Today is the first Sunday of Advent, which means that today is the first day of the new liturgical year. Happy New Year! The song that is often associated with this day is "O Come O Come Emmanuel." I was looking at the lyrics and was struck by this line: "That mourns in lonely exile here." That basically sums up the last nine months, doesn't it? 9 months of staying home. 9 months of wondering when and where it is safe to gather. 9 months of lonely exile. And yet, we still have hope. I feel like I have much more hope now than I did two months ago. I have hope for a vaccine. I have hope that the country will stay united -- at least, more united than I imagined it might a few months ago. I have hope for normalcy again. It feels good to have hope. And yet, I've learned this year that I can't place hope in human institutions, no matter how good they are. Sometimes science will come to the wrong conclusion if the data is incomplete. Sometimes government will