I continue to learn Spanish, and I am getting better at saying what I want to say. Though it goes slowly, I can communicate one to one fairly well. But it's still amazingly difficult to actively participate in a lively conversation with a group of Colombians. They talk so fast and with great vitality. The emotional intensity is both beautiful and frightening. What sounds like an alarming conversation could well be about how to properly prepare empanadas or how to make the sauce to accompany them. Adding to the mystery, they speak with their own traditional and personal idioms. Well,…

A Decade is Ending . . .

A decade is ending. That's not too exciting; it happens every ten years. But as this decade ends I am caught up in I don't know what. Nostalgia, curiosity, wonderment, mystery, I don't know, but whatever it is, it's a nagging feeling that demands my attention.

Lazaris has often called the first two decades of the new millennium, "the two most exciting decades in the history of humankind on Earth." The 1990s was the most monumental but these two are the most exciting.

I have found that Lazaris says some of the most significant things in…