In the work now required of us, both the immediate and the long-term, a seeming flood of pressing needs demands attention - recognising our kinship with the Earth community and acting to protect it, nurturing and protecting that which cannot be commodified, and replacing politics of denial with a renewal of coherence based on wisdom and compassion. In reflecting on the insight, commitment and joy that the wisdom traditions can yield in the tasks we face, I experience once again the habit of gratitude that seems to accompany spiritual practice. Gratitude arises for all the people working from various directions to give birth to ecological postmodernity - the holistic scientists, the communitarian grassroots activists, the process philosophers, the visionary artists, and, yes, all those deconstructive postmodernists who warn us of the shortcomings of human systems of knowledge yet search for engagement with the ineffable. Gratitude arises for all the Jews, Christians, and Muslims who now and in the past have challenged institutional failures to enhance the great communion and who have courageously acted to shape their traditions by advancing justice and love. Gratitude arises for all people who now and in the past have kept alive a sense of the Goddess - through images in village women’s crafts, through preservation in the face of historic persecution, through the rebirth of ritual arts of the Earthbody and the personal body. Gratitude arises for the steadfast guardianship of native peoples, preserving their sacred trust with the Earth community even through centuries of forced assimilation, exploitation, and genocide. Gratitude arises for the Buddha and all true teachers of Dhamma, gently spreading release from anguish and ill will.
Gratitude arises for their bounteous gifts of grace and for the possibilities before us”
