Table of Contents
Part 1 The Birth of the Universe
Prologue: Finding Our Bearings in the River of Time 3
1 To Understand the Origin of All 7
2 Mathematical Cosmology at the Tacoma Yacht Club 11
3 Primal Light in a Basketball Gymnasium 15
4 Music of the Spheres at the Grotto Cafe 19
5 A Galloping Beast in the Thompson Hall of Science 23
6 Point Defiance in the Central Basin 28
7 Sanctuary for the Chaotic Transition 32
8 Three Worlds on Whidbey Island 35
9 The West Coast Highway 40
10 Sr. Isabelle Mary and Dwarf Stars 43
11 Ralph Waldo Emerson's Cry 46
12 Siskiyou Mountains 51
13 The Shakespeare of Mathematical Cosmology 55
14 Barnacles at the Boathouse Grill 60
15 The Initial Singularity of Space-Time in the Boeing Amphitheater 63
16 Primordial Fire in the Lips 68
17 When Newton's Equations Fused with Gravity 71
18 The Sun in British Columbia 77
19 Freeman Dyson's Intelligent Cosmos Just South of the Border 84
20 Mount Olympus in the Marysville Denny's 89
21 Narrows of the Salish Sea 92
22 King Tut in Seattle 98
23 The Snow of North Tacoma 103
24 Dirac's Quantum Field Theory in Knapp's Bar 108
25 Snowflakes in the Stoplight at Proctor Avenue 114
26 Galaxies Singing in Different Octaves at Hood Canal 117
27 Isaac Newton inside the University of Puget Sound 124
28 Seattle Space Needle 128
29 The Olympic Peninsula 132
30 Rocky Point, West Tacoma 135
31 The Long View Down 15th Street 139
32 The Observatory of Puget Sound 142
33 A Multimillionaire in the Basement of 1508 North Cedar 145
34 The Piano at the Winthrop Hotel 153
35 Epiphany at St. Patrick's 156
36 "The New Cosmic Story" 160
37 Goodbye to Dolores 164
38 Stars in the Salish Sea 168
Part 2 Stars and Galaxies
39 The Professional Fool 175
40 Matthew Fox in Chicago 182
41 Hildegard of Bingen 185
42 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin vs. Alfred North Whitehead 190
43 Thomas Berry's Bleak Vision in the Yellow House 196
44 The Pilgrimage to Bell Labs 199
45 The Great Red Oak in New York City 203
46 Terror in a Vast Universe 209
47 The Supreme Poet of the Medieval Cosmos 213
48 The Universe Takes Flight as a Red-Tailed Hawk 216
49 Plagues of Symbolic Consciousness 220
50 The Magnanimity of Sunshine 225
51 The First Basic Law of the Universe 229
52 A Cosmological Form of Intention 235
53 Gottfried Leibniz at the Riverdale Center 239
54 Window to a New Axial Age 243
55 Fraser River Awakening 248
56 Bewitched by Theory at the Broadway Diner 252
57 The Nuclear Force in the Santa Cruz Mountains 258
58 St. Augustine's Rome in Flames 270
59 Cathedral of St. John the Divine 275
60 The Reinvention of Sexual Attraction 279
61 The Spirituality of the Supernova 283
62 Theories of Death at the Hudson River Palisades 288
63 Cosmological Love 293
64 The Solar System Floats Light as a Feather 296
65 The Universe Is a Green Dragon 300
66 The First Hexagram of the I Ching 304
Epilogue: Our Common Human Destiny 309