Saturday, March 5, 2016

SCIENCE AND RELIGION REDUX

SCIENCE AND RELIGION REDUX In 1999, I attended a science and religion retreat at Trinity College in Connecticut, featuring Margaret Wheatley and John Polkinghorne. There, over several days, housed in campus dorm rooms, we inquired, focused on, speculated about, the inexorable linkages that bound us all together by the grace of God. John Polkinghorne, who is a former physicist-turned-priest, lead a seminar that inspired me to inquire whether the Holy Spirit was the "female principle in Christianity." He just smiled, and asked me what I thought. Fellow attendees, all of whom were white Protestant, Episcopalians, did not weigh in either, preferring to laugh at or with my question. That curious question was not necessarily reflective of my own unique African Methodist Episcopal tableau, then and now! In a later, evening session with Meg Wheatley, whose evocative work, A SIMPLER WAY (1998), had prompted my precipitate flight and stay in those remote New England woods, also smiled, as had Dr. Polkinghorne, nodding affirmatively when I opined that God's immanence and eminence were necessarily present in all things. Here again fellow confreres made no comment, pro or con, on my quixotic spiritual asseverations. https://www.google.com/search… This one visit was a highlight of my spiritual life. Its considerable costs and expense having been more than fully worth every penny of the $1000 dollars expended by me in its pursuit. Experience to me is far more enriching than any other form of wealth since it will last always.