When we shrink from the world, our souls shrink, too.

When we shrink from the world, our souls shrink, too.

None of us can predict when the causes we support will capture the public imagination, and our once-lonely quests become popular crusades.

As Joanna Macy reminds us, "Information by itself can increase resistance [to engagement], deepening the sense of apathy and powerlessness." Stories about particular individuals and specific situations usually have the opposite effect. By giving unwieldy problems a human face, they also bring them down to a human-and thus manageable-scale.

Hope isn't an abstract theory about where human aspirations end and the impossible begins; it's a never-ending experiment, continually expanding the boundaries of the possible.

History...shows that even seemingly miraculous advances are in fact the result of many people taking small steps together over a long period of time.

We become human only in the company of other human beings. And this involves both opening our hearts and giving voice to our deepest convictions. ...When we shrink from the world, our souls shrink, too.