I’ve been blessed with the women in my life. My biological mother Lethel Wolter Peters raised and cared for me for thirteen years, even during her multi-year terminal illness. Alice Krautsch Peters became my mother when I was sixteen and was a life-inspiration to me for almost fifty years. My first wife Carol Dzemske Peters was an independent minded, hard working IBM systems engineer and an equal companion in many of our memorable life-adventures together. Rev. Marjorie (Marj) Hall Davis has gifted me with three adult children and their families and has been intellectually, morally, and religiously my soul mate since our marriage in 1999. I am so fortunate.
I enjoy my step children Paul, Anne and her husband Bob, and Mark and his wife Valerie and our grandchildren from age 25 down to 6: Jana, Matthew, Sarah, David, Gregory, Amelia, and Nora. Not having had any children of my own, with Marj and her family, and thanks to Amelia and Nora, whom I’ve known from birth, I have learned and enjoyed much as a witness to the remarkable development of young human beings. At age 68, I learned to change my first diaper—one of many new life adventures for Grandpa Karl.
The most important person in my growing up was my father Norman Julius Peters. As a mechanical engineer he taught me how to solve problems practically. More important, he modeled for me what it was like to be a humane human being. When my first mother died, he became both father and mother to me—a cherished memory.
Now in my “senior years with senior moments,” I find that I’m professor emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida. For more than forty years I taught a variety of courses in religion and philosophy, including environmental ethics, and evolution, creation and human creativity. I lectured and published articles on issues in science and religion, with a special interest in understanding how religion and science can be related to everyday living. Many of my reflections are in Dancing with the Sacred: Evolution, Ecology, and God (Trinity Press International, 2002), and in Spiritual Transformations: Science, Religion, and Human Becoming (Fortress Press, 2008).
I was the Editor of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science (1979-89) and Coeditor (1989-2009). Now I’m co-chair of the Journal’s Joint Publication Board.
Since 1972 I have been participating in the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) attending its summer conferences on Star Island and now at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York. I am a Past President, a past Vice President for Conferences, and was co-chair of the IRAS 2011 conference on “Doing Good, Doing Bad, Doing Nothing.” Visit the IRAS website to find out more about what we are doing. I also am the current president of the Center for Advanced Study in Religion and Science, which is IRAS’s partner in publishing Zygon.
In 1993 I was the founder and first president of the University Unitarian Universalist Society of Central Florida. I now am a member of the Unitarian Society of Hartford and have served on the Board of Directors. I regularly attend with Marj her church, South Church (UCC) in Granby, and participate in some of its activities.
Now 73 years old, I find that my mind is still young even if my body does not keep up with it. In memory I enjoy the richness of my life and all the people that are a part of it—a part of me—with gratitude.