About 25 years ago, the man who wrote the Tao of Physics wrote an amazingly different book, called The Web of Life. He’s a physics professor at Berkeley, named Fritjof Capra. He had also written a book called The Turning Point, on where we were in history, which I had found as interesting as his physics book. About that time I was working with a woman on a systems text who had worked with him. I was asked to coordinate a conference of systems people in 1990 that was focused on the future, so I took the chance to reach out to professor Capra through her and ask him to be the keynote speaker at this conference. When he heard it was a gathering of systems people he said he didn’t think he’d fit. I said not to worry, his Turning Point and his integration of eastern and western philosophy in The Tao of Physics was perfectly in alignment with our conference theme and he’d be just fine. He finally agreed, came, did his talk, and was very well received. Of course, he received a copy of our program and our proceedings as part of our thank you. I left my career as a systems scientist for the ministry a few years later and never heard from him again.
A few years later, when The Web of Life came out I was blown away. The man had paid attention! He had integrated what we were talking about at that conference with his own understanding of how the universe works and said it in a way that any intelligent reader could make sense of! Wonderful!
A few years later, I was asked to tea with one of my more “mature” former students – a retired engineer from IBM – and he said “I was participating in a class in Berkeley and one of our instructors was Fritjof Capra. When I asked him how he had come to do all this work in systems, he said “This woman in Portland called me and asked me to speak at a conference…” Needless to say I was delighted – and, once more, blown away.
Capra has since come out with a number of systems-thinking books, including A Systems View of Life, for which I am truly grateful… we need as many systems thinkers in the world as possible.
Now, why am I telling you this story today?
Because you who believe that there is One Power, One Presence, accept that we are all part of the Web of Life.
Whew! There is only One. That One is Good. Here is only One, Good. Everywhere is only One. Everything, everywhere is the One that we call God, the Good, omnipotent.
So that means all beings are Good. They can’t not be! We might misunderstand them. They might be being Good in places we’d rather they were not, or ways we can’t see as Good right at the moment, but they MUST BE GOOD.
A few years later, when The Web of Life came out I was blown away. The man had paid attention! He had integrated what we were talking about at that conference with his own understanding of how the universe works and said it in a way that any intelligent reader could make sense of! Wonderful!
A few years later, I was asked to tea with one of my more “mature” former students – a retired engineer from IBM – and he said “I was participating in a class in Berkeley and one of our instructors was Fritjof Capra. When I asked him how he had come to do all this work in systems, he said “This woman in Portland called me and asked me to speak at a conference…” Needless to say I was delighted – and, once more, blown away.
Capra has since come out with a number of systems-thinking books, including A Systems View of Life, for which I am truly grateful… we need as many systems thinkers in the world as possible.
Now, why am I telling you this story today?
Because you who believe that there is One Power, One Presence, accept that we are all part of the Web of Life.
Whew! There is only One. That One is Good. Here is only One, Good. Everywhere is only One. Everything, everywhere is the One that we call God, the Good, omnipotent.
So that means all beings are Good. They can’t not be! We might misunderstand them. They might be being Good in places we’d rather they were not, or ways we can’t see as Good right at the moment, but they MUST BE GOOD.
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