I arranged to meet him in the lobby of the hotel where he was staying. As I waited there, I was not surprisingly somewhat anxious about event details and meeting such a significant leader. When he entered the room, I immediately felt a sense of calm wash over me. The Dalai Lama literally radiates peace and calm in a very palpable way. It was profound and deeply satisfying. The event went very well, with hundreds of people from all walks of life and religious faiths from around the world coming together to share our common concerns for the planet. 
	The other event was an evening Concert for the Earth in which we managed to get some very well-known musicians to participate, namely John Denver and Olivia Newton John. There was also a fantastic didgeridoo player, as well as new age musician Paul Winter on soprano saxophone. The event was an incredible success, with more than 5,000 people in attendance. The gathering was used to highlight the coming together of a wide diversity of people, including the religious community, to grapple with issues of environment and development, as well as to just celebrate! 
	The Social Summit was less of a star-studded event than the Earth Summit, and we did not coordinate any particular events. The impact on me came from where I stayed. I arranged to live with a woman in Christiania, an intentional community in the heart of Copenhagen founded by squatters in 1973, making it one of the longest-lived experiments in communal living the world has seen in recent history. There were times when the government tried to clear them out, but were never able to do so. Lene, the woman with whom I stayed while in Copenhagen, lived in a home adapted within what was essentially one of the old fortification walls around the original city. Christiania had become known as a place to buy drugs, and has never been able to shake the resulting damaged reputation. There are communal gardens, frequent communal meals, and so on, but everyone has their own self-built house. This, I think, is the key to their success. They share a lot, but they never made the mistake of over-sharing that has led to the demise of many other intentional communities. They seem to have hit upon a balanced harmony between the individual and the community, between private and public, that works well. 
	The impact of these experiences on my life have been several-fold: The importance of thinking globally was not something I had really considered before, but was much easier knowing that I was part of worldwide movement; again and again I came to appreciate and see the need for affecting not just individual beliefs and behaviors, but those of institutions, including religious institutions; and meeting and spending time with people like the Dalai Lama, then-Senator Al Gore, and other leaders impressed upon me the need for reflective and excellent leadership to inspire and motivate people around the world.
