My musing was not an isolated activity. It was in a United Methodist adult education program that I began to see important connections between Joseph Campbell's work on mythology, Carl Jung's psychology, Eastern religions, Matthew Fox's Creation Spirituality, Brian Swimme's cosmology, and a metaphoric reading of Christian scripture. It was with the participants in that study group that I began to share my writing, and what I have produced owes its growth and development to those who have responded so helpfully, some in agreement, some in disagreement, but always contributing to further thought.

Two events now enter the picture, each nudging me to further growth:

First, Paul Laughlin joined the discussion. Paul had received each of my Musings but had not responded until now. He explains why:

"One reason I have not responded until now is that you appeared to be in such early stages of reflection that anything that I might have suggested before now from the standpoint of a professional academic could well have done more harm than good -- been more stifling than productive. I think the kind of creative fumbling you've done, without professorial intrusion, has been just what you needed, and certainly appears to be panning out for you. (I am quite impressed!) You seem much more focused now than previously -- and, I might add, in very positive directions."

He went on to suggest several books -- by Teilhard de Chardin, Frijhof Capra's The Tao of Physics, especially the first 81 pages, Hoff's The Tao of Pooh, and Sally McFague's Models of God.

He then entered into the substantive discussion with these observations:

1. "Your choosing the present modern scientific worldview as a starting point is a good one, and surely more appropriate than an ancient worldview that has been outmoded for centuries. But factor in somewhere that, although worldviews are relatively stable, they are not absolute, and are bound to be supplanted eventually by more comprehensive ones. Also, though our current modern scientific worldview has worked wonders (for a couple of hundred years!), its materialistic (in the philosophical sense), mechanistic, naturalistic, empirical, inductive, and rationalistic presuppositions and methodologies appear to factor out things spiritual from the start and as a matter of routine. In other words, our current worldview tends to be reductionistic, i.e., to whittle the world (and human experience) down to what can be measured, explained, predicted, and (perhaps above all) known by the senses (i.e., empirical data). That means it is far more inimical to spiritual and religious categories than any worldview that has gone before it! For that reason, you're going to be pushing the envelope of our current Weltanschauung with any view of God that you come up with....unless you say that 'God' is merely another name for the process of things taken as a whole, a definition with which I can't imagine you being happy."

My comment: A point well taken, but what you describe is more true of Newtonian and DesCartesian science than of the new physics, or at least of those, like Capra, Einstein, Bohm, Swimme, et al, who are not reductionistic, but who see spiritual implications in their scientific work. It is to the "new" science that I look for cohorts in the spiritual quest. Later I will say more about the importance of ways of knowing that extend beyond the five senses.

2. "Your references to Jesus seem, well, forced. Why was he 'the best teacher and example' of health and wholeness? Your views otherwise appear to lean away from monotheism (a God above) and toward monism (a holistic universe with a spiritual depth-dimension that you can call 'God' if you want to.) Hence, your understandable appreciation for Taoism. But how can you call a man who was (apparently) an unrelenting monotheistic Jew and who unabashedly referred (and prayed) to a Father in Heaven 'the best teacher'? I would have thought the Buddha or Lao Tse far better articulators of such a view than the historical Jesus. I would also have thought that the Christ of faith would have been more compatible with your budding system than the Jesus of history, in this sense: it is possible to use the term 'Christ' in a non-traditional, perhaps Gnostic sense, to refer to the inner spiritual dynamic of Jesus -- as a quality that he possessed and elicited from others. ('The Kingdom of God is within you.' 'If you have seen me you have seen God.' etc.) But there is a far longer and deeper tradition of this sort of interpretation, say, in Mahayana Buddhism, which typically teaches that we all have Buddha nature and are therefore capable of Buddha-hood."

My comment: Touche! I'm rooted in Christianity, and so, mostly, is my audience. What you call attention to is, perhaps, where I am going, but I am not there yet. And one reason I am not is that, until now, no one called me on this particular issue. Mostly I have been chided for not believing sufficiently in a transcendent God. But I also need to say that I do see in Jesus the same message that Buddha taught -- of divinity within. To be sure, it is older and more consistent in Buddhism and Taoism. Good point, and one that will inform the rest of my writing.

3. "'This is both a mystical (right brain) and a rational (left-brain) process.' True mysticism, as I understand it, is neither left-brain, nor right-brain. Like 'Mind,' mysticism transcends that distinction. It treads on the interstices of the cerebral hemispheres. ... In other words, mysticism aims at the very wholeness you offer as an ideal and goal!."

You see that Paul is my teacher and friend, and the interchange that began with his letter continues to influence me.

And that leads to the second transitional event, which is that Paul and I, independently but at about this same time, moved our locus of religious focus from the United Methodist Church to the more congenial (for our belief in the inner divinity, the Christ within, the Buddha self, the inner light, etc.) confines of the Unity Church of Christianity. For me, it was a matter of recognizing that I had come, by my own devices, to an acceptance of the principles of Unity teaching, and it was a delight to discover others who shared my faith.