Of all the issues we are concerned with at present, the most basic issue, in my estimation, is that of human-earth relations.

You cannot have well people on a sick planet.

Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.

The present urgency is to begin thinking within the context of the whole planet, the integral earth community with all its human and other-than-human components.

But if a peaceful world is beyond politics it is also beyond religions as these presently exist. A change is needed in every phase of human life. This lies mainly in recognition that the micro phase, the particular or national traditions, must find their context and fulfillment in the macro phase, the global or panhuman phase of human existence.

The divine communicates to us primarily through the language of the natural world. Not to hear the natural world is not to hear the divine.

We come here because we too feel a responsibility for the human community. To preserve and develop a human quality of life is the common responsibility of us all. It is not fitting that those concerned with the various aspects of the human be alienated from each other. Both you and ourselves represent forces too profound and aim at objectives too significant for either of us to succeed completely without the assistance of the other. The urgency of our work impels us to get on with our common task lest a new period of disaster erupt over the Earth.