The Christian message, like an ecosystem, is about process. In an ecological sense, the cross symbolizes a willingness to die so that the continuation of life might be served. Now we must extend our love to the unborn if we are to serve eternal life.

We recognize that our progress as a species does not have to be defined in terms of wealth or material and physical growth any more than our progress as individuals has to be defined in terms of physical growth. Physical growth of the body reaches a limit, but the character and the soul of the individual continues to grow, or at least has a chance to continue, often to our last breath. It is simple minded to define our well being in material terms, when that well-being has an aesthetic dimension, and intellectual dimension, a moral dimension.

Instead of trying to understand agriculture in its own terms, acknowledge that agriculture ultimately comes out of nature. Right now agriculture is the No. 1 threat to biodiversity on the planet.

Politicians are simply reflections of the public.

We the people, so to speak, need to realize that if we can keep ourselves fed, we might get through this long dark tunnel of power down, and mitigate the consequences of CO2.

As we search for a less extractive and polluting economic order, so that we may fit agriculture into the economy of a sustainable culture, community becomes the locus and metaphor for both agriculture and culture.

When people, land, and community are as one, all three members prosper; when they relate not as members but as competing interests, all three are exploited. By consulting Nature as the source and measure of that membership, The Land Institute seeks to develop an agriculture that will save soil from being lost or poisoned while promoting a community life at once prosperous and enduring.