Stewardship is profoundly ethical, profoundly loving and profoundly spiritual.
And these are all qualities we shall need desperately in the years ahead of us. The issues that concern and divide us now, issues of justice and sexuality and responsibility, do not look as though they will be resolved quickly, and yet they are only a mild prelude to the issues that are rushing at us out of the future. The human genome project, cloning technology, growing knowledge of a universe that, so far as we have yet seen, goes on forever, new discoveries in environmental and biological sciences, are all going to present us with ethical choices our parents and grandparents never dreamed of. So when we speak of stewardship we are speaking of our relationship with the universe, and we must take care that we speak of a real relationship and a real universe. This is not always easy.