Scott McClellan has made the news circuit in recent days because of his shocking reflections on his tenure as the President’s press secretary. I don’t believe there is any comparable book where a former presidential press secretary has so completely disavowed the messages that he himself promulgated. Whether on war or crime or policy, McClellan has confessed to either being a source of error himself or of being deceived by the most senior people in the White House.

It’s disturbing enough to see someone of his stature accuse the administration of willful deception. After all, he was the administration. He was the one standing before the cameras, he was the one spinning the message, he was the one who was on the record. If he’s claiming deceit, then there’s no real debate: deceit it was. He was getting his talking points directly from the boss.

What’s even worse than feeling totally let down by one’s government is having to endure the explanations of what went wrong. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank captured McClellan’s repeated attempts to deflect responsibility in his Friday column. He was, in his words, “in the White House bubble.” “You get caught up in the…bubble.” He blamed “the permanent campaign culture.” Now he is “disappointed,” “dismayed and disillusioned.”

How about “responsible?”

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Hillary Clinton’s amazing campaign is over. Regardless of what one thinks of her, we can all appreciate the model she has set for women and girls. She’s redefined the possible in politics, and our country is forever changed because of her.

Pundits have already begun to evaluate her next political move. Senate leader? Legislative powerhouse? New York governor? None of the options seems exactly right.

At times of transition, when people don’t know where to turn, the spiritual world has an answer: Do nothing. Do nothing every day. Do nothing at all for several days and then continue doing nothing at least once a day for the rest of your life!

That’s how the spiritual teachers frequently counsel those of us who, like Hillary Clinton, are in the midst of upheaval, facing uncertain outcomes with no clear road map.

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C.S. Lewis once wrote, “You have never met a mere mortal.” Those words came to me as soon as I heard of the sudden and heartbreaking death of Tim Russert. He was no mere mortal.

The last time I saw Tim Russert was just 10 days ago. He came up to me as I was talking to his sparkling wife, Maureen Orth, about the school in Colombia that bears her name and is the focus of her passion. Tim asked me about my uncle Ted, who’s fighting cancer. He told me that he’d written to Ted to express his support. “I wrote him,” he said, “and told him that I was praying for him with my wood bead rosary. I told him that nothing beats praying with the wood bead rosary.”

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Last week, I joined my daughter Caroline’s 5th-grade class on a visit to Colonial Williamsburg. In Bruton Parish Church, I sat in Thomas Jefferson’s pew and looked up at the altar where there was a seat of reverence for the bishop and one for the governor, too.

I imagined Jefferson coming to the realization that something was wrong with the relationship between the church and the state. Somehow, he realized that the King’s Governor and the King’s Bishop didn’t belong on the altar together.

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The names in this post were changed because I was not able to confirm permission to use them. The accounts however, are completely accurate as I saw and heard them at L'Arche. I apologize for my oversight in not noting this when the column was originally posted on Monday.

“How’s your mum?”

That’s what Peter Frey says every time he speaks to anyone. He says it maybe 50 times a day. He says it every single day. He’s been saying it for as long as anyone can remember, over and over again. “How’s your Mum?”

Peter works on a farm in Canada, lives with friends and has a severe intellectual disability. To most, he appears an unlikely teacher. Short of stature, with an extra chromosome in every gene, to the world he’s vulnerable and hopelessly disabled. He can’t do anything. Except say, “How’s your Mum” over and over and over again.

But to Jean Vanier and to his thousands of followers around the world, Peter is among the world’s most gifted teachers of the art of relationship.

Vanier is a man just months short of his 80th birthday and is the cofounder of L’Arche. In L’Arche homes all over the world, people with severe disabilities live, work and pray together with non-disabled assistants.

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