People will say to you, "Oh, you are fearless." That is so not true. We should stop saying that about people. It's a slander, really.

Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.

There is no graceful way to carry hatred.

Healing cannot be done by settling a score.

It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings out of shame. This is the tragedy of the world. For we can do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet, a destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual, and bringing our small, imperfect stones to the pile.

In the far upper corner of my altar is a photo of Joan Crawford in her most fierce Mommy Dearest mode, just to remind me of some of the cost of everyone's hard-earned sweetness and light.

Now there are heavy houses everywhere and more of them are being built. In fact, it is only when more houses are being constructed that some countries consider their economics healthy. Yet each house is a heavy footprint on the Earth. Just as all our possessions represent-if we cannot learn ways of sharing them-a weight and clutter that often means the faces of future generations will look up into darkness and the pressure on the Earth of "things."