Economically: We need to stop talking about growth in terms of more production and adopt a standard for economic growth and development based on meeting human needs.
Nationally: We need to stop talking about national security and the national interest -- code words for serving the goals of the powerful -- and focus on people's interests in being secure in the basics: food, shelter, education, and communal solidarity.
Religiously: We need to stop trying to pin down God. We can understand God as simply the name we give to that which is beyond our ability to understand, and recognize that the attempt to create rules for how to know God is always a failed project.
We need to stop mistaking cleverness for wisdom. We need to embrace our limits -- our ignorance -- in the hopes that we can stop being so stupid.
When we do that we are coming to terms with the kind of animals we are, in all our glory and all our limitations. That embrace of our limitations is an embrace of a larger world of which we are a part, more glorious than most of us ever experience.
When we do that -- if we can find our way clear to do that -- I think we make possible love in this world. Not an idealized love, but a real love that recognizes the joy that is possible and the grief that is inevitable.
It is my dream to live in that world, to live in that love.
There is much work to be done if we want that world. There is enormous struggle that can't be avoided. When we allow ourselves to face it, we will realize that ahead of us there is suffering beyond description, as well as potential for transcending that suffering.
There is grief and joy.
And there is nothing to do but face it.
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