What’s the Problem, Man?

The bus hurtled down the highway at the edge of the canyon, weaving back and forth on the twisting road. I was in the front passenger seat, right up next to the windshield, staring open-eyed at the exotic landscape. It was raining hard. I watched the river below through the thumping windshield wipers. The bus leaned on its side at every turn, and I grasped my seat to keep from falling over, but I felt strangely unconcerned about falling over the cliff and into the chasm hundreds of feet below.

The giddy voices of my fellow trip members in the back of the big air-conditioned bus rose over the roar of the storm. I tried to ignore them, but I couldn’t help paying attention. They gossiped about romances, musical groups, jobs, acquaintances. It was all somehow painful to me. I had nothing to say to them. Our relations did not seem real. In all our interactions, there was not a single moment of mutual recognition.
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Are We Responsible for Global Poverty?

I am walking down the street, striving to feel the earth under my feet. I am the only pedestrian in sight. The streets are spotlessly clean, broad and smooth and black. The cars fly by, and not a single horn is blown. Are there living beings in those machines, graced with the capacity for intelligence and love?

I walk a full minute through a great parking lot and into the store, which is my destination: a great big box shaped store, without any architectural features to speak of, just gray slab cement walls. The lights are brilliant, the plastic floors squeaky clean. Overweight and pasty-faced mothers load up their shopping carts, and wait patiently at the registers. I shake my head, somewhat confused. Where did this wealth come from? Is it the result of the inventions of scientists and engineers? Was it manufactured in factories, by machines? Did we really earn this bounty, and do we deserve it?
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Those Who Have

The Missing Center of Vitality

There, Somewhere