What we need are guardians — guardians committed to the middle path of mindfulness and dedicated to the enormous task of restoring and healing our ravaged planet. Guardians who have penetrated the anthropocentric notions of our civilization and who, as Aldo Leopold said, can begin to "think like a mountain" and acknowledge that we are only "plain embers of the biotic community."
What is the way that leads to life? The narrow way, the way less traveled, the alternative wisdom of Love. It has two closely related dimensions. First, it is an invitation to see God as gracious and womblike rather than as the source and enforcer of the requirements, boundaries, and divisions of conventional wisdom to a life that is more and more centered in God. The alternative wisdom of Love sees the religious life as a deepening relationship with the Spirit of God, not as a life of requirements and reward.