JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR'S impending retirement from the United States Supreme Court has been followed by newspaper headlines of a "high court fight" and a looming "confirmation battle." Before accepting these predictions of future strife in the political process, we should be asking ourselves, Should I agree to them? Is a fight inevitable?

What I find myself yearning for is a display of intelligence and harmony in the selection and the hearings leading up to the confirmation of the next justice. In his first presidential campaign, President Bush said of himself that he was "a uniter, not a divider." This is an opportune moment to put those words into action in a way that can actually heal some of the divisions that persist today.

It is time to put into action, at least in our own thinking and prayers, the prophet Isaiah's words, "Come now, and let us reason together" (1:18). While there are important cultural and political issues on which people have strong opinions, it would help to step back and recognize that these very issues may pale in importance in the 10 or 20 or more years a new justice will serve. No one knows what will seem most vital for the reputaion of the Court over a period of several decades. It is the qualities of thought—in essence, the character—of the new justice that should most concern us.

First among the qualities we might expect from a new justice would be absolute integrity. In fact, integrity doesn't even need a qualifying adjective in front of it! What else? In human terms, it would be an independence of thought combined with an ability to listen to others—even to the point of possibly being persuaded to change one's mind. The phrase "judicial temperament" brings to mind a sense of fairness, balance, and calm.

In reading several of the synopses of the Court's most important decisions in the term that has just ended, I felt that many of the former descriptions of opposite points of view just don't hold—liberal vs. conservative, strict vs. loose constructionist, states' rights vs. the power of the federal government, and so on. These are overly simplistic labels, not very useful in describing the unique aspects of many of the cases that make their way to the high court.

In the California medical marijuana case, for example, the Court overrode states' rights by affirming the federal right of Congress to legislate on harmful substances. Yet in the New London, Connecticut, property-taking case, it seemed to go in an opposite direction, ruling against the highly valued tradition of personal property rights and in favor of letting states take private property for commercial development.

Because both the process of choosing a candidate for the Court, as well as debating his or her qualifications, are so important, it would be at the least bad citizenship to go along with the current belief that the process has to be flawed or acrimonious. Jesus once said to his disciples, "Whenever you pray or ask for anything, have faith that it has been granted you, and ye shall have it" (Mark 11:24, Goodspeed translation). This translation is more direct than the language of the King James Bible, and also accords with the thought in Christian Science that what is good and God-given has already been established and is awaiting our recognition of it. Such prayer, in this case, isn't a wish for something personal, but expresses an expectation of good for everyone involved. And it's interesting that Mary Baker Eddy used this statement in an article entitled "Power of Prayer" (see The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 292-294).

The integrity that each individual—each child of God—already possesses could not belong just to you or me. It must be the birthright of everyone with whom we may come in contract, or whose actions affect our own welfare. Fairness and balance are integrity's natural offspring, so to the degree that we hold a prayerful expectation that fairness and balance will be expressed by the president, by senators, by the media, and by the populace generally, there will be less room in the mental arena for idle talk about "the coming battle."