So tonight's talk is called Loving Life, Loving this Earth.

And a friend of mine in the Sangha reminded me or told me a few days ago that tomorrow

night is the anniversary of Saint Francis's death. And he was known as the patron saint

of animals in the environment. So Pope John Paul second called him the patron of

ecology. So in a way we get to claim this as a fitting time. It's one way.

So here I'd like to maybe name the question that I contemplate a lot within myself which

is given the sense that this earth is struggling, suffering and in trouble. What will help us

to wake up collectively in a way where we, where it's real enough in our bodies and hearts

so that we care enough to respond? What will help us to be sensitive and awake to both the

suffering of the earth and the preciousness of life? So we actually step out of our routines

and in some way collectively try to bring healing to our planet. What will it take? That's

my inquiry. One of the things that I'm aware of is that in the United States we spend on an

average about 90% of our time indoors. And of that time you might wonder how much of that is in

front of a screen. Probably a good chunk, right? What it tells us is that we're indoors in

an virtual world a lot and that has to affect our relationship with our larger body of the earth

that has to. I think of our children and more than ever that they're living in such a cyber world,

such a virtual reality and more than ever in the history of the planet not as actively involved with the

natural world. Will this generation care enough? These questions make sense to you? So will they really sense

this mysterious fragile world we're a part of? So I was reading one writer from actually wrote in the New

Yorker's. He described in his one story he tells how his son turned 12 and they had a very close

relationship but somehow rather around 12 this distance, this gap opened and he'd ask him questions

when he come home from school and there's just no verbal willingness at all. But one day his son

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