One of my greatest thrills about going to northern France was visiting the birthplace of Joan of Arc. I walked through her family home; stood beside her baptismal font; and wandered in awe over the grounds where she had her "visitations" from God. Max Weber says of her: "Charisma . . . bursts the bonds of rules and tradition and overturns all ideas of the sacred. It enforces a subjection to something which has never before existed." And Alfred North Whitehead says: "Youth forgets itself in its own ardor. . . . When youth has once grasped where beauty dwells, its self-surrender is absolute." Copyright 2007 Dell Belew