Sustainable behavior is that which is socially responsible and economically viable, so designed and implemented that it can be continued indefinitely, without exhausting resources, without corrupting its environment, and without impoverishing its practitioners. An activity is sustainable if it can be continued indefinitely. Sustainability requires a change in our fundamental values; it requires us to be fundamentally countercultural and revolutionary. It is, in essence, as a monk of my acquaintance once told me, a "conversion experience". For not simply to alter how we do things but to change the value presupposition of why we do things is a conversion of the deepest kind.

The word "spirituality" refers to the condition of being of the spirit. The spirit is that which seeks transcendence, mystery, the other, that which seeks the BIG picture. It provides an essential faith in the future, a grounding for hope. It gives us the determination to persist and prevail. When we lose our cosmology, that is, our relation to the whole, to that BIG picture, we get small and we settle for shopping malls.

I knew a priest who used to end Catholic Masses not with the more common expression, "Go in peace", but with the much more challenging expression, "Go forth and make a difference". It is up to each one of you to determine what that means for you. But while you’re reflecting on that, don’t fail to consider the very old, popular and meaningful saying, "Actions speak louder than words". Will you, then, go forth and make a difference?