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."
It is hard to explain to a loving person who can only give, what the refusal to receive does to would-be givers. If our gifts come out of the substance of who we are, to refuse our gifts is a rejection of our very self. At the same time, the turning away of a gift destroys the reciprocity of love. In place of mutuality, it sets up a hierarchy of love that makes the one who always receives and whose gifts are refused feel empty, powerless, and incompetent to love well, and so unable in turn to receive from the beloved with a grateful heart.