Goodness is something much larger and more important than a list of rules. Mainly, it is a vision of the world as it has been and can be, a vision of people living in all the little and big ways that support happiness. Fully realized, the vision is a vast and complex ecological order, quite beyond the comprehension of children.
The garden is not decadent, of course. It is merely decaying. But being amid it, one can sense the temptation to decadence–that recurring human response to loss of faith–a way of taking the decay not as a transitory phase but instead as a choice and a meaning.
An awareness of nothing has creeped into our schools and offices. What does it matter which building in which edge city reached by which highway one goes to through morning gridlock to ride the same elevator to the same hallway to the same room filled with purplish gray fabric-covered cubicles, personalized with photocopied jokes?
Then the story begins–-the knight,
the dragon, the princess–-a cruel struggle,
