A text, perspectives, and hope. Who of us could have postulated the world and national events of the past 8 years? Who among us has not felt the shock and terror of so many recent and current world events: famine, poverty, war, child abuse, and even slavery on too many continents; bigotry, racism, prejudice, and unwarranted discrimination on too many fronts; abject corporate and executive corruption; the 2005 tsunami; and global terror, perhaps most notably for our readers, the lingering shock, terror, and exponential paradigm shift of the horrendous attacks of September, 11,2001? Amid these horrors and so many other potentially overwhelming forces of disempowerment for so many throughout the world, we have seen countless instances of incredible heroics, including many instances of counselors and other mental health practitioners helping people throughout the world continue to desire, seek, and attain aspects of human empowerment. Outstanding, indefatigable action by New York City and Washington, DC, mental health professionals, joining others in rising to the challenge and demands of the horrors of September 11, constitutes a major manifestation of our profession's capacity for sharing, resilience, and empowerment. If ever a time seemed right for the good that counselors can do, for the differences that counselors can help people make, our times cry out for the positive aspects of counselors' dedication, commitment, and capacity for promoting human worth, dignity, uniqueness, and potential. Counselors can and must continue to find their voice and amplify their inspiration as means to clearly articulate the voice of human pain and suffering as a prelude for a paradigm shift toward empowerment for all. Counselors bring a refreslungly altruistic perspective of human digruty and potential that the world seems to need more than ever, and we need to find means of expanding the seriatim, incremental, and quotidian work and gains that counselors and our clients and client groups and other publics achieve so regularly. The question is, How do mental health professions expand the relatively slow-paced individual and group empowerment gains that counselors and other mental health advocates help our publics attain? How do we "clone" the goodness, hope, and empowerment of counseling so that yet more of the positive mental health achievements of our profession can come to bear individual, group, local, regional, national, and even international paradigm shifts toward personal empowerment? As we continue sharing with one another through the medium of our conferences and journals, let us keep the vital m i ssion of promoting human dignity, uniqueness, and potential at the forefront, let us keep our eyes on this vital, essential prize and our hearts on a parallel path.
Although discoveries in our journal may not seem immediately relevant to the practicality of addressing monumental human circumstances, the human condition cries out for using our science and art to advance practice. In turn,