Visiting roots

Yesterday after 20 hours travelling, youngest son and I arrived in Vancouver. I am here for the David Lochhead Memorial Symposium, to present a paper, but much more importantly to pay homage to the roots of my academic interest in cybertheology. In 1995, I was just starting to explore the possibilities of a theological approach indigenous to cyberspace community when I discovered the writings of Professor David Lochhead online. It was these papers which gave me the inspiration to explore the possibilities, and 11 years later, I have at last got empirical evidence which addresses some of the quastions he was asking as early as the mid 1980s.

Professor Lochhead died in 1999, so I never had the opportunity to meet him in virtual or other reality. The invitation to contribute to this symposium has brought me to Vancouver School of Theology to meet those who were fortunate enough to work with him as students and colleagues: people whose names I know from Ecunet and academic papers. It's a privilege to put faces to names and a source of astonishment that many of them are genuinely pleased to meet me. So this is very much a visit to the place where the roots of my academic career are planted.


But we found another sort of roots today as well. The symposium didn't start till this evening, and I was excused the business meetings of the conference today, so on the advce of Cathy Bone of VST and Gordon Laird of Ecunet (who, wth his wife Marilyn met us off the plane last night), youngest son and I explored the University of British Columbia campus this morning, and the Museum of Anthropology this afternoon. The First Nations of this area are honoured in memory and art in a strikingly beautiful way through the artefacts and displays which tell their story.

UBC is a very large institution - 40,000 students - and the campus is new, extensive and developing at an amazing rate thanks to endowments. The commitment of the people and government of BC to education is evident everwhere one looks,and there is a fascinating collection of buildings that are beautiful, functional and exquisitely apt for their purposes, from the Chan auditorium, designed to look like the inside of a cello, to the library which is shaped like a book opened and then laid flat with the spine upwards and the science building shaped like a cell.

Tomorrow the real work of the conference starts, and I'm delighted to be part of David Lochead's legacy.