Part of my bedtime routine when I was a child was to say my prayers with my parents and then confess any wrong I had done during the day. Sometimes I made my parents sad, and myself, too, but my confessions were always followed by immediate forgiveness, by assurances of love, the love of my parents, the love of God. I am grateful for the teaching given me by my parents, because it grounded me in an awareness of God's all-embracing love.
We live in a moment of grace. Through the hedges of our divisions we are beginning to glimpse again the beauty of life's oneness. We are beginning to hear...the essential harmony that lies at the heart of the universe. And we are beginning to understand...that we will be well to the extent that we move back into relationship with one another, whether as individuals and families or as nations and species. The time is right. The time is desperately right.