I had never thought much about landmines until I stepped on one in 1984, when I was twenty years old. I was camping in northern Israel with two friends and suddenly the earth exploded around me. I looked down at my shredded bloody legs in confused horror, wanting to know where my right foot had gone. Our hike had led us through an unmarked minefield left from the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Quo Vadis, Humanity? Today we face serious questions around rigid ideologies, national boundaries, proprietary interests, technological utopias and naive, egalitarian demands. Global debates center on competing economic models, open political access, mandated equality of opportunity and results, and a host of other external, top-down solutions.

We are living in a time of whole system transition on a personal and planetary scale that affects every aspect of life as we know it. Patterns of possibility are emerging that have never before been available to all the earth’s people and to the whole planet. Two million organisations are working toward ecological sustainability and social justice, according to Paul Hawken.

It is time to ask the great questions: How can we make a better world? What must we do to serve the emerging New Story? These questions help us clarify and define. They prompt us to articulate goals lofty enough to lift us out of petty preoccupations and unite us in pursuit of objectives worthy of our best efforts.

Let us explore the nature and development of our call to service in ways that link inner and outer realities, universal plans and passionate commitment. Let us ask what to do, where to go, how to take initiative and how to understand our role as leader and social artist in this most compelling moment of human history.