(1) Evensong

Chapter Nine. EVENSONG

As time moved along, it became clear that Ellen assured my
being "plugged-in" at the university here in Canterbury. It was
a nice blend of the studious and the social. We also enjoyed
concerts and public events provided by the King's School as
well. I felt a certain pleasure, in that I had a life here in
Canterbury that all around was not at all burdensome.

I still had plenty of time for solitude and reflection. It had become
obvious that the issue of Neurotheology would not go away.
Just in a year's time more and more scientists were publishing
articles on the subject. Not many theologians, however. I still
had my reservations plunging into this field, though Ellen was
beginning to educate me--somewhat.

However, this very issue caused me to pause to ponder, to reflect,
reviewing altogether my lifetime efforts towards linking our mind
with the Spirit--or that Greater Mind, if more comfortably put.

Though I had taught in Claremont's School of Religion, that was
not to say that I was traditionally religious. All through my career
I had remained a "nondenominational" theologian! Still, as a child
of the West, I could not deny that the concepts of the Christ, later
the Pantocrator, and ultimately the Spirit most definitely colored my
writings. I just as easily could have stuck with the Logos-Pneuma
of ancient Greek philosophy. To be truthful, I saw these two
conceptual infrastructures mainly as a Continuum of religio-
philosophical thought. Studying such, I could also trace the
evolution of this thought moving towards ever greater
sophistication!

And I guess my excitement about how this Continuum connected,
indeed communicated, with the human mind utterly energized me.
As for the findings of Cognitive Science, well this opened up yet
another door--in that I believed that the "seeds" of evolutionary
development of the brain were already there from the beginning
of humanity's long trek forward. Though I would not yet write down
my thoughts in any serious publication, I liked to think that somehow
all this development--embedded in a strangely wonderful Freedom--
portends a strangely wonderful Completion. Maybe not at all
connected with our current religio-philosophical concepts, there
still seems an "Omega Point" in our future.

So, perhaps my life's work as a free-thinking theologian might be
part and parcel where God's finger is pointing. Over human history
there have been plateau following after plateau when it comes to
our concepts about God--and it would seem that we are on the brink
of yet another plateau that involves science, cognitive studies as
well as new psychologies. The Future beckons!