"I am alarmed and saddened. Probably our greatest teacher, which is nature, has been unsuccessful in teaching us lessons. Season in and season out, you plant tomato seeds. If anything comes up, you'll have thousands, millions and millions of seeds. The problem is that when harvest time comes, we think we can harvest oranges or onions.

Still, we plant cruelty, unkindness, violence, greed - in our families, in our communities, in our state, in our nation, in our world - and think we have the right to be disappointed when we don't harvest kindness, generosity, patience, intelligence, courtesy, love and peace.

It's a wise thing to nurture courage. None of us is born with courage. You develop courage incrementally in small things, then a little in larger things, three to four times a day, little by little, until you develop enough courage to defend yourself, to really recognize when you're being assaulted. Not with a sword, a bomb or a poison dart, but by ignoring us, trying to obliterate the role of humanity. Then you can learn to defend others."