"Calculating God" by Robert Sawyer

This is the fourth book by Sawyer that I have read and he never fails to leave me in awe of his imagination and vision in the construction of plausible explanations for some of life's biggest questions. "Calculating God" continues the course of "Starplex" to consider wonderfully complex intelligent life forms from other worlds and the speculation regarding the nature of dark matter that comprises so much of our universe.

However, "Calculating God" takes a surprising twist in presenting the reader with life forms that are vastly superior in intelligence to human beings and who take the existence of God as a scientific certainty. However, their "search" for God has nothing to do with religion even though they are searching for answers to questions that have vexed humans throughout history and for which we have constructed religious answers such as "original sin" and "the fall".

This book is probably the most emotionally moving of Sawyer's books as the reader can easily identify with the main character, Thomas Jericho, a paleontologist and non-believer, facing his own mortality and who, in his final hours, comes face to face with a "God" he can comprehend and realizes how the cancer that has ravaged his body fits within the larger picture of the universe.

Reconnecting with friends

My final stop on the Seeking Balance Tour took me to London where I spent three days renewing a very important relationship in my life. I met Jim Linthicum on my first day at Wesley Seminary in Washington DC and we fast became friends. We shared common interests in rock and roll, sub-cultures, and being on the fringes of church and ministry. We may be best remembered at our seminary, if at all, for the grant proposal we wrote and secured funding for a happy hour bar ministry in Old Town Alexandria for two years. We actually got paid to drink beer and talk about life with bar patrons twice a week. Our Sunday mornings that first year of seminary usually consisted of rocking away at the Marble Bar on Franklin Street in Baltimore until 2 a.m. then grabbing a bag of Little Tavern Burgers on the way home and maybe a few hours of sleep before heading off to the little rural church Jim served where he preached sermons from his favorite rock song lyrics like "Cosmic Debris" by Frank Zappa.

Jim's parents were very generous in welcoming me into their home on many weekends and holidays as I was long way from home that first year of seminary. I remember having a problem securing a ticket at the bus station when I was about to ride the Greyhound from Baltimore to Wichita. It seems they would not take my personal check, but Jim's father very graciously came down to the bus station and paid for the ticket so I could be on my way home to get married.

Jim and I did not spend as much time together after I got married. We took a road trip to Boston that was memorable, but I started working for two congregations in DC so our Saturday night routine became more difficult and we started to drift apart. I got to visit him in Baltimore once after graduation and before he left for the UK where he works now as a chaplain at a children's hospital in London. So it had been about 28 years since we had seen one another and it was a bit of a challenge recognizing each other at Heathrow Airport.

Jim was probably the first really good friend that I ever had in my life. He is a great listener, he accepts people for who they are, he has a gentle way of suggesting different perspectives on things, to name just a few of his fine qualities. I am sure that many families have been able to better manage very difficult situations in the lives of their children due to Jim's ministry.

The past year was incredibly difficult as anyone who has gone through a divorce knows what I am talking about. Yet at times when I felt most alone and despondent I have been blessed with the presence of friends old and new. In the past year I have been able to reconnect with friends from high school, college, and my seminary roommate. I have been able to rely on the support of friends here in Kent and I had the opportunity to make several new friends on this trip around the world. I have also had the opportunity to meet and get to know someone very special with whom I have many shared interests and a desire to travel with together on this wonderful adventure of life.

So here I am at the beginning of a new year with a wealth of new experiences to draw from, a great group of friends to share with, a new perspective on the journey that lies ahead, and a renewed yet tenuous balance on the teeter-totter of life. Thanks for reading.

Kolkata: Where to Begin?

How to begin writing about my experience in Kolkata, India is a challenge I have struggled with for several days and that is a pretty good indication of how incredibly complex and overwhelming I found this city and its people to be. In my personal quest for balance I encountered this mysterious place where life appears to be both alarmingly out of balance and yet serenely stable at the same time. The social, religious, political, and economic forces that all work together, sometimes at odds with one or another and other times in harmony, to weave the beautiful and moving tapestry of this city are more than I can hope to write about much less to understand in one or more blog posts.

Once again I had the good fortune to meet nice people and make new friends. I was very fortunate to make the acquaintance of Dr. Kakoli Sengupta who teaches at Jadavpur University in the International Relations department. Dr. Sengupta graciously took the time to show such sites of interest to me as the Ganges River, the National Library, one of the several temples of Kali who is the patron goddess of Kolkata. We talked about the caste system and its historical role in defining social identity in such a way that seemingly leads the poorest of the poor to accept their position in life as destiny. We also talked about the recent Right to Information Act that is empowering the powerless to obtain justice against those persons who have abused their more powerful positions in society to the detriment of others.

I also had the pleasure to meet several faculty members from the School of Library and Information Science at Jadavpur University. It was an honor to receive their gracious hospitality while we visited about such library science pioneers as S.R. Ranganathan from their country and Jesse Shera from mine and the collaborative work they did for our field towards the end of their respective careers.


My experience in Kolkata has led me to do some thinking on the inter-relationships between fear, uncertainty, information, and religion. I awoke on my first morning in Kolkata with a great deal of uncertainty and an inability to access information that would have helped to reduce this uncertainty. I was a stranger in a strange land, isolated and cut off from information and communication tools that I took for granted. I was way out of my comfort zone and found myself suddenly realizing what all could go wrong over the next three days and afraid that I might not be able to get any help at all. Thankfully, I was able to stay calm enough to seek out the assistance I needed in order to feel safe and somewhat in control of my life again.

However, I came to a much greater appreciation for the fact that far too many people in this world live with levels of uncertainty that I cannot begin to comprehend. This, in turn, reminded me that my sense of control is an illusion and that we are all equal in that we live but from one moment to the next. My smug feeling of not needing to believe in a higher power to intervene on my behalf is a luxury made possible only with the security blanket of a socio-economic position in life that affords me access to education, health care, job security, and so on. But when my access to those resources is removed, and smugness is replaced with fear, I can find myself easily identifying with the throngs at the Temple of Kali petitioning for her divine intervention and holding on to whatever is available in the hope that things will get better.

I am thankful for the experience and also that it was short lived. The impact and memory of the experience will be with me for a long time to come.