Math Mystic's Guide to Creative Spirituality

Book excerpt: The Math Mystic’s Guide to Creative Spirituality is unique, provocative, engaging, and a masterpiece of philosophical and mystical exploration. It offers gourmet treats for those with spiritual hunger, a feast of innovative perspectives on building social collateral (trust, forgiveness, resilience . . .), and intellectual desserts for the mathematically inclined. User-friendly for the non-mathematician, the book also provides a smorgasbord of resources for those who want to know more about the math. Deeply personal but also scholarly, with an unprecedented use of mathematical metaphors, this book will appeal to mathematicians, scientists, teachers, philosophers, religious educators, and spiritual seekers of many persuasions. A math professor before becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister, the author has compiled herein a lifetime of creative study about the relationship between math and religion. She has pioneered ways to use mathematics to help clarify such spiritual ideas as God, fairness, equality, redemption, and the nature of things. In the process she coined the terms “matheology” and “mathaphor,” introduced the notion of math sermons, and has expanded the concept of moral math. This exciting collection of essays (with a little poetry as garnish) uses math as a language to nourish the spiritual heart of our global society.