| the vita |
| Over the past 25 years Lawrence Willson has served in a variety of integral professions. For seven years Larry taught communication and conflict management skills at a private school serving young adults with learning and emotional problems. Previous service included 15 years at institutions of higher learning, first as a teacher of philosophy and the religions, then as a campus minister. In between he worked as hospital chaplain for three years, including clinical training. Along the way he served as pastor and counsel to seekers of spiritual care from varied religions and cultures. As an ordained United Methodist cleric, Rev. Willson has embraced intensive study of spiritual formation in various wisdom traditions and enjoyed extensive peer group travel with the patronage of Mr. Ed Dixon and the Methodist Educational Leave Society to learn of interfaith and crosscultural connections between contemplation and action. Peer Group travel and learning involved select teachers in North America, Europe, Middle East, and India, with additional study in the previous Soviet Union. He is a graduate of the two-year program of the Academy for Spiritual Formation and a member of that Academy Forum. Dr. Willson holds three academic degrees: Bachelor of Arts from Birmingham-Southern College, 1969; Master of Theology from Boston University School of Theology, 1972; and Doctor of Philosphy from Boston University, 1980. He wrote a doctoral dissertation on Zen Buddhism and process philosophy, under the current title, The Being of Being--a comparative study of the contemplative philosophies of Charles Hartshorne and D.T. Suzuki; and under the supervision of Harold Oliver, LeRoy Rouner, Daud Rahbar, Peter Bertocci, Alan Olson, and Merlin Swartz. Larry's abiding interest is in the application of deep knowledge to practical problems, chief among which he finds to be Faithism. Thus comes an attendant aim of the site-- to avert the reader's eye and ear from faithism that proves, in us all, a severe bias that comes from the cave of self-righteousness. It can sever the ties that bind any common wealth and leads invariably to violence if not held at bay. Individually, every one of us carries on an internal dialogue between a true self of integrity and a false self of fear and fragmentation. Faithism results from that false self. Larry was raised in a mining camp near Birmingham, Alabama. The coal mine and the racially segregated camp provided the formative setting for learning--through his parents the integral values of trust, honesty, simplicity, tolerance and empathy; through his brother the beauty of nature, with particular attention to birds and the perceptive regard for creatures great and small; and through his sister a deep trust in energies beyond the eye of flesh or of mind. Larry is married to an attorney and they celebrate two adult children, one an engineer, the other a photographer. Dialogue is welcome. E-mail address: [email protected]. To put a face on this bio click the gold bar below. |
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