How Fear Arrested Our Theological Imagination with Fr. Dan Horan (Part 2)

“How Fear Arrested Our Theological Imagination with Fr. Dan Horan” (Part 2)

In part two of their discussion Ilia Delio asks Fr. Dan Horan about the way forward, and how fear arrests our theological imaginations. They discuss whether it will be possible to reimagine some of the most central tenets of Christian doctrine, especially in the case of the more centralized churches. In light of today’s cultural and scientific contexts, can age-old doctrines still give us guidance?

ABOUT DAN HORAN

“God’s love is not conditioned like our love, God’s mercy is not bound as ours is, and God does not discriminate or reward a person according to the standards of a given society, no matter how widespread such criteria may be.”

Daniel P. Horan, OFM, PhD, is Professor of Philosophy, Religious Studies and Theology and Director of the Center for the Study of Spirituality at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. He is also Affiliated Professor of Spirituality at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. A columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, he is the author or editor of more than fourteen books, including Catholicity and Emerging Personhood: A Contemporary Theological Anthropology, A White Catholic’s Guide to Racism and Privilege, and The Way of the Franciscans: A Prayer Journey Through Lent. Prof. Horan’s most recent book is titled Engaging Thomas Merton: Spirituality, Justice, and Racism and his next book, due out in Summer 2024, is titled Fear and Faith: Hope and Wholeness in a Fractured World. He is currently working on a book on Christology tentatively titled, Not Because of Sin: Reconsidering the Reason God Became Human. His academic research, writing, and teaching focuses on medieval and contemporary spirituality, theological anthropology, Christology, antiracism and LGBTQ issues, and theologies of creation. Prof. Horan regularly lectures around the United States and abroad; and serves on several university, academic, and publication editorial boards. He is recipient of numerous awards for his writing and service and is co-host of The Francis Effect Podcast.

Transcript

A HUNGER FOR WHOLENESS TRANSCRIPT | S04E09

How Fear Arrested Our Theological Imagination with Fr. Dan Horan (Part 2)

Robert: Welcome to Hunger for Wholeness, a podcast from the Center for Christogenesis. I'm your host, Robert Nicastro. In part one of their conversation, Ilia and Father Dan Horan left off discussing the church's response to justice issues such as our ecological crisis and gender rights. Today, we pick up in the midst of this topic as Ilia and Dan consider how fear is arresting our theological imaginations and the critical need for humility in the age of the internet.

Ilia: I do wonder about the future of theology and the future of the church. I mean, because I don't think what's moving the world today. And this is just a radical idea, but I often wonder like if there was to be a decree like tomorrow that all theology programs are to be dispensed, then basically all churches will close. Will that make a radical difference to the world and what the world's becoming? And my honest, honest answer is no, it really does not significantly affect what's going on in the world. If you shut down Microsoft or Google or Nvidia, it will make a huge difference, right? That's where we are in the world today. That's unfortunate, but that's our deepest reality. And I think we have to begin to take a legitimate inventory of what we're doing and really honestly confront it. We keep kind of just toting along. Like it's all going to be well. We talk about overusing statements, Julian of Norwich, "All shall be well and all should be well." It may not be well actually, it may just disappear. And I think we're kind of a little bit narrow-minded sometimes

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Dan: In the same boat with you I think we could probably—and maybe it's interesting in the time we have, or maybe it's for another conversation about maybe where we agree and disagree about what that looks like and what the path forward is. I don't know that I have a very clear idea of that exactly. It's certainly not a full drawn picture. But one thing that I a hundred percent agree

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with is the role of fear. And fear, not just of ecclesiastical authorities and the like, but I think fear is—this is a little self-referential, but it is the subtitle I think you'll appreciate. I have a little book coming out in June called Fear and Faith, the subtitle of which is Hope and Wholeness in a Fractured World. And again, this drive toward wholeness, it doesn't take as much of a look at—Well, actually it is. It draws quite heavily from the biological, psychological sciences to unpack fear as a starting point. But the reason I bring this up is because I do completely agree that the curbing of imagination, the theological imagination, the curbing of an openness to the novel, an openness to reality as it is, is rooted in fear. It's rooted in a desire for control.

It is in some sense what we might in another era have called original sin; this kind of original temptation to make it comfortable and clear and controllable for us. And I think one of the things that's missing—so that's one aspect. So I agree, and there's a lot to unpack there, I think. I think another aspect is the lack of what I would call epistemic humility. And we can talk about like the process of intellectual humility, which is part of what's lacking in the tradition. But if fear is what governs so much of the kind of Christian community about not pursuing certain theological questions or scientific questions or the intersection of these, then I think on the part of those who want to maintain that static classical theology that is unmovable, which is never true, is a-historical and a-contextual, which is never true, then it's a lack of epistemic humility. And you see that play out. I mean, I think that's what intersects as well in my interest with non-human animals as well. Like, what does it mean to say that we are smarter than squirrels? On what grounds? Or what does it mean to say as Franz de Waal and his work in primates that somehow we just happen to be the species that has been actually the most kind of problematic. Last time I checked the squirrels aren't causing acceleration in global catastrophe. But maybe I'm wrong about that. I should take some humility there. That's a bit of a far stretch.

But I do think there's a kind of epistemic arrogance that's analogous to the Heideggerian one with the human person that I think I hear you talking about, whether it's informal kind of declarations of church teaching. But it's oftentimes not even that, to be quite honest.

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It's about people who make documents and doctrinal declarations idols. Where they say, "This is Christ, this is God, this is the church, this is the capital T truth." And that lack of humility, intellectual and epistemological stymies as you're saying, like facing reality. I mean, the thing that drives me nuts is I love metaphysics, I love philosophy, I love reading this stuff. But I also need to I think, remind myself—I don't need to remind myself; I'm quite aware of this, but I feel like others might need to be reminded as well that homomorphism isn't what is. It's just not the world as it is certainly and as you've said time and again in the scientific age. Are there analogies we can draw from it? Are there curious, interesting things we can analyze and read and reflect on? Sure. But I think the more that we want to hold onto that out of that fear, the more limited we become in actually listening to the divine presence and transcendence in the world.

So basically the belief in the Holy Spirit. If the spirit isn't the one who's revealing God self and the truths of the world and the universe, then who is? We want to be the ones who control that fear again. I can't accept it, so I'm locking it down. I think that's the thing that —I've called it in some of my writing Holy Spirit atheism. That it is a version of fear; that we're afraid that we aren't actually—it's not all up to us. We're afraid that things will change. We're afraid that we may not be the center of the universe. I do think we as human beings—I'm not denying that we have a relationship to God that's unique and distinctive, and we have a relationship to one another. And I agree with Pope Francis that we have a responsibility to care for the rest of creation, not because we are apart from it, but because we caused the mess. And as I like to say, maybe as a last note on that because the rest of creation's already caring for us. We can't breathe on our own. We just produce carbon dioxide and we need algae and trees to give us oxygen. We can't even digest the food we eat without the bacteria in our digestive tracts to help us with that. So this nonsense, again it's a delusion, it's a false sense of reality. And what would it look like to allow our theological imaginations to open up?

Ilia: I like the idea of epistemological humility because I think knowledge is a huge thing. Several points here. One is that in an age of science where we now know so much more

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than in the age of Francis of Assisi, there is a deep fear of not having the correct knowledge. And people sort of overcompensate sometimes by they'll overread and overthink things. I think we don't do well with just saying, "Well, I don't know." Or even realizing that all knowledge is always proximate knowledge. It's never whether science or religion. I mean, you're absolutely right. When I hear of some people talk in theology about God and their ideas on God, or what so and so said of God, it's said with such not certainty, but this kind of dogmatism like this is the truth. And I'm like... I mean, I don't laugh, but I want to sometimes because I'm like, "Really?" We're talking about 'God,' which basically is a name that's pointing to an incomprehensible mystery to use Ronner's terms.

So one thing is we have a difficult time, I think, in an age of science with kind of half-baked knowledge, and we feel that it's inadequate and so we want to overcompensate for that. But then we're also confused, I think about between knowledge and information. I think we have information overload. Everyone will go on to their social media feeds or the internet and they'll find whatever kind of reinforces whatever their ideas are. And they feel buoyed by this, "So-and-so said this." I find in this way the internet has just fractured us epistemologically, quite honestly. I think literally brains are just fractured. They're like little scattered segments all over, and we've lost sense. And here's where I would look to the tradition like an Augustine or a Bonaventure or Thomas Aquinas, right through to the famous Bernard Lonergan where knowledge is insight. It's a very deeply contemplative. It's about coming to new horizons of meaning. And then from those new horizons forming new ways of seeing the world and acting in the world. We've just lost that completely especially in our internet age.

Robert: Do we have the courage to reconsider age old doctrines in light of today's cultural and scientific context? Or out of fear will we clinging to what we're used to? Next, Ilia and Dan ask whether it's possible to reimagine some of the most central aspects of Christian theology, the doctrine of the Trinity, the incarnation.

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Ilia: We have such a poor theology of the Trinity, quite honestly. The Trinity is just like—As Karl Rahner said, "If the church voted the Trinity out of official doctrine, no one would bat an eye." Or Michael Heisman said, "Well, if we voted that there's a fourth member of the Trinity, we would have to have a committee meeting on how to remake the sign of the cross." So it's really kind of a meaningless doctrine. Yet I actually think that might be the source of our problems even in thinking through theology, because one of the key aspects of the Trinity certainly is the spirit. And I think certainly in Trinitarian theological discussions, it's, well, how do we think of the spirit? And I think Augustine and to some extent Thomas Aquinas—now this is a huge contentious issue. I realize that, but they kind of did hate the spirit on a second tier compared to the father and son. So it's got this magnificent creator idea, and then you got Jesus the Savior idea, and then you have the spirit like the bond of love. Therefore we had this kind of reduced or enervated God. God's already impotent from the beginning because Jesus did it all. And the fact is, well, no, Jesus didn't do it all. That's what He said. Like, "I've got to go so I can send the spirit because the spirit will lead you to all things." And the whole idea is like, "You're going to do more than what I did." We've never taken that seriously. We're always like, "Oh, no, this is what Jesus did. Well, we have to follow Jesus." But we go back to Francis of Assisi, and we know from our Franciscan studies that Francis almost never spoke about Jesus in his writings.

Dan: I know. People are shocked to hear that. Exactly.

Ilia: And what he did speak about a lot was the spirit, the spirit of the Lord and His holy activity. And so if we learn anything, if we read Francis with right eyes, we'll realize that it's the energy of divine love that's moving him to act at a new level. But I find in our own age, the Spirit is just short shifted. We don't know what to do with the Spirit. We keep imaging the spirit as like this dove or this little flame of fire. And it's heartwarming. It's got a little sense of personal therapy like the spirit is with you. But that's not it at all. I mean, the prophecy that is in the Old Testament, it was about the spirit breathing over chaos; the spirit breathing over chaos and out of that order coming. And that's the whole point, is that that spirit needs to be really upgraded, huge. And I think we need a whole upgrading

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on the Trinity, quite honestly. It's just like our God is all over the place. We have Trinity, and then we have all sorts of images of God or what God is for us, and then the Spirit is just out there floating around.

Dan: Well, and I think for several reasons—everything you're saying I'm giving a big amen silently here on the podcast, because it's funny, when I first wrote about this concept of Holy Spirit atheism, which is exactly what you're describing. I began with Rahner’s point about the Trinity exactly. In his little book of the Trinity, using that as the kind of tip off because I think he's exactly right. As you were talking I was thinking of a couple things that kind of go back to what we've been talking about already. One is that the doctrine of the Trinity requires a profound open-ended imagination, because it is very, very hard for us to get our heads around. I mean, it's hard enough for people to get the chalcedonian understanding of Christ; wrap their heads around it. Fully divine and fully human, what does that mean? And frankly, most people in the pews are again, unwitting heretics. There's all kinds of things. There are erroneous... But at the end of the day—I think docetism is particularly prevalent. I joke about it as I think a lot of people think that Jesus was just undercover God, like the TV show Undercover Boss and not fully human.

So if the Christology is challenged and broken in a way, oh my gosh, as you say, like the Trinity requires all the more. I think another thing that's really kind of in addition to—The joke is also like this mathematical thing. Like, "Is it the three leaf clover? Is it a triangle?" But the point is, I think there is a space open in thinking about divine action as deeply relational as dynamic. And the concept of paraparesis of a kind of a divine dance is not as narrative as we get like, "Jesus was born in a crib and then He journeyed for 30 years and this, that, and then the next thing." And because of that, the spirit as one theologian said, I can't remember—This was like in the 1950s. Wrote an article called the Holy Spirit: The Cinderella of the Trinity because it's like the forgotten step-sister.

But I also think going back to your point about patriarchy too, even though most people may not be aware of the Hebrew and Greek roots, etymological and conceptual roots of

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the spirit, if we think of the Greek pneuma, or if we think about the Hebrew ruach Halloween that you were talking about, going back to Genesis 1:2, these are feminine images of the divine. And so even on some level, I think there is this minimization and dismissal and kind of a setting aside of this, because Jesus is a dude, he's your brother and best friend and Savior. And God is this old man in the sky and people can wrap their heads around that. But what does the spirit look like if not, I guess a dove or a piece of flame like you were saying. So there's a taming or a desire to control. There's a fear again.

I was really struck by when you were talking about Lonergan and others with the kind of fracturing of knowledge because of the abundance of information. I was reminded of Bonaventure's notion of wisdom that you brought up earlier, that knowledge leads to wisdom. That there's something more than just the kind of intellectual act of knowing. There is something that's more embodied and more total. You mentioned Lonergan and I was thinking about Lonergan's whole notion of conversion, intellectual, moral psychological. And so all of this I think is of a peace. It's a desire for stasis, it's a desire for control, it's a desire for simplicity. It's a desire for easy answers, black and white binary worldviews. And in fact, the very core of our faith, whether it's the fully divine, fully human christology, whether it's the heretic trinity, whether it's the pneumatic pneumatology of the spirit, whether it's knowledge. All of this requires kind of like being held lightly, like an open handedness to the theological tradition instead of like a rigorous policing or kind of concretizing. And I think that's how God works, right? I mean, as I understand your work and the work of others who are really engaging in kind of cutting edge, not just evolutionary thought, but also technology and these other things that reflects to us is this kind of open-endedness. But we need to have the answer. It's going to be this, it's going to be that. And that's disconcerting for a lot.

Ilia: Right, Dan. I mean, again it's really kind of funny just listening to your language and the way we have developed doctrines of Christology; one person, two natures. Trinity; three persons, one nature. So one and two, three in one, we have all these formulas. And all of this really is flowing out of a young Jewish man who basically doodled in the sand and

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talked to women at wells. And you go, "Wow, how did this happen? Where did this come from?" Just going back, and I think sometimes we've just lost sight of the New Testament, quite honestly. It just has drifted far. We're on a boat someplace. The churches like to see itself on a boat on the stormy seas of the world. But I think that boat sometimes—I know Pope John Paul, John the 23rd at the start of the Vatican Council was that the ship has sailed too far away from land and we need to get back to land and just be on land with people and wake up to what this world is. But it's still a little bit quasi like that. It's still a little bit in the hull of the ship.

I think when I come back to Jesus—and the fact is the New Testament is not black and white answers, it's not formulaic, it's not dogmatic, it's none of those things at all. It is really just having that trust in God as Jesus trust in God, trust in me, love of God, love of neighbor. It's pretty simple some times. And being filled with that spirit. This is where I think Francis of Assisi, or even Thomas Merton, who was a very bright man, very well educated. But Francis in his own simplicity, he kind of got it and that was his genius, right? He wasn't way down by neo-Platonism, all the school stuff that the theologians were. In fact, for all the hyper Francis stuff, the fact is Francis was really on the edge of the church if he really looked seriously. I think some of the stories in his early career where he goes to the monastery which was paradigmatic of the church at that point, and he didn't feel at home. He said he went back into the world. That's basically Francis of Assisi felt himself at home with the lepers, with the wolves, with poor people, rich people, whoever came along. It wasn't a clear cut life. And I think we're always looking for clear cut solutions in the church, theologically, "Here's my systematic treatise on this." And it's like, "Actually, that is not how things work." Not things that will move other things. And that's the whole thing. We can have these treatises, we can have these wonderful expositions, intellectual discussions. But the fact is what moves the world, what moves nature is none of that. It is actually something that's energetic and that is coming from a deep center of life.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, I'm reminded of something that when we were talking about earlier, this came to mind. And then as you're speaking just now, reminded me of it again, which is

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you said going back to this first century Palestinian Jewish man writing in the sand and kind of associating with the outcasts of his day. What's going on there? Well, the heart of Christianity is about relationship. It's about experience. The first followers experienced God in the relationship with this person Jesus of Nazareth. After the resurrection came to realize, "Well, this is a world changing revelation for us." And then that early kerygma of preaching this, it's preaching about relationship, preaching about experience. And Jesus' whole ministry, as we know, was exactly like you're saying. It's about love and connection. When people asked—and I just think the gospel itself. maybe that's why so many Catholics —it's a stereotype—but don't read the Bible. Don't read the gospels because actually it undermines a lot of this sort of concrete static thinking that predominates.

Ilia: Others knows best.

Dan: Yeah. Yet when Jesus has asked direct questions that would have a seemingly either or answer, He tells a story. He's like, "It's actually like this," and it flips expectations around. You mentioned the New Testament, I was just thinking because I'm working right now—I was asked to write an essay about the resurrection. So I've been thinking a lot about the resurrection lately. And it's probably a good time we're recording this about a week out from Easter. The resurrection is another one of those doctrines that is just really hard for people to wrap their heads around. Our mutual friend, Jack Kaputo, has a great essay from years ago that was published in a collection where he does his thing that he does so well and it's thinking about what this might mean in kind of philosophical language. But I'm also thinking about St. Paul, when people like the Thessalonians and others are asking him like, "Okay, we're preaching this resurrection. What does it mean?" He basically says, "I don't really know. We know it's going to be something." And there you go.

Truth be told, that is a doctrine that is some ways like the Trinity underdeveloped. And I don't know that it's necessarily a bad thing because of its profundity. It will always be kind of incomplete just like the mystery of God. And I was just thinking since you've mentioned Merton so much, I can't help but go to the end of chapter two of New Seeds of

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Contemplation that we had mentioned where he basically throws this torpedo at the kind of limited theological thinking that we're talking about. He says, "There is no such thing as God, because God is neither a what nor a thing but a pure who. God is the thou before whom are in most I springs into awareness. God is the I am before whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice we echo I am." And for me, I always love teaching that and putting that up on a slide for students, because immediately they think, "Oh my God, is Thomas Merton an atheist? Are you an atheist?" But his point is kind of what we are saying, which is when we have such a limited constricted atrophied theological imagination, then we can only deal with propositions and clear, simple, easily digestible statements. But Merton and Francis, and Jesus himself and others had this relational sense of God. And not trying to put God in a box, not trying to create an idol in our own image and likeness, but allowing God to disclose the gift of God's self to us on God's terms. That requires a surrender of control; back to that fear again.

Ilia: And you're right. I mean, I get the question a lot, "What's life after death going to be like?" And I always say, "Well, I don't know. I haven't died yet." Try to get a firm answer on that one. But I kind of like want to put like, "Resurrection. Surprise!"

Dan: I like that.

Ilia: Just have like, "Surprise! Here it is." So that's it. We love surprises but we don't really like divine surprises. We're like, "Oh no, what could that mean?" It's like, maybe just go for the journey, just get on that roller coaster or just go to the party and see what'll emerge. And that's the beauty. I think our understanding of God, we so kind of manipulate God to fit our own size and our own little ways of thinking. But I think God is that surprise. God is that dynamism of future we'll never be able to get a handle on. But we're asked to join the party. We're asked to... I'm thinking apparently we've got this thing from Trip Fuller on Theology Beer Camp. I'm thinking it's a great way to kind of destabilize and diffuse theology out of its seriousness, yet talk about the things that matter most to us. And I think that's what we're doing here as well. We're trying to diffuse this kind of heavy,

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scholastic, philosophical framework around God talk and just say, "Wow, God's really much near and dear and much more infused in the life streams of what we're about and where we're going." As you said, it's just a matter and the spirit is that energy of trust and surrender. Just like let go and have a little fun on this journey. We're so dead serious. And I think seriousness may be the buzz killer of the world because we just lack a sense. I think levity brings lightness and lightness brings a new way of thinking about things and just live the future.

Dan: And I think that that's tied to what we were talking about earlier and that you've emphasized as well about imagination. Imagination is playful. Imagination is not predetermined, it's not overdetermined. That's why on the one hand I get very frustrated as I'm sure you do, informal sort of ecclesiastical pronouncements. You'll hear things like, "We can't do X because it's out of our control and Jesus determined this," when Jesus has never said anything about whatever X is. But it's this like arrogance again that comes along. But I think it's rooted in that fear that what if the Holy Spirit were real? What if what Jesus preached...? There's this sort of concern from some Christians that like, "Oh, other traditions and atheists or folks who may not identify with an ecclesial community look at Jesus and say, 'Well, he was a nice wisdom figure and I have no problem with Jesus, but He is a nice guy.'" And they say, "Oh no, but he was the son of God and this kind of thing," which of course, Christians, we believe that. But at the same time, there's a way in which that kind of atrophied imagination and stayed theological thinking reflects a kind of not taking Jesus seriously as divine and human, as just like a nice guy. We're going to disregard everything that he said in order to kind of advance our agenda and worldview and way of thinking and stamp Jesus' name on. It's disconcerting.

Ilia: I think the world will heal when we can let go of the control. We just have to decontrol. And maybe in a really strained way, AI, because it's kind of remaking us, is kind of taking some of the control away from us and it's reforming us into a new collective type of species. We're very deeply fearful of that, very suspicious of what we're going to become with AI. But I've often thought that there's something very deep within us; deep,

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deep within our consciousness that knows that this is where we are now it can't stay. It's not only unhealthy, it's deadly. We become a deadly species to ourselves and to the environment. So we do need to move on. And I think what we need to do is just trust that God, the spirit, life could indeed be part and parcel woven into, integrate into the circuits of AI. And until we can really begin to be at home in that, I think we're going to struggle because we're constantly trying to control everything. And as you were talking, couldn't help but thinking of the upcoming synod for the Catholic church in October and the millions of dollars that are spent to fly people in to have these discussions on something as simple as, "Should we allow women near the alter to preach?" And the inability to even get that far is so indicative of sort of the illness that's plaguing underneath kind of a systemic dis-ease, if I can use that language.

Dan: I think that's right. I mean, it's an overused phrase or image. But I think drawing kind of like the most cynical take it would be like the rearranging of seats on the Titanic, right? People talk about it this way. I think a generous read is I think Pope Francis—for all the limitations we've already discussed, particularly around like Laudato Si' where I think we would just like to see it more seriously taken in that line of thinking. I think he is sincere in wanting to be open to the Holy Spirit. I do believe that he's one of the few very senior church leaders who actually believes in the Holy Spirit. I think the consequence, the possible implications and maybe even fallout from listening to the Holy Spirit taking, as we've been saying, the gospel and the mystery of God, seriously. I just don't think we're ready for that, which is unfortunate. I think I am one of these people to confess that's a little bit more afraid of AI than you are. But I think there's something to think about there about why is that. And maybe for me it's what you identified earlier, that AI in its present iteration as opposed to like general artificial intelligence is really... A lot of that is calling information and not knowledge or wisdom yet. So maybe what does that look like when these things come together? I got to think about that some more perhaps.

Ilia: If we wait until we at a better position to kind of navigate where we're going we're never going to get there. And I think there is a thing where we have to be trusting enough

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of where we are, what we know, what we have, where we are in the church, just to say, "Okay, this is it. We're going to just do it." You just have to step into the river at some point to know whether the water is warm or cold. You just can't stand on the shorelines and just kind of speculate, "Well, it could be because of the weather conditions." So I think certainly I agree. I think Pope Francis is remarkable and I give him a lot of credit for even bringing the church this far in these discussions of women and the environment. But there's still so much resistance as always. Wherever you have more than three people gathered you're bound to have resistance. So I think we get caught up in those pockets of resistance, and we're trying to always defend our positions. And I think that is the most unhealthiest thing we can do. I think nature just doesn't work like that at all. We humans would not be here if nature actually worked like that. So it's time to let go and let flow and let God. So bringing it back to the Spirit, maybe it is now the time for the Spirit to emerge. So what's your final word to our listeners?

Dan: My final word is be open to the Holy Spirit. I mean, don't forget the spirit. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to have this conversation with you. I always enjoy when we talk theology and talk about the growing edges of it and the needs of the world today. It has been a real gift and I'm very grateful. So thank you.

Ilia: Thanks, Dan. It's great to have you.

Robert: This concludes our conversation with Father Dan Horan. Be sure to listen to our next interview with Neil Theise, professor of pathology, groundbreaking scientific researcher, and author of Notes on Complexity; A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being. A special thanks to our partners at the Fetzer Institute. As always, I'm Robert Nicastro. Thanks for listening.

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