I have never met a person whose greatest need was anything other than real, unconditional love. You can find it in a simple act of kindness toward someone who needs help. There is no mistaking love. You feel it in your heart. It is the common fiber of life, the flame that heats our soul, energizes our spirit and supplies passion to our lives. It is our connection to God and to each other.
Is it possible to see the future as dark and darkening further; to reject false hope and
desperate pseudo-optimism without collapsing into despair?...if you don't feel despair, in
times like these, you are not fully alive. But there has to be something beyond despair,
too; or rather, something that accompanies it, like a companion on the road....I am
going to pick up [my scythe] and go and find some grass to mow. I am going to cut
great swaths of it...I am going to walk ahead, following the ground... I am going to
breathe the still-clean air and listen to the still-singing birds and reflect on the fact that
the earth is older and harder than the machine that is eating it—that it is indeed more
resilient than fragile—and that change comes quickly when it comes, and that
knowledge is not the same as wisdom.