When you look at what is happening to our world-and it is hard to look at what's happening to our water, our air, our trees, our fellow species-it becomes clear that unless you have some roots in a spiritual practice that holds life sacred and encourages joyful communion with all your fellow beings, facing the enormous challenges ahead becomes nearly impossible.

The refusal to feel takes a heavy toll. Not only is there an impoverishment of our emotional and sensory life, flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstaticâ but this psychic numbing also impedes our capacity to process and respond to information. The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies.

We are making choices that will affect whether beings thousands of generations from now will be able to be born sound of mind and body.

The most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present to what is happening in the world.

The sorrow, grief, and rage you feel is a measure of your humanity and your evolutionary maturity. As your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal.

There are the holding actions, the changing actions, and the vision of the future - what we want to see happen for the Earth. All are essential.

Action isn't a burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders. It is something we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a kind of coming alive. More than some moral imperative, it's an awakening to our true nature, a releasing of our gifts.