User:Davidc

Hello, I'm David Coward and I guess you are wondering what I am doing in this space. (In case you are questioning my spiritual credentials, here's a picture of me with the dalai llama). I am here for two reasons, first as a contributor (sorry, no money, just an article in the Symposia) and secondly as a friend (almost 30 years now) of Rob, the Supreme Radiant Lord of this domain. Rob and I rose from similar humble beginnings to become what we are today--humble middle aged old men. Personally I started out with nothing and still have most of it left (stolen joke). I am originally from Birmingham, AL and currently live in the outback of rural Mississippi where I work as textbook buyer for Mississippi State University. I am married, no kids, and have a small zoo of llamas, cats, and a possum (that's Southern for "opussum").

My religious background is Protestant Christianity, but my journey has led me through Anglicanism with a strong inclination toward more esoteric forms such as Zen Catholicism (William Johnston, Thomas Merton) and Celtic Christianity, which may contain more myth than history, but nonetheless I am drawn to its reputed idea of the divine permeating nature from below as opposed to the detached trancendence of conventional theology.

For several years my interest has gravitated toward the integral spirituality and philosophy of Ken Wilber. I first began to lean toward integral thinking in high school and my academic track finally culminated with an MA in Interdisciplinary Humanities from Western Kentucky University, a program that was consciously integral (though that term was not used). Throughout college and beyond I had accumulated quite a personal library in my quest to connect all of the dots of existence, and then one day I discovered Ken Wilber. His integral system was so plausible and elegant that I found myself in the strange situation of suspecting that most of my library had been rendered obsolete by a small handful of Wilber books. In fact, I sold and donated most of them shortly thereafter, resulting in no regrets and a feeling of spiritual lightness.

Considering that I am a "recovering Protestant" as well as a "failed amateur Buddhist" I have long been hard-pressed to categorize myself in any positive way, not that I feel a particular need to be in a category. However, it did become apparent fairly recently that my spiritual path is clearly Franciscan, and has been for several years unbeknownst to myself. The simple zen-like act of daily feeding and caring for a variety of dependent animals, each one a singular miracle, has become no less than a holy communion of boundary dissolution requiring neither intentionality nor effort, altogether lacking the strainings and distractions of meditation, and quite likely the closest I will ever come to finding mystical union in the routine of daily existence.

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