Closing Remarks

Peter LaurenceIN summarizing what I’ve heard today I’ll restrict myself to twopoints. And I’ll be followed by Ms. Benson’s remarks, saving the bestfor the last. My first point has to do with the idea that when diverse people come together to discuss issues, the use of language is criticalbecause each of us comes with a different perspective and a different
sense of what the language is actually saying. And so, I think the person
who deserves the most applause today is our interpreter. He is incredible. He digests fifteen minute discourses and then somehow feeds themback in another language.
I heard an interesting play on language in the conference today. It
started with Dr. Jim Kodera saying that we need “contemplation” totranscend language, words, politics, and theology. There were somequestions about his idea. Our small discussion group in particularthought that words are important and wondered why he said we need
contemplation to overcome them. The sense I got of what he meant bycontemplation was similar to what Bill Aiken said earlier using the term,“humanizing religion.” There are other people who will call that wholeprocess “spirituality”. So we all seem to be using different terms in talking about whatever it is that transcends the things which divide us andinstead connects us all. Whatever you want to call it, whatever language
you use, there is something that connects us that does transcend thosedifferences. And what I heard today was that we need to look harder forthat. In spite of our differences, which certainly do exist, we need to findthat connection and use it to be closer to each other.
My second point comes from a trend that I heard in the presentations
today. The first presentation talked about an historic movement fromviolence toward coexistence. In religious history there is a lot of violence. There is still some around today, but there seems to be a movement toward coexistence that we welcome.
In the second presentation it was described as an historic marginalization of women that has been moving toward gender equality. And again,
today there is obviously not universal gender equality but we’ve been81

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CLOSING REMARKS

moving in that direction. Many of the panelists today made the point
that, in relation to religion, all of this movement hinges on changes in
the interpretation of scripture and tradition. The way we interpret ourscriptures and our traditions allows us to bring them into the present andnot just live in the past, because past history is not always that pleasant.
There is a book that I read recently that I want to recommend toeveryone here because it describes social evolution in ways that I’ve
never heard it described before. It presents a model I find extremely useful in looking at why we have some people who are still operating invery conservative traditional ways, other people wanting to function inprogressive ways, and all those different levels going on simultaneously
in our culture today and creating quite a bit of tension. So I’ll recommend this book to you. It’s by an author named Steve McIntosh and iscalled, “Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution.” If you
read it I hope you will find it as helpful as I have in gaining some clarity
about what is going on today and where we might be headed. So that’s
my contribution and I’ll invite Virginia Benson to make hers.