Leadership is a punishment that God inflicts on obstinate teenagers.

Ruby was the giant, the bob thread that held the tapestry together. Everybody else was made possible by her. One could spend many a night contemplating the significance of that fact.

My wife and I saw Cold Mountain last night. Cold Mountain is the story of a North Carolina man called Inman, who hails from the Appalachians and is called to fight in the Civil War. He leaves his beloved, Ada, behind in their hometown of Cold Mountain - hence the name of the book and movie. After four years at war, he flees from a hospital to return to Ada - to Cold Mountain, for the story is as much about place as it is about lovers - and the story becomes the story of his Odyssey and Ada's patient waiting.

This story is so rich in imagery, character, place, emotion, and literary tradition that a person could gain a solid liberal education by reading and studying it for his four years of college - and he would be more humane and wiser for it if he approached it rightly.

The character Inman restores the strong, reserved, hard-working, loyal man to his place as a model of manhood. I am often left feeling that these supposed hard men of the 19th century had a capacity for love that we modern sensitive men lack. They worked the land and were forced to accept it for what it was. In so doing, they learned their powers and their limits. At least in the literature of the day, it was a complex love/hate relationship, but not one they wanted to end. They had a capacity for endurance that shames me. Their love for the land and their acceptance of what it demanded of them formed them. They were able, as a result, to love their families after this strong, dare I say heroic, manner. They didn't live a life of illusions and the pursuit of rainbows. They wanted what they had and they wanted to know and love it.

Perhaps this is a romantic view of that life. But I know that all of them had at least the potential, and many more of them realized that potential, for deeper souls than the modern sophisticated, urbane man. I saw this demonstrated last night when my wife and I visited Borders. I sat on the other side of a book case from a group of teenagers. I love teenagers. I have three for children and have been teaching them since I was one. There is something wonderful about the age. But I hate - I despise - I curse what our culture has done to them.

I overheard something I believe the modern world may be the first to have created: the sexually active innocent. In her horribly excessive and directionless yearning to be accepted, a little girl of not more than 15 - probably younger - spoke sweetly and nicely about how she didn't know what a new sexual term meant. The five or six boys around her - and no they weren't leering exactly, they had achieved, or put on, an (agonizing to see) ironic detachment in their sexual conversation - expressed surprise that she couldn't figure out the meaning on her own. She sweetly responded that she simply hadn't heard the term before. Her humility was utterly disarming. I remember the humiliation I felt on the bus home from school in 8th grade when a supposed friend accused me of not knowing what a sexual term meant. I denied the truth like Peter for long enough to figure it out. I would not have dared admit I didn't know.

In the course of this conversation, this sweet little girl described her mother as "hot" while the boys were comparing other kids' moms, she and another girl talked about how hot a star of some sort was and whether they would be willing to become a lesbian for her (one emphatically was, though she did not consider herself a lesbian at this time), and she mentioned that she had seen pornography the week before for the first time "because I hadn't seen it before." The boys teased her by describing the kinds of "sexual aids" (how utterly ironic a term for today) she would have wanted while viewing the pornography. My heart deflated while they spoke in such knowing, sexual sophistication about something they probably will never actually experience - a truly sexual encounter.

This girl had no self, and the boys had no souls. And barriers had been structured around their minds to prevent any nutrients from reaching the self or the soul. Why didn't she take offense at the horrifyingly insulting teases they directed at her? Why didn't she slap them? Why didn't she know they were attacking her in teh most secret keep of her soul? She was such a sympathetic character. She was Francesca. Has she already abandoned every hope?

Would to God that they could encounter their limits and learn to live in them soon so that they stop willing themselves as though they were mythical gods - not subject to the laws of nature and free to pursue the passion they feel without regard to its ultimate purpose and the limits that enable us to fulfill that purpose.

For on Cold Mountain you learn to build a fence - but you never forget the names of the stars.

Two straight thrillers and now off to Philadelphia. Everybody wants to know what I expect in Sunday's game against the Eagles. I can't tell if this is wishful thinking or true analysis, but here are my frognostications:

The Eagles have a very good, confusing defense. But the Packers are better than the Eagles at O-line vs. D-line. The Eagles have not been good at stopping the run. Favre has never played smarter. People may not realize how complete the Packer offense is. The Packers will mix things up amazingly and score 25 or more points.

The Eagles can't score that many points against the Packer defense unless someone goes down in the Packer secondary. Philadelphia will score 15-20 points.

The Packers will surprise everybody except me and those who pay attention by turning the ball over once, by moving the ball effectively against the Eagles defense, and by keeping the Eagles offense under wraps.

Packers by 10 or 15.

St. Louis will beat the Panthers by 7-10 points.

New England and Indianappolis will win in the AFC.

The Rams will play the Colts in the Superbowl.

I don't know who will win.