It all starts with mental comparisons of the present time with the late sixties and early seventies when I was growing into manhood. There was a war then: the Vietnam War, just as there is a war now. Until American troops were withdrawn in 1973, the conflict split the nation, just as the nation is split now.

It is a myth that politicians are among our finest people. Throughout human history this has almost never been so. Humankind has most often created its great religions, institutions, ideas, and works of art despite political situations, not because of them.

In the sixties, for instance, a renaissance of great music, literature, and social movements erupted in the midst of the chaos. The world’s greatest artistic masterpieces have often been born out of despair, trauma, warfare, persecution, poverty, oppression, injustice, discrimination, and intolerance.

I’m not making sense. At least not enough sense. Nevertheless I will continue, albeit senseless.

I’m not only talking about art, either; I’m talking about spirituality, about the awakening of consciousness. Why is it that insight often arises out of deep dark experiences?

It’s not that the world is more full of evil than it has been in the past; evil has always existed. The difference is that now, in this era, we have the ability to obliterate everyone and everything, to eliminate all life on Earth. And some folks would rather do that than share what they have, or what they crave, with others.

In the greatest darkness light shines clearer. I am watching for that light. From whence will it emerge?

We cannot control what happens in the higher echelons of government. They have their own agendas, which often do not align with the needs of the people they are supposed to be serving. But we have control of our own psyches, our own minds and hearts.

A perennial nomad travels in thought as well as on foot. The spirit roams freely even if restrictions are placed upon the body.

But that’s not all of it. The analogy that comes to me is of childbirth. “A woman when she is in travail has sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembers no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.” Is humankind in the throes of childbirth or on the verge of apocalyptic disaster? Or both?

As Yeats wrote in his poem “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” So it often seems as “the worst,” with fervor and force, are hell-bent on leading us to inglorious destruction. But this cannot be the final word. What we wait for, then, is an awakening of truth, of righteousness, of gentleness, of peace, of prosperity for all and not just for those brandishing the most powerful weapons.