Curriculum Vitae of Sylvester L. Steffen. I AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CHRONOLOGY
1933, February, He was born, ninth child of ten children to Mathilda A. Meier and Joseph Nicholas Steffen, in the early morning hours, at home, attended by Dr R. A. Bucky Buckmaster, M.D., and his thirteen year old sister Marie, later to become Sr. Mary Samuel, OSF
1938-1946: He completed elementary school at Barclay, No. 3, Black Hawk County, IA; attended daily Mass with parents at St. Francis Parish located near the elementary school.
1946-1950: He attended High School at the Divine Word Missionary Preparatory Seminary, in studies for the Catholic priesthood at Epworth, IA, and at East Troy, WI, where he graduated in June 1950
1950-1952: In preparation for religious life he completed a two-year Novitiate at Techny, IL, and made his first religious vows under Novice Master Fr. Felix Glorius, SVD
1952-1954: He completed the Divine Word Seminary Juniorate at Epworth, Iowa. Won a First Class Relic of St. Theresa of The Child Jesus for scoring highest in a contest to know and correctly spell the names of all the Juniorate Seminarians; the award was presented by the Prefect of Students, Fr Emil LeSage, SVD.
1954-1956: He completed the two-year Philosophy curriculum (texts and classes in Latin) and was awarded the Bachelor of Arts Degree, Major in Rational Psychology. Textbooks by Gerald Esser, SVD
1956-1957: He completed First-Year Theology; was assigned and completed a life-changing Paper: Religion, A Rational Consideration, February-March 1957. [See: Quantum Religion, pp. 255-270] His Theology Professor (Prefect of Students) was the late Fr. John Musinsky, SVD, First American Superior General of The Society of The Divine Word (SVD). From this time, he became committed to reconcile what was to him the disturbed mind between science and religion. He attended a Summer Class in Embryology at DePaul University, Chicago, under Professor Semrad. In August 1957 he returned to public life.
1957-1984: He was in the employment of Harvestall Industries, Inc., a business of his brother Vincent B. Steffen (now deceased); he was employed in grain research and grain equipment marketing. He obtained multiple patents in original science (grain chillcuring) involving the curing/drying (preserving dormancy) of fresh-harvested corn grain in storage bins on the farm. In 1982 he became physically handicapped by osteoarthritis. Due to the withdrawal of governmental funding to farmers for the purchase of on-farm-storage (c. 1981), the grain bin business was severely curtailed. His patents were at issue in multiple Harvestall Business lawsuits, which he personally and successfully defended.
1958-1960: Under a joint Research Grant, (Botany and Agricultural Engineering) at Iowa State University, he obtained a Master of Science Degree in Plant Physiology; his unpublished thesis, The Effects of Drying Methods on the Germination of Corn, May 1960, is in the Iowa State University Library, Ames, IA.
1959-1989: Member of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE)
1959, June 20, He married Felicitas Angeles Garcia, daughter of Dr. Gaudencio Garcia, J.D., (Professor of Law, wartime Judge and Commissioner of Elections, Manila Philippines) and Maria Paz Angeles.
1960-1969: Six daughters were born to the couple: Monica Ruth (b. 4/5/60, d. 6/9/01); Veronica Rose; Rebecca Marie; Theresa Mae; Maria Pilar; and Leticia Lee
1982: He continues to study and write for the reconciling of religion and science, specifically in analyzing and synthesizing implications of evolution on theology premised in static presumptions of Aristotelian cosmology and culture. He continues to write materials for new paradigm studies in evolving religion, moral maturity and adult faith education.
Self-Published Writings: 1992 New Genesis Poems, A Trilogy: Word Behind the Word; Under the Sign of the Cross; Crossword Church
1998 THE POETREE TRILOGIES, a Reconciliation of Chardin & Einstein Novogenesis, the quantum cosmology; Metagenesis, the quantum philosophy Theogenesis, the quantum theology
2000 A Summary Prevision Toward Global Revitalization A public confessional statement
THE SECOND ENLIGHTENMENT TRILOGY 2001 Primary Scripture, Cosmic Religion's First Lessons 2003 Quantum Religion, The Good News of Rising Consciousness 2004 Religion & Civility, The Primacy of Conscience.
THE CONSCIOUS LIGHT TRILOGY 2006 The Possible Journey, Uncompromised Trust 2007 What Self-Donation is: Kenosis, Eucharist & Green Religion 2008 Green Religion, Inside the Cultural Spectrum
II AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVE
Torchbearer for 2nd Enlightenment: My name is Sylvester Lawrence Steffen. My family lived on a Black Hawk County (Iowa) farm, just down the road a quarter-mile from the one-room country school, Barclay No. 3, and the St. Francis Catholic Church. A railroad track from Dunkerton to Dewar cut through the family farm.
I was born in the wee morning hours of the 26th day of February 1933, even as a several day Iowa blizzard was happening. Our family physician, Dr. Robert Bucky Buckmaster, MD, came on his one-horse sleigh to attend to my birth. Snowdrifts made all roads impassable. Assisting him was my thirteen-year-old sister, Marie. Many times I have heard my mother tell how much I look like Marie, though I think that was my mothers birth-trauma fantasy for I am in no way as good-looking as my two sisters.
I am the second youngest in a family of eight boys and two girls. By birth, I have the Joseph place in the sibling relationship. I attended eight grades at Barclay No. 3, where we played softball in the cow pasture across the road from the school. We were always on the lookout for the ornery Jersey bull that pastured with the cows. After graduating from grade school (1946) I entered the preparatory seminary with the Divine Word Missionaries at Epworth, Iowa. I continued studies for the Catholic priesthood until August 1957. My two sisters, Marie and Eleanor, joined the convent of the Dubuque Franciscan Sisters. In religious life their names are Sr. Mary Samuel OSF and Sr. Mary Justina OSF. Both were stricken with Multiple Sclerosis in their mid-years and were physically incapacitated from their regular work. My brother Arnold became a Divine Word Missionary priest and has since 1957 been in Papua New Guinea, where he works with the Better World Movement.
My 11-year seminary experience was positively formative, and my acquired determination to live a life of service, what priesthood is all about, has never wavered. More than I can say, I am indebted to the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) for their excellent curriculum of studies that included a broadly based liberal arts program, with emphasis on languages and science, culminating in a MA (Liberal Arts) major in Philosophy. Language studies included English, Latin, German, Greek and Hebrew.
My love for religion and science advanced them mutually, as did my sense of bewilderment over public distrust that confuses truths of science and truths of religion; each discipline claimed priority in alienated realms of reality, which made no sense to me.
In my eleventh Seminary year, as a first-year theology student, all students were required to write a serious paper; mine was Religion: A Rational Consideration. In it I brought together theological and cosmological issues in the unitary evolution of energy and matter, soul and body. (This paper is included in Quantum Religion as an Appendix.) The correlations I drew between science and religion were modest and cautious, but significant in the evolution of my personal consciousness. This paper marks in me an already-rooted sense of the need to reconcile religion and science, for in reality each is an important aspect of common consciousness. The schism of holistic truth conflicts consciousness and rattles the brain with the confusion of adversarial voices.
I came to the conviction that I needed to pursue science as professionally as I had pursued religion, so I decided with much reflection to discontinue my pursuit of the priesthood. Life was now more complex for I had two parallel lives to live, the optional one, in which I continued seeking the reconciliation of science and religion, and the essential one that required of me to earn my own living and not depend on an institution for lifes necessities.
I was fortunate to be able to pursue science in a way that fit well in both lives. I matriculated at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, in pursuit of a Master of Science degree in Botany (Plant Physiology), which gave me entry into physical science and quantum-electric investigation. Fortuitously, the knowledge I acquired enabled me to apply basic science in a way that directly benefited farmers in the harvest, curing and preservation of their corn grain on-the-farm, and to apply this learning to my sense of the sacred order of natural sacrament.
I went into business with my brother Vincent, who later became the elected State Representative of Chickasaw County and the Speaker of the Iowa House during the time (1960s) of Governor Harold E. Hughes. His business was called Harvestall Industries, Inc. Together we sold grain storage systems of our patented designs to farmers; the systems employed a process of CHILLCURING that avoided heating the grain and the forced and premature extraction of moisture from the grain, thereby reducing costs to farmers even as grain values become enhanced. We collaborated until the death of Vince, July 10, 1994. By 1982 I had developed medical problems that restricted my work and allowed me more time to study and write toward the reconciliation of science and religion.
SUMMARY of the SCIENCE/RELIGION RECONCILIATION
With completion of the last book of The Second Enlightenment Trilogy, Religion & Civility, insight into reconciling religion and science emerges.
Personal and collective consciousness is the venue where reconciliation happens. Consciousness evolves informed in natural web-complexes, and informs ongoing transformations of the web-complexes. The conscious tension flow of information is purposeful and holistic, namely, processing continuously, coherently and inherently. Continuity processing involves iterative patterns of cosmic evolution, the means of knowledge reconciliation and symbiosis. Information-consilience accommodates consciousness by the three-step process of synthesis appropriately called trimorphic resonance, that is, coming to synthesis by communication, consciousness, and conscience. Consciousness- resonance transforms soul/substance and religious/civil harmony. Consciousness is web-sourced insight (enlightenment) where information converges, correlates and is processed and stored.
The scripture of life, encoded genetically in evolutionary experience, is the memory cache of life successes and failures. Each living cell advances first-text imprints of cosmic experience. Mindfulness, rationality, purpose, wisdom come to be encoded in resonant memory, matters of the first book of the Second Enlightenment Trilogy, PRIMARY SCRIPTURE, Cosmic Religions First Lessons.
The point is made that religion is irrelevant except personal morality is informed and updated in truthful relationships and applied conscionably in all interpersonal relationships. A least expectation of religion is that it enlightens conscience and the obligation of personal/social faithfulness in securing common relationships in the essential providence of natural web-complexes
The ongoing ascendancy of consciousness in the process of rationality enables civil sensibility and moral maturity, subject matters of QUANTUM RELIGION: The Good News of Rising Consciousness, book two of the trilogy.
Quantum-ascendant consciousness, the place and process of human / divine conspiracy, attends mindfully to religious/civil sustainability. Holistic, rational consciousness underlies religious and civil conduct. The separation of moral sense from civil obligation is a schism that fatally infects the human psyche and interpersonal relationships with disorder and dysfunction. The primacy role of conscience in personal/public behavior applies equally to civil life as to religious. The polarizing of faith against reason conflicts consciousness and serves opportunistic ideologies that frustrate religion and civility. The evidence is a matter of history. Ecology and economics are in the final analysis essential aspects of human/divine Eucharist, self-donation; when ecology is trashed, economics are trashed; when economics are trashed, Eucharist is trashed; when Eucharist is trashed so is respect for nature and for self. The lessons of history, both honorable and horrific, document conscionable and unconscionable behavior, but are accessible for the edification of all; these are presented in the Third Trilogy Book, RELIGION & CIVILITY, The Primacy of Conscience. Published print-on-demand (POD) at www.AuthorHouse.com
Websites: www.secondenlightenment.org and www.acolyte.gather.com
