We spend an average of 163 more hours a year at our jobs than we did thirty years ago, and the percentage of American's who believe that the "American Dream" is still alive dropped from 32% in 1986, to 23% in 1992 (just four years later.) Furthermore, the amount of garbage produced in the United States each year would fill a convoy of 10-ton garbage trucks 145,000 miles long -- over halfway to the moon. Each year we send to land fills or pour down our drains, 180 million gallons of motor oil. The amount of energy consumed by one American is equal to 14 Chinese, 168 Bangladeshi, and 531 Ethiopians. The average U.S. citizen causes 100 times more damage to the environment than our brothers and sisters living in poor countries. More than half a billion of the globe's poorest people earn less than the typical American child receives for pocket money ($230.00 a year.) Since 1940 Americans alone have consumed as large a share of the earth's mineral resources as all previous generations put together. In the last 200 years the United States has lost 50% of its wetlands, 90% of its northwestern old growth forests, 99% of its tallgrass prairie, and 490 species of native plants and animals, with 9,000 more now at risk. 9 square miles of rural land in our country is turned over to developers every day. We black top 1.3 million acres of land, and lose another 1 million acres of top soil each year. Within the next 50 years, The World Resources Institute warns that supplies of copper, lead, mercury, tin, zinc, and nickel will be completely depleted.

There's no doubt in my mind that mine is a wounding and wounded nation, and yet, I love it still. I read somewhere that, "The United States is a planetary nation, emerging not from a particular race of people but from the efforts, hopes, and dreams of men and women of all races and nations. It is the site of a great planetary experiment; the U.S. emerged with a destiny to serve humanity in ways no other country has ever done before." In regards to the rest of the world, our nation may very well be compared to that of a 'precocious child.' Created from the daring and determination of some of the very best the world had to offer (consisting of people from almost every nation on the globe) we advanced rapidly, gaining momentum and wisdom from the vast numbers of souls who braved their way to our borders. United by a common dream, and enriched by our diversity, we achieved, and we triumphed. But we (the precocious child,) grew too quickly, and were not entirely prepared for the privileges and responsibilities that accompanied our success.

Carl Jung suggested that the most important problems that confront people aren't as likely to be "solved," as they are to be "outgrown." Jung also asserted that this "outgrowing" would result from some "higher or wider interest" that would involve a new kind of consciousness. While this new perspective may not "logically" solve the dilemma, the problems would generally be diminished Jung observed, "when confronted with a new and stronger life urge."

Many of us have forgotten that the 'American Dream' was founded, to a large extent, on spiritual values. Ironically, we can be reminded of our original legacy every time we hold a dollar bill in our hands. On every American dollar bill our great seal is stamped. On one side of the seal is an incomplete pyramid with an eye placed above it, and contains the words, "annuit coeptis" (he favors our undertakings.) It's been interpreted that the eye represents the eye of God, and symbolizes spiritual vision and purpose, while the pyramid represents the material world. According to futurist, Willis Harmon, author of "Global Mind Change," the incomplete pyramid indicates that our nation's vision will require divine insight in order to be fully realized.

The eagle's been said to represent spiritual guidance, and like the monks who shaved their heads in the middle ages in order to remain open to receiving the spirit, the eagle's head too is bald. While it clutches both an olive branch (a universal symbol of peace), and arrows in it's talons, it distinctly faces the olive branch. The banner held by the eagle asserts,

E pluribus unum (unity from many) and, novus ordo seclorum (a new order of the ages is born), announcing, according to Harmon, that our country would introduce a new spiritually based order to the world.

It's been said that if we in America are going to effectively meet the numerous challenges that confront us, we'll need a new dream. Maybe that's true, on the other hand, perhaps instead, we only need to revise or reconnect to an old vision, one that has enormous potential to serve us. A vision where the "pursuit of happiness" isn't overshadowed by the pursuit of money and possessions, where "the pursuit of liberty" includes the freedom for families in the poorest of countries to acquire that which is necessary to sustain them emotionally, physically and spiritually, and where "the pursuit of life" takes into account the lives of those not yet born.

FAITH AND SCIENCE

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another." Thoreau

Margaret Mead, anthropologist, educator, social activist, and humanist possessed a tremendous thirst for knowledge. This thirst, coupled with her commitment to action, led Time Magazine in 1969 to name her, "Mother of the World." She cared deeply not only about the fate of her fellow Americans, but about the well-being of all her brothers and sisters who shared the home that she described with tenderness as "small and lonely and blue."

Understanding that we must change what we think before we can effectively alter what we do, she sought to change the attitudes that imperiled each and every one of us. Mead advised, "It is our thinking that we must modify if we are to make and implement the decisions necessary to protect the world we live in." She warned that we were living beyond our means and urged Americans to embrace those values that might lead us to a new era. A new era in which, "... the entire nation is involved in a search for a new standard of living, a new quality of life, based on conservation not waste, on protection not destruction, on human values rather than built-in obsolescence and waste." She recognized the power of each and every one of us to make an impact in our communities and redirect our course. "If we are to restore some kind of balance to the relationship between population and earth resources, we will have to find ways to shift human beings from the present retreat from individual responsibility to a recognition of just how creative and significant each individual can be," noted Mead.