The first thing to say is simply, "Thank you!"  Especially to many of you who so appreciatively responded to my mid-year query form (for mail subscribers only).  It really is so encouraging to hear from you!

Here are some things I've been pondering lately: the profound vulnerability of each and every one of us and how  here on this beautiful, living planet for such a brief little all-sufficient saving grace. And yet we consume ourselves as we seek to devour one another in useless games of speed of media and machinery.  "What shall it profit us if we gain the whole world and yet lose our own soul?" -- to paraphrase the New Testament.

No worry, no hurry. Stay as cool as you can, keep a goin! Someone wrote a piece called "The Abyss of Time," and ain't it the truth!  Receding and arriving with increasing rapidity as we "run for the shadows" of these golden years.  But it's all okay, because time is but a circle, bringing us round again to where we once were so soon ago.  Here's the main thing -- to keep faith with the moment, never regarding our present experience as useless.  It is all an opportunity to practice patience, courage and integrity.

I am once again, so glad to hear from Ram Dass via the article here excerpted from MODERN MATURITY. His practical wisdom is such a refreshing fountain, even from his own loss and suffering, he nourishes us all with abiding hope.  Yes, it is true, as the old song says, that "you've got to walk that lonesome valley all b yourself," but there are also wonderfully redeeming songs and deeds that we can create for one anther, such as the 23rd Psalm, such as the enduring theme of that first Ram Dass book, BE HERE NOW.  What else need be said or added.  It's all right there!

-- Bill Joyner

Ram Dass in MODERN MATURITY ~ July-August, 2000 ~ Amy Gross

How Do you Handle Pain?
I'm in pain now. I've had cataract surgery, and I've taken pain medication, but there's still pain,.  What you do is to ask yourself during pain: Is there a part of me that is not in pain at this moment? Or if in fear, Is there a part of me that's not in fear? That's enough, because the question will solve the problem.  You will find that there's some place inside you where there is no pain. It's not that the pain free place is higher or truer -- the pain is the truth, too, it is God too.  But you aren't fighting it anymore, and you're not afraid of it, and that releases you from its grip.

Most of us assume that aging is the end of growth - but you begin with the idea that it is an opportunity for growth.
It's the greatest learning we have. All our old desires are off our backs, finally.  We're quiet. We aren't dancing to the culture's drum. And we are silent inside.  That silence is there so that we can hear our intuitive wisdom: This culture sees life as collecting experiences.  But aging is an emptying out and beginning to experience the moment, what's happening right now. In our culture, we value old people who act young.  We don't value old people for acting old, for their wisdom,  For them to hear their own wisdom, they have to experience their own silence.  That's one of the ways the stroke was a blessing - it increased my silence.

But everyone advises the aging to keep busy, to fill up the hours. Are you saying that there's value in slowing down, that it may be enough to sit under a tree?
It is for me.  If people can find a really good situation with a fishing rod in hand, or stirring a pot, they'll tune in to such richness of the moment.  They will find that they can be here now. They will go into the fabric of the many levels of "I" in the moment, and that's ecstasy. You want more than ecstasy? [He laughs] Old people have a delightful chance for it.  There is, in each of us, everything; you've got it all on your hard drive.  All this keeping busy is killing an opportunity to engage the hard drive.

What about boredom, though? Isn't that a risk when you slow down?
A Quaker woman said to me, "Tam Dass, I'm just so terribly bored."  And I said, "Do you hear the kids? Do you hear the clock? Isn't there a nice light on your window sill? How are you bored?" We've got to treat the moment differently, turn it around.  Become an adventurer while studying your mind, including boredom.  I went to Burma for meditation and found myself in a little room, and there was nothing to do. I got so bored. I decided to study the boredom, very carefully.  That was where I first stared it down. What you do is merge with the moment.

Global Cooling

So what can we do about global warming?

Next, when shopping for an appliance - a refrigerator, a dishwasher, an air-conditioner - select the one with the highest energy efficiency rating.  There will be a sticker on the appliance, telling you how much energy it uses. Pay attention. There can be a difference of 30 percent to 40 percent or more in the amount of energy consumed by appliances with comparable features.

Even more important is the choice you make in the car or truck you buy. Motor vehicles are responsible for about a third of the carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. The vehicles that are the most fuel efficient emit the least carbon dioxide. (Fuel economy and carbon dioxide emissions are inversely proportional. If you double fuel economy, you cut carbon dioxide emissions in half.)

According to the research and advocacy group Environmental Defense, if you buy a new car that gets 10 more miles per gallon than your old car, the amount of carbon dioxide reduction realized in one year will be about 2,500 pounds.

So buying a  car or truck that suits your needs and fuel efficient is a big help.

Honda and Toyota are bringing so-called hybrid vehicles onto the marketing the U.S.  Hybrids are cars that combine an internal combustion engine and a a battery-powered electric motor.  They are mid-sized cars that are achieving twice the fuel economy of conventional cars.

Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, summed the matter up as follow: "The issue is not so much what we are doing, but how we power what we are doing.  That's the first step."

Over the long term, the requirements are far more ambitious,  Ideally, over the course of the next 100 or so years, a transformation will take place and most energy will end up coming not from fossil fuels like coal and oil, but from clean energy sources - the sun, the wind, hydrogen and non-polluting fuel cells.

"To get there at a cost that's affordable will require substantial technological development," said Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, the chief scientist of Environmental Defense.

To move from our pollution-choked present to a future in which climate change is not a mortal threat will take more than that all-important first step of an enlightened citizenry buying cleaner cars and more efficient appliances. Tough action by Congress and the president is needed, and soon.  And international cooperation, with enforceable agreements covering both industrialized and ultimately developing nations, will be crucial.

Among other things, the federal government can offer subsidies and other incentives to reduce the cost and foster the use of existing clean energy technology, and to encourage the development of ever more efficient new technologies.  And the government can - and should- develop more sophisticated strategies like emissions trading and more stringent requirements for reducing carbon dioxide emissions everywhere.

Global warming is the most serious problem we face in the 21st century. Last week an intensive analysis by a respected geologist at Texas A&M University, suggested- as most scientists have been saying for some time now - that human activity, not natural factors, is the primary cause of the warming.

We caused the problem and we have within our grasp a variety of potential solutions. To ignore those solutions, to be aware of them but not make use of them, is not just profoundly destructive, it's suicidal.