As seems to happen each Christmas, someone gives me a book I would never have bought for myself – but ought to read.  This year it is “The Spiritual Journey of George Washington,” by Janice T. Connell.  Thanks to my wife, Charmaine.

Most Americans know little about the man I learned in school to be the Father of our Country.  They may know he was the first president and spent a cold winter at Valley Forge.  (Actually, the winter at Morristown was probably worse.)

But what most folks don’t know is detailed in this book.  Washington was a deeply religious man who believed humbly in his dependence on God.  He lived by a code of life called “Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.”  It is worth a Google search and read – rather quaint, but if we all lived by these rules the world would be a more civilized place.

Washington also had a collection of daily prayers that express his gratitude to God and ask humbly for guidance.  You get a sense of a man more concerned with doing the right thing than what was most profitable for him personally.

Maybe that is why he the only American President who was elected without opposition.