The following are excerpts of an address by Dean Lawrence E. Carter Sr. of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel of Morehouse College at the Club of Rome annual meeting in Amman, Jordan, on Oct. 10, 2003.

People who are aware of their common ground of spirituality are inspired to cooperate. They are prepared to participate and are participating in the universal reality of spirit that transcends all religion.

Spirituality is not the same as religion. Indeed, it does not necessarily have anything directly to do with religion.

Just imagine the power inherent in the inescapable fact that we are all spiritual beings, planetary citizens and human incarnations. Imagine the power that we can actualize if we realize the cosmic truth that we share: That we are all members of an evolving species, of an evolving world, and that we can effect the rate and quality of the evolution of the world, that we can accelerate the movement of our world from a destructive culture of war to a regenerating culture of peace.

If nature could get from subatomic particles to molecules, to cells, to animals, to ecologies, to vast systems of complexities, to consciousness, then we can take the quantum leap to global peace.

When we take steps to move away from the lower and slower emotional frequencies of ambivalence, anger, apathy, fear, guilt and shame, we have struck a match that will split atoms, waves and particles, setting off a spiritual chain reaction.

This is what happened in Montgomery, Alabama, in Johannesburg, South Africa and in Berlin, Germany, when the spirit of non-violence became the still small whisper of the mighty wind that blew down the walls of segregation, Apartheid, and the Iron Curtain.

The universe has a process of taking jumps, quantum leaps of spirit just as the system is about to self-destruct. You see this pattern in evolution, from pre-life to life, from animal life to human life. These are quantum leaps in the tiniest corners of space and time.

We must move from embracing the tragedy of the World Trade Center to embracing the suffering of the world. In the words of a Greek philosopher, we must do all of this “to tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world.”