When you look at the Pueblo communities along the Rio Grande, when you talk to the Navajo people, the Ute people, and certainly the native peoples of California who still have their communities intact, it is what they have always known: that we are not apart from nature but a part of it.

I will never be able to say what is in my heart because words fail us, because it is in our nature to protect, because there are times when what is public and what is private must be discerned.

Every time we make love to a human being, fully, we are making love to everything that lives and breathes. In that sense it becomes communion. It is a sacrament.

I accept the Organic Trinity of Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal with as much authority as I accept the Holy Trinity. Both are sacred.

When Pico [Iyer] talks about home being a place of isolation, I think he's right. But it's the paradox. I think that's why I so love Great Salt Lake. Every day when I look out at that lake, I think, "Ah, paradox" - a body of water than no one can drink. It's the liquid lie of the desert. But I think we have those paradoxes within us and certainly the whole idea of home is windswept with paradox.

When I write, I put one foot in front of the other. It's an act of faith. I just follow my heart.

Thomas Berry calls the Ecozoic Era, a time when we recognize the imperative of caring for the planet as a means of compassionate survival. We do not know what the outcome is going to be, but we have an opportunity to make these kinds of creative and imaginative leaps of thought and actions both locally and globally. This is completely antithetical to the direction George W. Bush is leading this nation. I do trust that the open space of democracy is ultimately the open space of our hearts and that we can follow our own leadership that carries a long-term view way beyond "four more years."