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As if often the case, several things at once have converged moving across my desk to highlight what must be understood at this very critical (and perhaps we should also say, precious) moment in our time on earth. The first is a poem from Mary Oliver's new book Red Bird, and the second is a link sent me by Diana Beardsley from NYT and Thomas Friedman's recent, insightful article, which I think is a "must read." Here they are:

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accomodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html?em