Aren't we privileged to live in a time when everything is at stake, and when our efforts make a difference in the eternal contest between the forces of light and shadow, between togetherness and division? Between justice and exploitation? Oh, be joyful that you are a warrior in this great time! Will we rise to this battle? If so, we cannot lose, for rising up to it is our victory. If we represent love in the world, you see, we have already won.

It is no longer enough to discuss ecology across the coffee table or to theorize about how much time we have before water supplies become so polluted or the ozone layer so reduced that human life is threatened. Now is the moment for commitment, for staking life on making God's presence known in rock, ocean and forest. Now is the time to resist relentlessly every act of violence against creation.

Some of us will be drawn to public and prophetic action that calls attention in dramatic ways to the devastating future we face if we refuse to change. Others will be drawn to less noticeable forms of action. Our prayer needs to be one of discernment: How does God want me to act, choose, pray in this moment so that my way of life enhances the goodness of creation?

Think of a child asleep in her mother's arms; the abandon with which she gives herself to sleep can only be because she has complete trust in the arms that hold her. She is not lying asleep on that heart because she is worn out with anxiety. She is asleep there because it is a delight to her to be asleep there.

The mother rests too. She rests in her child's rest.... Rest is a communion between them. It is a culmination of content. On the child's part, utter trust in her mother; on the mother's part, sheer joy in the power of her love to sustain her life.

Such as this was the rest of God in the beginning of time, when God had created the world. Our rest in a world that is full of unrest is Christ's trust in his Faither; our peace in a world without peace is our surrender, complete as the surrender of the sleeping child to her mother, of the Christ in us, to God who is both Father and Mother.

To bury your pain is a way of surviving your pain and therefore by no means to be dismissed out of hand. It is a way which I venture to say has at one time or another served and continues to serve all of us well. But it is not a way of growing. It is not a way of moving through adolescence into adulthood. If you manage to put behind you the painful things that happen to you as if they never really happened or didn't really matter all that much when they did, then the deepest and most human things you have in you to become are not apt to happen either.

Whenever we pray, we are tapping the power of creation, and that's a mighty power. There are a lot of battle lines to cross in order for us to pray with each other, and with the rest of the world, with those who do not agree with us, with those who worship God in ways we do not understand. But that is all right. We do not have to understand. We do have to try to turn to love, to know that the Lord who created all, also loves all that which was made.

By nature, by essence, we co-inhere with others. God is in them. If God's love and my love cannot touch the depths in the other, then I choose to take and absorb whatever may be directed toward me out of the evil of the other. That is far better than isolating myself, cutting myself off from God in people. The isolation technique is sure death. If I stay open, any hurt I sustain serves to drive me more deeply into God, who is love....

Jesus, the world's greatest realist, believed the universe was friendly. So, even with what I know about the power of darkness and the demonic as it expresses itself through people, I am going to connect as Jesus did and let people--all people, my kind and not 'my kind'--be the instruments of God's love and presence flowing into me. And I'm going to flow into them.

To connect is to relax. It is to rest. It is to trust. It is to let down. It is to be cared for. It is to be nourished. For the most part, we are terribly isolated from people and we remain in a defensive stance toward those with whom we come in contact. To be alienated from people is to be alienated from God.

We are part of the whole which we call the universe, but it is an optical delusion of our mind that we think we are separate. This separateness is like a prison for us. Our job is to widen the circle of our compassion so we feel connected with all people and situations.

The fundamental attitudes of true community, where there is true belonging, are openness, welcome, and listening to God, to the universe, to each other and to other communities. Community life is inspired by the universal and is open to the universal. It is based on forgiveness and openness to those who are different, to the poor and the weak. Sects put up walls and barriers out of fear, out of a need to prove themselves and to create a false security. Community is the breaking down of barriers to welcome difference.

I remember a conference in NYC. The topic was social justice. Assembled for the meeting were theologians, pastors, priests, nuns and lay church leaders.

At one point a Native American stood up, looked out over the mostly white audience, and said, "Regardless of what the New Testament says, most Christians are materialists with no experience of the Spirit. Regardless of what the New Testament says, most Christians are individualists with no real experience of community."

He paused for a moment and then continued: "Let's pretend that you were all Christians. If you were Christians, you would no longer accumulate. You would share everything you had. You would actually love one another. And you would treat each other as if you were family."

His eyes were piercing as he asked, "Why don't you do that? Why don't you live that way?"

We believe ourselves to be engaged this very moment in that which is the hope of the world. Our commitment is to the Lord of that redemptive community which has the task of pushing back its boundaries until it holds the world. There will be no peace or healing in our day unless little islands of koinonia can spring up everywhere--islands where Christ is and because he is, we can learn to live in a new way.

The most characteristic feature of the humility of Jesus is his forgiveness and acceptance of others. By contrast, our nonacceptance and lack of forgiveness keep us in a state of agitation and unrest. Our resentments reveal that the signature of Jesus still is not written on our lives. The truest sign of union with the crucified Christ is our forgiveness of those who have perpetrated injustices against us. Without acceptance and forgiveness the dark night will be only that. The bottom line will be a troubled heart.