu, all at great risk to the doctors, hospital staff, and aid workers directly in harm’s way.

Accompanied by heartbreaking photography, Walsh’s writing paints a personal, touching, and frightening story to which the world urgently needs to respond:

In the cramped, dilapidated Ebola ward, a 5-year-old boy languished on a bare mattress, a tissue stuffed into his nose to stanch the incessant bleeding. His father stood over him, eyes clouded with worry.

A few beds away lay the body of Christiane Bahati, 21, who had died seven hours earlier but had not yet been taken away. Her shoes were still tucked under the bed, her wailing relatives gathered outside the ward doors.

The body, covered by a thin sheet, was highly contagious. Yet hardly anyone in the ward was protected. Relatives came and went, carrying food and water to ailing patients because the hospital had none to give them. A few wore rubber gloves or pulled a scarf across their mouths. Most had nothing at all.

In the next ward lay the hospital’s laboratory technician, also sick. Seven other hospital workers had already died from suspected Ebola. Few of the staff members had ever been trained to fight the disease, and the most rudimentary equipment was in dangerously short supply: tests, protective suits, goggles, masks, even drinking water.

Outside, the sound of hammering broke the hushed silence. Aid workers from Doctors Without Borders were racing to erect isolation tents and disinfection stations.

… arriving patients who do not have Ebola risk being infected by those who do. In fact, it is hard to know who has Ebola because test results from the regional capital, some 50 miles away, take four days or more to arrive, said the hospital director, Dr. Richard Lokudu.

By then, many patients have already died.

Dr. Alex Bogole, a Congolese doctor in the hospital’s intensive care ward, expressed anger at the world’s indifference, neglect, and inadequate response to the crisis.

The virus had been spreading for months, virtually unimpeded, “and this is the best we can do?” he said, the frustration pouring through his protective gear.

The medical staff at Mongbwalu General Hospital are completely overwhelmed. Three weeks before The Times published this story, the hospital’s anesthesiologist died. A day later, the hospital’s surgical assistant died. Over the previous 12 days, the hospital experienced more than 30 deaths. Many others died in their homes in Mongbwalu, where fear, dread, and confusion overwhelm its residents.

Meanwhile, misinformation proliferated on social media as many townspeople refused to accept that the virus was real. They instead blame the hospital, its doctors, and staff.

Some said the outbreak was a moneymaking plot concocted by Congolese doctors and foreign aid workers. Others called it a curse. Often, doctors say, the early symptoms of Ebola resemble other ailments, like malaria or typhoid, so by the time patients go to the hospital, many are already very sick and die quickly, heightening suspicion and distrust.

Two nights earlier, assailants had burned down an isolation ward in the hospital, shortly after Doctors Without Borders put it up. In the chaos, 18 patients suspected of having Ebola fled their beds and vanished into the town, potentially spreading the virus even more.

Fear understandably drives community perceptions. Faced with a sudden surge of deaths, some townspeople irrationally believe the hospital is the cause and not the solution to the outbreak. “We’re here to save them,” the hospital director Dr. Richard Lokudu told Walsh. “They think we want to kill them.”

Still, the medical workers and staff risk their lives every day. This includes the doctors and their assistants who directly care for the patients, administer intravenous fluids, monitor vitals, help alleviate patient suffering, and wash and sanitize bottles and protective gloves so they can be reused. It includes the Red Cross volunteers who transport the bodies of patients who die and then attempt to enforce protocols to ensure safe burial practices, as traditional funerals are a major vector of disease transmission. They all contend not only with the threat of a deadly virus, but also the possibility of attacks from their own community. They are the heroes of this story.

The information gap between the medical community and the general populace is one of the biggest obstacles to stopping the spread of the virus. As seen in the photos and video documentation, the doctors (and The Times reporter and photographer) wore full protective suits and gear. But the family members who brought food and water to patients were mostly unmasked and unprotected. They appeared almost unaware of the risks while understandably preoccupied with their loved ones’ survival.

It would be wrong to dismiss the people of Mongbwalu as ill-educated, uninformed, and ignorant. As Dr. Edward Blau, a retired physician, explained in The Times’ comment section:

The same thing happened during the worst of the COVID pandemic in this country during the height of the pandemic. Frightened and willfully ignorant patients led astray by … reactionaries and conspiracy theorists claimed the virus wasn't really that dangerous, was a myth, and falsely claimed quack drugs would cure them. Close to five thousand health care workers died here taking care of the sick, and there was never a national tribute to them, or a word of official thanks. Do not look at the pictures here and think we are better than them, because we are not.

As Walsh and Bashizi were leaving, Doctors Without Borders were sealing off the hospital and establishing a proper isolation ward. It is likely the virus has already circulated undetected for the past two months and penetrated deep into the surrounding communities. The true scale of the outbreak is thus unknown and frightening to contemplate. To protect overwhelmed health systems and prevent further transmission, the families and communities in the region urgently need access to reliable health information, early detection, and safe burials.

The inspiring stories of courage, compassion, grit, and kindness in the people caring for these vulnerable patients are what true heroism looks like. This is a story that demands attention. The Times article is worthy of a Pulitzer. The journalists covered it at great personal risk. Their words and photographs brought me to a place with which I would not have the courage to go. My deepest respect to Declan Walsh and Arlette Bashizi for bearing witness to suffering with such honesty, dignity, and compassion. The world needs more reporting like this. And a little more humanity.

*     *     *     *

Dr. Lokuda treating a patient
(Photo: Arlette Bashizi, New York Times)

According to experts at the World Health Organization (WHO), a vaccine against this species of Ebola will take six to nine months to develop. But Ebola is stopped on the ground by trusted local health workers, protective equipment, proper specimen transport, isolation units, and rapid response. Tragically, these are the very capacities profoundly weakened by the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which affected billions of dollars in grant money for thousands of programs and nonprofit organizations around the world.

President Kennedy established USAID in 1961 to exercise American “soft power” in the form of financial resources, technical expertise, and humanitarian assistance to under-developed countries. In 1964, the agency's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) was created to "save lives, alleviate human suffering, and reduce the social and economic impact of disasters worldwide." For the past six decades, human need, not politics, drove USAID’s foreign disaster relief efforts, which received bipartisan support. Within hours of learning about the first signs of the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014, USAID drove in 28 trucks of personal protective equipment. President Obama deployed thousands of U.S. military personnel to Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone to build treatment centers and train local healthcare workers. And he secured from Congress $5.4 billion in emergency funding, the largest single-nation contribution to an infectious disease outbreak in history. These efforts played a tremendous part in stemming the spread of the virus and eliminating the danger to the rest of the world.

But in early 2025, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and his team of 20-something “whiz kids” thought it would be a clever idea to eliminate USAID, the agency most equipped to help with foreign disasters such as the Ebola outbreak. USAID staff in Washington who had dedicated their careers to the OFDA received emails informing them they were fired and had fifteen minutes to exit the building. Security personnel escorted them out. Also terminated were thousands of USAID employees across the globe.

The dismantling of USAID has been exacerbated by America’s withdrawal from the WHO, substantially reduced funding for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and politically motivated cuts to science and medical research facilities at the nation’s universities. Clueless people who "move fast and break things" do not belong anywhere in government. It is a recipe for a world catastrophe.

Collectively, these actions significantly disrupted and slowed the world’s response to the Ebola outbreak. As reported in a May 20 New York Times report, the WHO first learned of a cluster of unexplained deaths on May 5, 2026. “The organization promptly alerted the International Health Regulations, a legal framework for disclosing outbreaks. But the United States withdrew from the W.H.O. earlier this year, cut funding to the organization and rejected the framework, and American officials no longer talk regularly with their international partners.” When the U.S. government finally received confirmation of the Ebola outbreak on May 14, the virus had already infected 250 people, caused 80 deaths, and begun to spread across international borders.

The United States used to fund robust disease surveillance networks that maintained emergency teams who could respond rapidly to public health crises like the current Ebola outbreak. That all ended with the shutdown of USAID. CDC funding cuts further resulted in the loss of hundreds of experts, including in the DRC, who could have helped contain the epidemic. Moreover, as The Times noted:

Numerous positions in the U.S. government created to help detect and respond to global health threats remain vacant. The coordinator for global health security, a position created by Congress in 2023 to oversee preparedness to biological threats, is unfilled. The White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, established by Congress in 2022, is also unstaffed.

The C.D.C.’s emerging disease center has lost about 700 staff members and contractors, including the head of the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens, which covers hantavirus and Ebola. The C.D.C.’s Global Health Center has lost hundreds more employees, including many who helped African health ministries manage disease outbreaks.

… the C.D.C.’s Congo office has seven vacant positions for American staff, including the deputy director of the global health protection program and director of the H.I.V. program. (Staff from all programs would typically help in a large outbreak like this one.)

C.D.C.’s country office in Uganda likewise has at least four vacant spots, including the leaders of the global health protection and H.I.V. programs.

The Trump administration has instead prioritized a close-the-border approach to the current crisis. Although it recently committed slightly more than $200 million to the Ebola response in the DRC and Uganda, most global health experts consider this inadequate, especially considering the structural dismantling of foundational healthcare systems and long-term funding cuts inflicted by Musk and Trump over the past fifteen months. It reflects poorly on us as a nation. We can and must do better.

The mining town of Mongbwalu
(Photo: Arlette Bashizi, New York Times)

Let me close with a prayer for the medical workers and Red Cross volunteers who do God’s work every day at significant risk to themselves, while the world sits mostly in silence. These men and women are on the front lines combatting a frightening disease, widespread ignorance, and misinformation. They deserve our heartfelt thanks, praise, and support. Doctors Without Borders and other organizations assisting with these valiant efforts deserve our generous financial support. Human beings should never have to suffer like this. The world must respond.

The Power of Words and Duty to Country

Richard Goodwin (left), Jack Valenti, and President Johnson
January 12, 1966 (The White House/AP Photo)

Richard Goodwin, who was among the most talented and prolific speechwriters in American history, dedicated his life from 1960 to 1965 to two American presidents—John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He understood the power of words to move a nation and, more importantly when it came to legislation, move Congress. Goodwin was a “Kennedy man” with a Harvard pedigree, but following Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, Johnson persuaded Goodwin to remain on the White House staff. For the next two years, Goodwin crafted the words behind Johnson’s most impactful speeches on civil rights, voting rights, and the Great Society, giving voice to the president’s determination to raise America to unreached heights of equality and fairness.

“I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country. To right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.” Starting with these simple and powerful words, spoken eight days after “Bloody Sunday,” when state troopers violently attacked a group of peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, Johnson spoke before a Joint Session of Congress to urge passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The nation had before endured “moments of great crises,” Johnson declared, “[b]ut rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself.” Johnson’s words were direct, morally compelling, and set forth what was at stake – “the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation.”

The issue, of course, was the imperative of equal rights in the nation’s electoral process, and the need for Black Americans to “secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.” If America and the Congress were not up to the task, “we will have failed as a people and as a nation.” The cause of Black equality, Johnson insisted, was a cause all Americans should embrace. “Because … it’s all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

Johnson’s speech was powerful and impactful. His words spoke to the moral conscience of the entire country. They persuaded a bipartisan Congress to push America closer to the ideals of liberty, justice, and equality on which the nation was founded.

I have been reflecting lately on the power of words to inspire Americans to reach for its better angels, to more closely become the idealized vision of democracy to which we aspire. This is what leadership is supposed to be about. LBJ spoke with a Texas drawl and lacked the refinement of JFK. But he was an intelligent and deeply informed politician, and he knew that as the leader of a great nation, his public statements, speeches, and pronouncements required thoughtful deliberation, and sometimes poetry. This is where a talented speechwriter like Goodwin could be of service, to put into words why the country needed civil rights, voting rights, aid to education, protection of the environment, and medical care for the poor and the aged, not merely to improve the lives of some, but to allow all of America to reach its full potential.

The importance of dignified public leadership, and of words spoken with dignity by a nation’s political leaders, were driven home during my recent trip to the United Kingdom. While watching the local British newscasts, two things became apparent. First, the level of public discourse in Britain far surpasses what you see and hear every day in the United States. Political debates and competition are as ruthless in the UK as anywhere, but there are few if any gratuitous insults thrown about, no accusations of treason and sedition hurled at the opposition or the press for disagreeing with the prime minister. 

Second, when British journalists question public officials, they expect direct answers. Prescribed talking points result only in sharp follow-up questions until an answer to the original question surfaces. Talking over someone rarely occurs. Even when an unadmiring reporter asks tough questions, in Britain and most of Europe it is rare for anyone to shout at or insult the questioner. The British have a long tradition of high-level, high pressure, public debating. But as competitive and hard-nosed as political life can be in the UK, there remains an underlying sense of duty and dignity in its public discourse.

President Trump frequently boasts that he has restored respect for America around the world. But if my observations over eleven days in the UK have any bearing, nothing could be further from the truth. People outside the United States do not admire Trump’s undignified approach to leadership. Indeed, to the extent they even pay attention to him, the British public and press dismiss Trump’s daily social media posts and asinine comments as the undiplomatic rantings of an unstable man unfit for the office he holds. When he recently accused one of the world’s most respected national security correspondents, David Sanger of The New York Times, of treason and sedition—for reporting well-sourced U.S. intelligence assessments that sharply negated Trump’s assertions that the U.S. had achieved “total victory” in the war with Iran and questioned the extent of the damage caused Iranian missile capacity—the UK public recognized Trump’s insults for what they are: a desperate president’s attempts to suppress the truth, impose his will on inconvenient facts, and attack the messenger. These traits are not respected, anywhere. Anyone in the current administration who fails to see this is blind to reality.

When a nation’s leaders speak thoughtfully, when their words are principled and spoken in good faith, and when they convey a genuine concern for the nation and all its citizens, only then do people listen and engage in reflective consideration. Only when our leaders appeal to shared values over self-interest and base instinct can their words transform division into unity, elevate our moral imagination, and inspire us to reach for the stars.

As an American traveling overseas, it was embarrassing to contrast the comparative levels of discourse between the Trump White House with the statements of presidents, prime ministers, and members of parliament of most European countries. It is crude vs. dignified, uninformed vs. intelligent, crass vs. sophisticated. Maybe the American electorate wanted it this way when they voted for Trump in 2024; after all, Trump has always been transparent that he cares only about ego gratification, power, and economic self-interest.

But it should not be this way. We have lost our sense of purpose and the values to which President Johnson spoke in 1965, a moral clarity that all Americans knew, deep in their hearts, was right. A sense of right and wrong, an ethical concern for the public interest over private self-interest, and the knowledge that America can always do better and be better. Perhaps our appointed public officials have forgotten for whom they work and where their loyalties lie.

As recounted in An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who was married to Richard Goodwin for 42 years before he died in 2018, all the good Johnson accomplished during his first two years began to unravel as he escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War. Goodwin became increasingly dismayed by Johnson’s war policies and resigned in September 1965 (briefly returning only to assist with Johnson’s State of the Union speech in January). Johnson and other members of the administration never forgave Goodwin for what they perceived as an act of disloyalty, especially when Goodwin came out publicly against the war. As Doris Kearns Goodwin recalled, “[w]ords such as ‘traitor,’ ‘unpatriotic,’ and ‘disloyal’ were bandied about.” But Goodwin was right about the war, and despite his past partnership with Johnson, his duty was to his country, not his president.

This experience prompted Goodwin to write an essay on the loyalty of dissent, the words of which are well worth studying today. Goodwin wrote in part:

The government of the United States is not a private club or college fraternity. Its policies are not private oaths or company secrets. Presumably a man enters public life to serve the nation. The oath taken by every high officer of the nation, elected or appointed, is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not an Administration, a political party, or a man.

Dissenters are sometimes accused of demeaning the presidency. That office should demand respect. Its dignity, however, flows not from private right or title or the man who occupies it, but solely from the fact that its occupant is chosen by the people of the United States. It is their office, and if they, or any among them, feel that it is wrongly used, then it is their obligation to speak.

It should be apparent to everyone that these words possess exceptional resonance today. Each day’s news brings stories of corruption and conflicts of interest at the highest levels of government, and an utter disregard for ethics, law, and morality that is rampant throughout this administration. But I hope the tide is turning. Now more than ever it is time for responsible members of the Trump administration, the Republican Party, and those employed by the federal government, to heed the call and insist on decency and honesty in all public affairs. The American citizens deserve as much, and the rest of the world will respect us for it.

On God and Baseball

The Cathedral of St. Louis (Busch Stadium for the uninitiated)

Like Annie in the movie Bull Durham, I believe in the Church of Baseball. Religion and baseball may have nothing to do with each other, but baseball frequently operates in the same domain as religion. Watch any game during the defining moments of a pennant race and you will see hundreds of fans in the late innings with their eyes closed, hands folded in prayer, seeking heavenly blessings for their beloved players and teams. The players themselves appear to sense that God has a stake in the outcome of their games. They cross themselves as they step to the plate. They point to the heavens when they hit a home run or strike out an opposing batter. Certainly, God is not neutral in the affairs of baseball.

I am a rational human being. I accept scientific truths and accumulated knowledge of empirical research. Although my religious upbringing instilled in me a belief in God, as an adult my religious leanings are full of doubt and skepticism. And yet, while I cannot explain it, there are times in my life I have felt God’s presence. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “The moment we utter the name of God we leave the level of scientific thinking and enter the realm of the ineffable … which by its very nature lies beyond our comprehension.”

All of this leads to a fundamental question: Is God even a baseball fan? Certainly, God has no love for the powerful Yankees, the money-drenched Dodgers, or any of the evil teams that oppose the Cardinals and all their inherent goodness. In a just world, would not God intervene to ensure my beloved Cardinals won the World Series every season?

I know for certain that God was asleep at the switch when he (or she) allowed the Boston Red Sox to break the Curse of the Bambino in 2004. I did not object when God allowed the Red Sox, down three-games-to-none, to miraculously win the last four games and defeat the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series. But I can only conclude that other worldly matters distracted God when he allowed the Sox to sweep the 105-win Cardinals in that season’s World Series. Now, some people claim the Red Sox won because they played better baseball than the Yankees and Cardinals over that eight-game stretch. But you don’t really believe this, do you?

I am kidding, of course. I know God has nothing to do with how the Cardinals do on any given day or season. But I am convinced that each game’s outcome is determined by the coffee mug I choose to drink from each morning. When I open the kitchen cabinet and reach for that day’s mug, I think carefully about which one will provide the magic to help my team win that night. So far this season, I have chosen correctly 13 of 21 times, pretty good for a team not expected to do a whole lot of winning this year.

Is it possible that my lifelong attachment to the St. Louis Cardinals, a team for which I have no geographical or familial connection, arises from the same aura of ineffability to which Rabbi Heschel attests, that inexplicable, spiritual dimension of human experience that touches the core of our existence? I have been pondering such questions ever since reading Baseball as a Road to God (Gotham Books, 2013) by John Sexton and watching Baseball: Beyond Belief, the companion documentary, which aired recently on FS1.

Sexton is the former President of New York University and Dean of NYU Law School, who also holds a PhD in history of American religion. His book originated from a seminar he designed on baseball and religion, which contends that “baseball can show us more about our world and ourselves than we might have thought” and “can demonstrate the benefits of living a little slower, of noticing a little more, and of embracing life’s ineffable beauties.” Sexton does not literally contend that baseball provides an avenue to God, or that we should take too seriously the connection between baseball and religion. But he does seek to show parallels between baseball, faith, and spirituality.

Baseball, like religion, is full of sacred places and sacred times. Ballparks are cathedrals, a place where the faithful gather and commune. And much like the devoutly religious among us, the baseball fan’s innermost thoughts are filled with elements of faith, doubt, the hope for miracles, a belief in superstitions and myths, blessings and curses, saints and sinners, and a longing for community.

As noted by Sexton, just as the world’s great religions mark significant events on their holiest of days—Passover and Yom Kippur in Judaism; Christmas and Easter in Christianity; Ramadan in Islam—baseball has Opening Day, a time of rebirth and renewal, when every team gets a fresh start and the sins of the past are forgiven in the hope of new beginnings. Most religions point to an ultimate destination, the Road to Damascus, the Promised Land, the search for eternal salvation. In baseball, the postseason playoffs are baseball’s high holy days, and the World Series is the Promised Land. The only way to get there is to overcome adversity and be tested along the way. It is why all 30 major league teams play a long, drawn-out season of 162 games.

Within each season there are moments of heightened awareness, memorable events that become part of baseball mythology; a come-from-behind win, a walk off home run, a remarkable catch. These are the shared experiences of parents and children, brothers and sisters, and close friends that become sacred stories of baseball memories. In any ballpark, Sexton writes, “magic can happen, and the fan can be transported to a space and time beyond, to an experience we know profoundly but cannot put into words.”

Some of the oldest and most historic parks are considered especially sacred spaces, including Wrigley Field in Chicago, Fenway Park in Boston, and Yankee Stadium in New York. Yankee Stadium also contains Monument Park, where the Ghosts of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe Dimaggio, and Mickey Mantle are forever memorialized. On the University of Pittsburgh campus is the remnant of the outfield wall of old Forbes Field, marking where Bill Mazeroski hit the walk-off home run that defeated the Yankees in Game Seven of the 1960 World Series. To this day, people gather at the historical marker every October 13 and play a recording of the radio broadcast to relive that memorable moment in time.

Baseball, like religion, is also about community. After September 11, when the Yankees reached the World Series, it helped unite a city in pain and allowed a period of national healing. Even though the Yankees lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks, that series demonstrated baseball’s power to bring people together and celebrate America.

In Baseball as a Road to God, Sexton tells the story of when he and his best friend Dougie ran home from Catholic grade school on October 4, 1955, to catch the end of the seventh game of the World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees. As they put on the radio at Sexton’s house, they both placed their hands on a crucifix, got down on their knees, and prayed as they listened to the play-by-play. For the final three innings, they stayed on their knees until the Dodgers recorded the final out and became World Champions. For Sexton, it remains one of the most significant days of his life, an occurrence he only half-jokingly refers to as one of the twelve greatest events of world history. For him, it is a sacred memory.

Of course, as Sexton suggests, what is sacred for one person is not sacred for another. For Muslims, the Dome of the Rock is revered as the site of Prophet Muhammed’s ascension to heaven. Others see only a beautiful work of architecture. For devout Catholics and liturgical Protestants, bread and wine represent the body and blood of Christ as symbolized in the Eucharist. For the non-religious, it looks like the makings of a romantic picnic by the lake. Baseball is no different. For me, there is nothing special about the Dodgers, Brooklyn or otherwise, winning a World Series (apologies to Professor Sexton). But if the Cardinals ascend to the mountaintop, well then …

One thing all baseball fans share is a belief in miracles. Even the hard-core atheist understands that remaining loyal to one’s team in challenging times involves a leap of faith that, in any season, the impossible may occur. “A leap of faith,” writes Sexton, “is an embrace of feeling over logic, a willingness to loosen one’s dependence on the purely rational.”

My father experienced a leap of faith in 1951, when his New York Giants overcame a 13.5 game deficit in August to win the National League pennant on the final game of the year by Bobby Thomson’s walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth. For long-standing Giants fans, that season is still remembered as the Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff. The 1969 Miracle Mets and the “Ya Gotta Believe” 1973 Mets are two more examples of the impossible occurring. Ask any Mets fan old enough to have experienced those two seasons and you will hear similar and deeply embedded memories from all of them. And who can forget Kirk Gibson’s pinch hit home run in the 1988 World Series when he came off the bench with two crippled knees to win the game on one swing of the bat, leading to Vin Scully’s legendary call: “In a season that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened.” The fans of these teams, I dare say, believe in miracles to this day.

Speaking of miracles, can it be denied that the forces of destiny, or divine intervention, were in play when David Freese hit the game-tying triple with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in Game Six of the 2011 World Series that propelled the Cardinals to a miraculous, come-from-behind World Championship? I think not.

Of course, in religion and baseball, faith and doubt go together. As Sexton explains, “Doubt is at the core of baseball, touching every player and every fan. And doubt is central to the religious experience. They are not separate, they coexist. In baseball as in religion, doubt and faith are intertwined.” As a Cardinals fan, doubt is the essence of my existence. During my lifetime, I have seen too many blown saves in the ninth inning, too many times the Cardinals have blown three-game-to-one leads in the playoffs and the World Series, to ever allow confidence or a sense of calmness to enter my thoughts. When the Cardinals take a lead into the ninth inning, I think of all the different ways things can go badly. And far too often it happens. You aren’t paranoid if they really are out to get you.

And yet, the antidote to doubt is hope. Without hope, the fan cannot survive. I may doubt the Cards will pull out a win each game, but that is a psychological defense mechanism to fend off the dark clouds of despair that lingers should my hopes be crushed by a series of walks and hits and wild pitches resulting in a Cardinals loss. Hope may be deeply embedded in my soul. But only when the Cardinals record the final out and win the game can I finally exhale and experience a sense of calm and inner peace. At least until tomorrow night’s game.

There are certain events that lead to prolonged suffering and the belief in the minds of some fans that their teams have been cursed. Most of the great baseball curses arose from excessively long championship droughts, highlighted by a groundball through the first baseman’s legs (e.g., Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series) and similar occurrences. Before the 2004 World Series, the Red Sox went 86 years without a World Championship. Did it really have nothing to do with the owner selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $125,000 after the 1919 season? Did the Curse of the Billy Goat, inflicted on the Cubs by Billy Sianis after he and his beloved pet goat were removed from Wrigley Field in Game Two of the 1945 World Series (due to the stench caused by the goat), really have nothing to do with the Cubs not reaching the World Series for another 71 years?

Yet again, other teams can lose for even longer stretches of time without any talk of curses. The Philadelphia Phillies did not win a championship for the first 97 years of the team’s existence, and no one in Philadelphia ever talked about The Curse of Connie Mack or anything of the sort. Phillies fans simply chalked it up to a century of bad baseball. And if any team deserved a curse, it was the Chicago White Sox, whose best players threw the 1919 World Series after accepting bribes from gangsters. Not until 2005, 88 years after their last championship, did the White Sox again win a World Series. And yet, fans on the South Side of Chicago accepted that, win or lose, it is about baseball, not curses. Oh, ye fans of little faith.

Baseball, of course, does not really provide a “road to God” and Sexton does not suggest otherwise. But baseball, writes Sexton, “calls us to live slow and notice.” Baseball is a timeless game. It proceeds at its own pace. It teaches us to breathe, to develop a heightened sensitivity to the specialness of our lives. For three hours each day, it forces us to slow down, to set aside the noise and speed of everyday life. Our lives are never slow for long, yet baseball “can awaken us to a dimension of life often missing in our contemporary world of hard facts and hard science. We can learn, through baseball, to experience life more deeply.”

Perhaps in the end, the former President of Yale University and commissioner of major league baseball, A. Bartlett Giamatti, best explained the essence of baseball as a spiritual journey, when he wrote:

Baseball is about homecoming. It is a journey by theft and strength, guile and speed, out around first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper, then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language and, at third, to proceed, no longer by paths indirect but straight, to home.

Baseball is about going home, and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need. It tells us how good home is. Its wisdom says you can go home again but that you cannot stay. The journey must always start once more, the bat an oar over the shoulder, until there is an end to all journeying.