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Garden City, NY 11530

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Here is a list of things which are important to me, a sort of list of values:

• I value loyalty and commitment, personal attachments that are long-standing and enduring.
• I have little concern for fashion, pop culture or celebrities.
• I admire the nobility of rocks and have an affection for trees.
• I find my place in nature and try to live within its limitations.
• I'd rather be a forest than a parking lot, yet I'd rather live my life in a neighborhood than in the woods.
• I willing accept obligations beyond my choosing, wanting to honor my ancestors but not worship them.
• I have a fondness for the past but do not long for it.
• I'd rather repair the old than demolish it for the new.
• Wealth, power and privilege have little appeal to me.
• I'm skeptical of progress, wary of experts, but love ideas and admire intelligence.
• I often prefer the company of children to that of adults.
• I hope to do no harm and want to do some good.
• I'd rather have things close than far, little rather than big.
• I could be happy either as a swallow or as a lamb.
• I like beautiful things but plain things, vibrant things, not dull.
• I abhor uniforms and am frightened by rallies.
• I'm critical of things as they are but know that not all change is for the better.

As a City College student, I took a contemporary American literature class. Each student devoted himself to one writer for the semester. I chose Bernard Malamud, not knowing at the time that he was a graduate of CCNY or that I would have a chance to meet him that year.

Malamud attracted me much the way Steinbeck did, namely, his vision of society and a dedication to a better world. Hemingway's pugnaciousness, his "manliness" held little appeal to me then or now. Steinbeck, I believe, had deficiencies as a writer, while Malamud seems to me to be more durable.

I cannot remember where I read this line of his but it has stayed with me since: Life is a tragedy filled with joy. This phrase has resurfaced for me as I think about my mother's death a day before her 83rd birthday.

What brought this home to me was my father who said, not long after she died, that he has decided to go on living. He said this not with resignation but anticipation. The pain of her loss is real but life is sweet nevertheless.

Tragedy cannot be avoided. Either we are pulled under by it or savor life in spite of or perhaps because of it. I don't know if it is possible to choose how we respond to such losses. But I do know that watching my father move from tears to laughter is one of the most important lessons he has ever taught me. Malamud only captured in words what my father demonstrated.

The hornbill plagued the school. Swooping from the blue African sky, it descended by the dormitory door. There with its hard beak it hammered at the glass until only the metal frame remained. To the consternation of the teachers the bird shattered new windows as soon as they were placed. It was as though the bird sensed something malignant about the window.

Meanwhile at a nearby mission a crane with a broken wing preened in front of long windows, strutting its erratic mating dance attempting to attract its imprisoned image. The crane would end its life dancing there in the false infatuation, beguiled by some-thing without substance, dying in lonely fascination.

How like the crane we are here in a wonderland of mirrors, a place where our reflections are only steps away. In shopping malls our images are available from three angles at once; we find our-selves on the side of new glass buildings.

Most mornings I begin with the sight of my own face before I view that of another. It is not a real face I see, merely an image of one. It lacks depth and only gives the illusion of existing in space. It mimics me perfectly.

For a while in Kenya I lived with only one hand-held mirror. Mainly I relied upon my wife to report the news of my appearance; her judgments were requisite.

Now I need only consult a mirror.

The hornbill knew better than the crane. Is anything gained by mirrors?

In high school, one term of gym was devoted to swimming. We began the class by changing into shorts and sneakers for attendance on the basketball court, then returned to the locker room to undress. A teacher, who awaited us, turned on the water in the shower room and directed us there. He handed out soap and told us how to wash ourselves. At the end of the shower, he passed out the towels and told us how to dry ourselves. Then we went back to the locker room to dress for the next class. No swimming.

I mean no swimming for the entire term. Each day we showered but never once entered the pool. Actually, there was good reason for this. Stuyvesant High School didn't have a pool. It never had one.

Why then did we take swimming when all we did was shower? The best I could make out is that the Board of Education mandated swimming classes for all city high schools. This was an estimable idea, I'm sure, but it would have been even better if a pool had been provided. But no matter. In one of the country's academically elite public high schools, thousands of boys received instructions on washing and drying because this was as close as we could get to the swimming requirement.

Did the school realize the absurdity of the situation? While none of us students thought it was anything but stupid, the shower teacher seemed serious, if not grim. We went through the motions but he appeared to think it was important.

I sometimes wonder why we participate in activities that are patently ridiculous. Perhaps it is, to paraphrase the poet Irving Feldman, that we cannot see our own irrelevancies.

To step back once in a while and examine our own actions can be a useful thing. We may be able to get a good laugh even at ourselves.

On my bookshelf are three items: a pink stone, an aluminum disk and the seed of a lantana palm.

Near the hamlet of Badaling, in China, I walked, jogged and wandered along the roadway at the top of the Great Wall. Suddenly the passage ended. Although the Great Wall's 3,000-mile length makes it the only human construction to be seen from the moon, only a small part is in good enough repair to walk upon. Beyond the sign forbidding further going, the wall hugs the ridge of the mountains as a huge dragon's tail making its way to the sea. But the missing pieces, broken turrets, cracked slabs and ramparts made passing prohibited and dangerous.

So I sat in a watchtower, looking onto the mountains fading in slate gray and rose. In my mind's eye I raced across centuries. I placed a fragment of the wall in my pocket.

The metal disk is from the Montana Rockies, near Hungry Horse Dam. In the middle of an evergreen forest, needles seared by chemical fumes, is an aluminum smelting plant. In the center of the building are pits smoking molten metal. Workers stand beside the pits sweeping bauxite into the flames. The foreman makes his rounds on a bicycle. The air is all heat and haze.

Outside is a pile of aluminum disks made to test the metal's purity. I was told they were only scraps, so I took one with me when I went. Across Kenya' s savannah are the Masai, one of the last peoples to enter modern times. Until recently they refused to have their photos taken, believing that the likeness snatched their souls. To-day it is not unusual to find the same Masai who goes to a clinic for medical treatment to cross the plains carrying a lantana seed as an amulet to ward off poison snakes.

When I found such seeds along the Indian Ocean near Mombasa, I took several home with me.

Often when I'm at my desk, I look at the objects -the rock, the disk and the seed -and wonder.

Overlooking Lake Windermere in northern England are the ruins of a viewing post used by ladies and gentleman of an earlier period. These 8th century visitors climbed the hill across from the town so as to get a better view of the countryside. Upon reaching the selected site, they were ready. Turning their backs on the lake, they then held a convex and dark mirror, called a Claude-glass, in front of their eyes, thereby looking at the scenery over their shoulders. Hikers viewed nature in this strange, mediated way be-cause they believed that the lake and hills were so wild that to view them directly would cause one to go mad.

This amusing bit of nonsense made me think about those things we do which, to future generations, will seem equally absurd. Two come to mind, although, I'm certain, each of us can extend the list.

First, I think about Long Island's green lawns. Our land was never meant for the grass of which we are so fond. Indeed, there is a species of cactus which is native to this area. Lawns require much water, fertilizing and cutting. I don't understand the aesthetic which values lawns over other types of vegetation which grow quite well without our constant efforts. Lawn maintenance would only be quaint if it weren't for its side effects. Every town now enforces water regulations, and wells, from which we get our drinking water are, in many places, severely polluted, in part due to chemicals put on lawns to keep them green and full.

Second, I think about which foods we find acceptable and which not. Not long ago the odd person didn't savor hamburgers. Today tofu is high on many lists as the food of choice. Still, one of the world's most bountiful supplies of good, inexpensive protein is reviled as a food source. When I tell people that friends of mine in Kenya treat termites as a delicacy, they hardly believe it. But eating bugs is no more intrinsically revolting than lawns are inherently more beautiful than ivy and cactus.

The unexamined life is not worth living, it is said. Perhaps so. The problem is that we often don't know that it hasn't been examined.

"Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity." So wrote Albert Einstein upon the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Ethical Movement. In this letter to leader Algernon Black, Einstein stressed not the need for an institution to save humankind, but the need for the cultivation of ethics.

The analogy to the cultivation of ethics can be found in the field of food. Food is necessary for the survival of the body; ethics is needed for the survival of the species. While food may be gathered in various ways, only the proper care of the soil will provide for crops for future years; while people can relate to each other in an infinite number of ways, only the proper nourishment of relationships will provide decent lives for future generations.

Seeds are planted in soil. We are rooted in community. Plants need sunlight. People need love. Plants need water. Humans need respect. If we abuse the soil, the food we eat will be less nourishing. If we abuse the people we live with, the lives we lead will be less enriching.

Soil builds in incremental layers. We build meaning in our lives through small encounters of daily life. As the varieties of healthy foods are too numerous to list, there is no one right way of living. As we now are beginning to realize the ways in which synthetic and adulterated foods are no substitute for foods rising from earth's bosom, we know, too, that only genuine and authentic lives add to the earth's bounty.

As spring brings forth new crops, as you watch the world green, remember that as the gardener must care for the garden, we must care for each other.

"From here," we said, sipping wine 107 stories high at Windows on the World, "even slums look beautiful."

East New York, my native Brooklyn, which now competes with the worst third-world slums, shimmered in the far distance before the glint of Jamaica Bay. From another angle, we could see beyond Central Park to the haze of the South Bronx. It was breathtaking and beautiful.

Everything and everyone, from a distance, can be loved. In their latest revision, China' s historians have elevated Ghengis Khan into a near-romantic figure who descended from the steppes to unite bands of petty warring states. The power, force and ugliness of Picasso' s Guernica has been converted into decorative art, to be hung over the living-room couch.

The more compassionate the person, the more that person is supposed to love the world and the people in it. Many do - at a distance. Hearts break at the thought of homeless victims, checkbooks become means of consolation. Humanists care about Cambodians, Kurds and Zimbabweans.

The love of multitudes is an act of will, bringing to the heart what the head views compassionately. The thought of millions, especially those who are victims, creates a pointillist image, beautiful in itself. It is the esthetic of charity.

But to love another person, as an individual, is life itself, and infinitely harder. Life up close reveals the scars of being human. Here are the annoyances of small habits, those exquisite instruments that seem designed to torture intimates.

How much easier to be inspired by the call to noble action on behalf of those unseen than it is to find what is noble in your neigh-bor. Those far away represent the hope of the future; the person next door is a crank.

Ideals are necessary and fine. But it is when they are lived in life's little encounters as well that there is a real chance of making the world a better place for everyone.

When I think of hard work - labor -I recall my climb up one of China's sacred mountains, Tai Shan. It was here that Chinese emperors would journey at least once in their lives. The mountain, although not particularly high, is frequently shrouded in mist. Carried on a palanquin, the emperor sat facing east, waiting from the shroud to lift and reveal the rising sun.

While the mountain top is no longer confined to royalty and it is no longer sacred, it is the goal of many to climb the long stair-case and ride the cable car to the summit to watch, in awe, the opening clouds make way for a glimpse of the sunrise. While I was there, many elderly, including women whose feet in generations past had been bound into gnarled claws, ascended slowly to make the journey to the edge of the earth.

Recognizing Tai Shan's attraction, the Chinese government decided to build a hotel not far from the top. So side-by-side with the tourists climbing, there were laborers hauling heavy rocks for construction. Across their backs they placed bamboo poles and at either end were massive stones to go into the new building. The workers ran the steps to make their wages. Because they were shirtless I could see that nearly all of their backs were purple with deep bruises.

This is what it takes, I thought, to create another's comfort; this is what some must do in order to earn enough to eat. Despite the years of communism, the laborers' lot was still hardly different from that of the coolie or slave.

I think about this remembering that in the 19th century the labor problem was defined as the major social problem facing the world. The problem is still with us. It is still central to the human experience, moral imagination and moral will.

While for all practical purposes Marxism may be dead, even in China, the problems which gave birth to it have not died. Per-haps we need to examine afresh the programs set about more than a century ago by social reformers. That there has yet to be an adequate responses to the problem of labor is not cause for despair but a call to challenge.

"Why," people have asked me, "do you devote so much time to writing imaginative literature: poetry, plays and novels?" One answer is that, for me, it is a calling. I don't feel so much that I choose it as it chooses me. I don't sit by the window waiting for the muse to visit. Unbidden, the muse finds me.

"Yes, that's fine, but what does that have to do with your chosen profession, leadership in the Ethical Movement?" A great deal, I think. Susan Sontag expressed it well when she said, "Art and thought. That's what lasts. That's what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better. A better state of one's feelingsorsimplytheideaofasilenceinone'sselfthatallowsone to think or to feel. Which is to me the same thing."

One purpose of an Ethical Society is to nourish people with thought of a better life, a sustaining and rich life. One way to do this is to think deeply by clarifying one's thoughts. Another way is to feel deeply by exposing one's self to the lives of others and to the beauty around us. The first method is that of the philosopher, the second that of the artist.

The Ethical Movement, since its founding in 1876, has favored the course of deep thinking. This, I think, is the product of having been founded by Felix Adler, who taught philosophy at Columbia University throughout most of his career while also serving as the Ethical Movement's prime leader. If it had been founded instead by say Walt Whitman, an equally passionate lover of humanity, our emphasis would be quite different, a place full of America singing.

This is not to say that art is superior to philosophy or vice versa. It is to make the point that Sontag was making, namely, that thought and feeling cannot be separated, that at their best art and philosophy are two aspects of the same thing, each needing the other to remain balanced and whole.