The beauty of the world and our experience of human empathy and compassion collide with our experience of bitter discord between individuals, severe societal divisions, brutal oppression, war, and profound estrangement from our environment. All manner of rational analysis and proposed solutions have not solved these elemental problems, the basis of which is spiritual. This book focuses on the spiritual nature of participation. It is about participation in a humanity rooted in Holy Mystery, in God who is in all things. It is about what is essential to being human: the experience of transcendence expressed in faith, hope, and love. It is about "being in Christ." In part, it is a meditation on the apostle Paul's insistence that we participate in Christ in whom we find our true humanity and through whom we are transformed in our relationship to ourselves, others, and the world. Being rooted in Christ, we gain discernment and power for transformative action in the world as it is, with all its wonder, beauty, and brokenness. This book moves from the inner reality of participation in Christ to the outer reality of engagement with the world.
