Reading from Agenda for a New Economy

Strong caring families and communities are not only the key to our happiness and physical health; their emotional support and simulation facilitate the maturing of our emotional and moral consciousness. They are therefore essential to the realization of our humanity and to the realization of true democracy, a real-wealth economy, and the world of our shared human dream.

Rabbi Michael Lerner
The great spiritual-religious wisdom traditions of the world have all taught some variant of this message: The deepest human pleasures come from living in a world based on justice, peace, love, generosity, kindness, and celebration of the universe and service to the ultimate moral law of the universe (whether learned through revelation or through reason).

David Myers "What is the good life?"
big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, secured rights and diminished civility. We were excelling at making a living but too often failing at making a life. We celebrated our prosperity but yearned for purpose. We cherished our freedoms but longed for connection. In an age of plenty, we were feeling spiritual hunger. These facts of life lead us to a startling conclusion: Our becoming better off materially has not made us better off psychologically.

Puanani Burgress tells the story of a Native Hawaiian navigator who learned and practiced the ancient Polynesian art of navigating to previously unvisited islands thousands of miles beyond the horizon.

Nainoa Thompson was taught by the master navigator from the Satawal Island in Micronesia, Mau Pialug, to navigate without instruments, using his native wayfinding skills to guide the Hawaiian double-hulled canoe Hokele'a on a Hawaii-Tahiti voyage of more than 2,200 miles.

As part of Nainoa's training process, Mau would take him to a lookout on O'ahu, where he could see the islands of Moloka'i, Maui and Lana'i. Mau would tell him,"Look beyond the horizon, so that you can see the island you are going to. Especially because you have never been there before, you have to see that island in your mind, or else you can never get there."

That ability- no, courage - to see something you have never seen before is an important part of navigating to the Earth Community that we all long for. Our ability to see it, describe it, share that vision is critical to making it real.

Like the navigators of the Pacific Ocean, the navigators of the Great Turning will require the gifts of mind as well as the heart of someone with the qualities of humility, leadership, courage, and kindness. When we think the journey is hard and impossible, I remember that we made the journey then and now.