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Probably best, going that route, to focus on Whiteheads interest in common sense

Hi Yingying,
I am sympathetic to your sense of time as a prison.
With calendars and schedules and so many demands from employers and family and other commitments it can be difficult to find free time for anything other than these commitments.
The process concept of flow, I think, gets at the experience of losing oneself in some experience, say, enjoying a really good book and losing track of how much time I spend reading it.
Conversely, when I hear about deep time, I’m thinking about all that is available in any given moment, and, all the potential for what might come of it; and so, I wonder if growth in awareness of all that available and all that is at stake in any moment could make the experience of each moment more rich in both potential and actual concrescence; and beyond this, if such rich moments could be sustained over time without being exhausted by the experience.
My curiosity wanders.
Thanks for your response.

Hi Paula,
I too enjoyed Whitehead’s autobiographical notes.
I’ve read and learned more about Whitehead than I have actually read of Whitehead himself, so, the Autobiographical Notes were my first exposure, beyond the copious quotes.
Getting to know someone can be an adventure.
Whitehead seems like an interesting guy.
Thanks for sharing,
Luke

I am not familiar with this quite.
May I ask: what is the context (fiction, non-fiction)?

Hi Theresa, impressive introduction.
Looks like you’re further down the path of process than I.
Kudos

I wish I did already know of it, looks like it’s pretty long: lol. I have a lot of reading to do before class

Questions for Reflection on Farmer and Cobb:

Cobb – on page 52 – John Cobb notes that sensory experience is secondary. Do you have experience with this in your life? Perhaps we have a memory we would share when our senses were surely at work but secondary to what we knew?
Hmm. My photocopy doesn’t have page numbers and my free Adobe software can’t search the text in the image, so, I can’t readily find the quote and it doesn’t spring readily from memory. I seem to recall from the reading that it was modern science that saw sensory experience as primary, even to the exclusion of God; whereas, Cobb identifies truth (reality) with Abba, an intimately personal and relational God. So, perhaps from this perspective, our sensory understanding of reality would be secondary to our relational experience of reality through our emotional and relational experiences of Gods world.
Do I have experience with this? Once I was a classical theist. I had a very personal relation with God/Jesus/Spirit in prayer especially. I’ve let go of this way of relating to God, and, it has had consequences in my prayer life. Cobb describes something similar, he describes a death of God experience of sorts. Perhaps my experience could be likened to this. Cobbs faith was salvaged, I’m still trying to work out salvation for my faith and see hope in Process. I’m a believer in science, but, I’m also a post-modern. For me, science (and it’s reliance on sensory experience) and religion are not mutually exclusive, and, I don’t sense they are for Cobb either. Human relationships in particular rarely work out as well as I’d hope, so, I wish I could claim more of Cobbs primacy of the initmate Abba relation to sensory experience and I certainly aim to.
Is there a memory I can share when my senses were at work, but secondary to what I knew? Hmm. I think there is quite a bit more to human experience than simply what comes in through the senses, or that could be reduced to what comes in through the senses: intuition, conscience, memory itself, feeling others feelings in their presence, and etc.
Cobbs point about the separation of knowledge from the divine in the schools certainly has consequences for launching young adults, as Cobb notes, who often are indifferent to religion, even if they are brought to regularly attend a religious community during their upbringing. An interesting part of Jesus’ story is that he is raised by a man, Joseph, who is identified as someone who is not Jesus’ biological father. Nevertheless, Jesus talks of God as Abba. Cobb doesn’t associate this Abba with either father or Father; but no doubt, Abba in the traditional community Jesus was raised in had certain attributes that first century Jewish-Christian readers would have readily identified with. But, whatever those traditional Abba attributes were, Jesus would have had a kind of outsiders perspective on them, as one who knew not his biological father, and, is presented in the Gospels as identifying God as his Abba. If Jesus had an intimate kind of Abba relation, I think it would have been different than the typical traditional relation between a child and his biological father; and therefor, just how intimate could it have been, except to the extent that Jesus intimately related to God as such.

How does Cobb help us manage our expectations by defining the Call Forward on page 54 and addressing providence on pg. 60?
Answering this would be so much easier with page numbers, or better, a searchable text. Anyway, my memory of the reading is that the Call Forward has to do with prioritized values, i.e. some things are more important than others, and, these values are urges God uses to lure us toward a particular end.
Providence for Cobb is contrasted with some kind of divine plan. Rather than predestined outcomes, Cobb sees providence differently. I don’t think Cobb says it like this, but, I think providence is Cobbs way of thinking of Gods ongoing activity in our lives through making new possibilities and lures available to us in every moment that will hopefully lead us toward a particular end.

Farmer addresses beauty, intense harmony, and ripening in her 1st three chapters. How do these process concepts inform pacing our work with young adults?
The word ripening brings to mind the process of maturation, which is the very nature of what young adults are in the process of doing as members of the broader community. The more complexity they can manage harmoniously, the more beautiful they become to/in the world. The ideas of intensity of experience and harmony can be presented as values guiding the process of ripening, maturation or becoming.

My reply to a video clip for fun: Tradition and Fiddler.

The video snippet that introduces the show title of the Fiddler on the Roof is on the many traditions that the Jewish people of a particular time and place relied on for their ongoing identity in a world of change. It’s a playful and artistic of a way of life thoroughly infused by one kind of religious tradition. The video seems to present tradition as all important for those in that community, and, focuses far more on the relation of the people to the tradition than the relation of the tradition to God (though this latter relation is thoroughly part of the snippet), so, broadening the scope of interest to tradition as a form of divine revelation (or, perhaps, the primary form of divine revelation) is beyond the scope of this snippet. Rather, it seems to me that the snippet is an artistic representation of the relationship between the traditions of a particular community and the way those traditions shape the identity and way of life of everyone in that community.

What relation Process Theology has to the video snippet is not obvious to me. Perhaps a case could be made that Process Theology, a subset of Process Philosophy, is a tradition of its own; but, if this is so, I have not heard it said. Rather, I tend to associate Process Philosophy with a completely different form of divine revelation, namely, reason. But, certainly, there are traditions in the schools and communities that organize themselves around Process ideas,and, there are (religious) traditions that incorporate (Process) philosophy as part of their theologies, so, the two are certainly not mutually exclusive.

The Fiddler on the Roof is presented as fickle, one readily changed by whatever, and, not grounded in the continuous strands of tradition. So, perhaps the fiddler on the roof would be more ready to embrace the novel possibilities offered by a Process philosophy/theology; unless, perhaps as mentioned earlier, the tradition itself embraced (Process) philosophy.

What any of this has to do with concepts of God and launching a young adult, I think, probably would fall along the lines of what kind of expectations a young adult raised in such a community could expect upon moving from childhood to young adulthood. In a traditional community, many of those expectations would be fairly well defined, like them or not; but, perhaps someone more fully invested in said traditional community could speak better for such a way of life, perhaps. someone like the artist who rendered the snippet as apparently sympathetic to tradition as it seems to be.