Where Is Your Kingdom?

Many years ago, one of Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons depicted a group of insects gathered together at a party …

One of the bugs is saying to a fellow insect, “Think of it, Ed, the insect class contains almost one thousand families and over seven hundred and fifty thousand species. But I still can’t shake that feeling that we’re just a bunch of bugs.”

One wonders if the cartoon hit a raw nerve for some people.

The class called “homo sapiens” — us human beings — contains billions upon billions of members who belong to hundreds of clusters and ethnic groups. We laugh, we love, we work, we create, yet judging from the number of shattered lives and broken homes, too many among us tend to think of ourselves as insignificant creatures without purpose: Just a bunch of bugs.1

This is not an easy time to be alive and kicking. As we plod through our everyday existence we find much to satisfy our…