It's always dangerous when a speaker begins with an apology, but I do feel like I have to apologize.

I'm not an expert on Sartra, but I was given an assigned topic.

How many people are here because of the Sartra hook?

Okay, so that many people at least will be a little disappointed.

How many people here a little because of the Aquinas hook?

So you'll probably be disappointed too. But I do talk, I get to them eventually. You'll just have to tell me afterwards whether I've done justice to either or to your interests. So.

Across the road from my house, presiding confidently over a patch of lawn on the property between

my parish church and the old school house, there's a chestnut tree. I cannot say that the tree

is particularly important to me. Days can go by without my looking at it or taking any thought of it.

And yet, if I turn my attention to it, I realize that my experience of this tree is bound up

with much of what I know about where I live, about my family, and about the history of my country.

I have sat under its shade leaning against its rough, ridged bark,

noticing how its roots distend and break through the surface of the soil at its base

as I read a book or watch my children practicing riding their bikes.

Every fall, I have kicked the prickly hulls, drying from yellowish green to rusty brown,

that have fallen on the walking path that takes me and my family to Sunday Mass.

I have picked up and comforted my youngest son after he tripped,

tending to his wounded hand pierced by the, protective spines of the chestnuts hull.

On a few occasions, I have squeezed the chestnuts out of their hulls under my shoe and gathered up the slippery dark nuts, making sure to avoid the ones that have started to rot or to sprout.

I have scored these gathered nuts with a knife and roasted them. making sure to avoid the ones that have started to rot or to sprout.

I have scored these gathered nuts with a knife and roasted them,

once in the oven, once on an outdoor grill,

...