People aren't just paying more to fill their gas tanks or when they pay for their heating bills for their home they are paying more at the grocery store on air travel and for many other daily expenses.

Each day as I travel through downtown Tucson I am amazed at how quickly the most ancient of human behaviors have changed. For as long as there have been Homo sapiens - roughly 200 000 years - people have filled their lives principally with two activities: talking directly with other people and doing physical things.

I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.

This evening I wish to suggest that we Christians should accompany people on their pilgrimages. Specifically we should travel with people as they search for the good the true and the beautiful.

Traveling you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities places exchange their form order distances a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.

Winners take time to relish their work knowing that scaling the mountain is what makes the view from the top so exhilarating.

Because when you have millions of people with this kind of need for gratification and the culture is saying that it's possible for everyone to satisfy all of their needs and desires all of the time there are obviously going to be clashes - clashes of ego.

Cancer victims who don't accept their fate who don't learn to live with it will only destroy what little time they have left.

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.

Yet when child sex offenders are brought to justice and serve time for their offenses they are often released into unsuspecting communities and left free to resume their sexual attacks.