"Nothing is ever lost" means that what we are now goes all the way back through natural history. We are biological organisms and not simply computerized brains. By focusing totally on the present, thinking only about science and computers, and forgetting four billion years of life on this planet, we are losing perspective on who and what we are.
Robert Neelly BellahWhile there are practical and sometimes moral reasons for the decomposition of the family, it coincides neither with what most people in society say they desire nor, especially in the case of children, with their best interests.
Robert Neelly BellahYet Buddhism is four hundred years older than Christianity, and if it's not a universal religion I don't know what a universal religion is. There's also a strong focus on selectionism and the notion that religion plays a functional role in the evolutionary process. But religion is dysfunctional all the time, as well as functional. It's not so simple.
Robert Neelly BellahThe central icon of Catholic Christianity is mother and child. That motif is so deep in not just our human experience but in our animal, biological past.
Robert Neelly BellahHowever painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.
Robert Neelly BellahThe problem of the universal is difficult in every case. The universal and the particular can never be separated; they always go hand in hand.
Robert Neelly BellahWe have imagined ourselves a special creation, set apart from other humans. In the last twentieth century, we see that our povertyis as absolute as that of the poorest nations. We have attempted to deny the human condition in our quest for power after power. It would be well for us to rejoin the human race, to accept our essential poverty as a gift, and to share our material wealth with those in need.
Robert Neelly Bellah