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I started out last week intending to reflect on something Jay McDaniel said on Tuesday: “If you’re ever going to meet God at all, it has to be in the present moment because there is no other moment to meet God.” But the more I reflected on it, the more I realized I’m pretty sure I’ve “met” God in my life, but I usually didn’t realize it until I looked back on the experience. How did I know I had really encountered God? Could it have been my wishful thinking? I was wrestling with that when I came across this topic and realized it was time to let go of trying to reason things out and shift to savoring the experiences as they presented themselves.

Roni said, “Attempting to obtain certainty is as futile as trying to catch the wind. As Whitehead pointed out, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty is an exhibition of folly.”

This reminded me of a quote I’ve heard said in several different ways, attributed to different folks (Paul Tillich, Anne Lamott): “The opposite of faith is not doubt – it is certainty.” There are folks who insist on being certain in their beliefs in God, spirituality, reality, life beyond, or even in reason, science, and reliance on empirical evidence only. They cling to that certainty even in the face of evidence (or intuition) to the opposite. The more I experience, the less certain I am of what there is to be certain of. I’ve learned to take what I believe with a dose of humility and skepticism. And that has not destroyed my faith because I’m challenged to revise what I think in light of better revelations.

As Roni also said, “Humans cannot know with certainty the ultimate destiny of the soul, but we can choose how we journey toward that destiny.”

While there’s more I don’t know about Buddhism’s ultimate reality of emptiness, one thing that spoke to me was learning to let go of my tendency to try to “explain” the meaning behind things in order to experience the event/ occasion/ becoming for what it is in the here and now. There are different ways of prehending the nature of the universe and they don’t all involve quantifying or explaining that nature. As Bill notes, we can experience the wind without seeing it by perceiving how it affects things like flags, trees, plants, what’s left of my hair, etc. We can similarly experience love in its impacts on us and on those around us. We just have to let go of our constrained definitions and be open to new ways of experiencing and perceiving. I can experience moments with God without having to analyze the details that led to that particular moment. For one thing, the act of analyzing usually leads me away from the experience itself.

And, I suppose, I can end this response without coming up with some profound observation.

Thanks, Leslie. I’d be happy to chat with you about the class sometime.

[Nelson Thurman]

Brian,

I’ve also been wrestling with the same quote and appreciate that you’ve tied this in with Rabbi Artson’s Sefirot from last week. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that we humans have so many different names or attributes for this creative energy we call God. Each of us encounters/intersects with/prehends God in unique ways, so that each of us experiences particular aspects of God in ways that differ from those around us.

This reply comes about an hour before our session starts this evening, so I’ll over only very quick responses to a couple of your questions:

What if being made in God’s image means carrying one or more of these Divine attributes and learning how to live them out in relationship with others who carry different ones?
What a beautiful thought! If we believe that we’re all interrelated through the process of becoming, then it makes sense to me that each of us has something unique to offer to others that adds depth to the relationship.

And how might this perspective help us embrace difference not as something threatening, but as something sacred?
I think that’s a wonderful way to recognize and honor the imago dei in all of those around us… and I would suggest that such a perspective could be extended to the nonhumans traveling with us on this planet. Two thoughts: (1) As this world (and, in particular, today’s society in this country) has become so contentious, I’ve been reminding myself to be more mindful about looking for some reflection of the image of God in those around me, particularly in those who espouse ideologies that seem so dark and different from what I try to practice. I’ve experienced more failures than progress on this front, but it’s more about the long run than the short sprint and I keep trying.

(2) More fruitful is the realization that as I spend more time listening to the particular and diverse experiences of others and sharing my experiences with them, the more expansive my perception of God becomes. It inspires me to seek out others whose experience is different from mine, to challenge me to re-evaluate my own in a broader context.

Thanks for sharing your reflections!

• This reply was modified 11 months, 2 weeks ago by Nelson Thurman.

Over time, I’ve become more suspect of attempts at interfaith dialogue in which the stated goal is to find common ground, unity, and some form of harmony for the concerns Dr. Long quoted from Paul J. Griffiths:

“…most pluralist conceptions of interreligious dialogue omit the substantive issues that make such dialogue at all interesting or intellectually engaging. Because they typically emphasize interreligious agreement and unity at the expense of the very real diversity and substantive differences that characterize the world’s religions, such conceptions of dialogue rend to produce ‘a discourse that is pallid, platitudinous, and degutted.'” [Long, Anekanta Vedanta…, p. 134-135]

Two things came to my mind as I read Dr. Long’s essay and your comments:
(1) Reflecting back to the Introduction to Process-Relational Thought & Practice class, I recall that, in process thinking, beauty doesn’t require perfect harmony. In fact, weaving together harmony and discord can create something deeper, richer, more intense than either alone.
(2) A wise elder once told me that he would rather encounter ideas he doesn’t agree with rather than those that reinforce his own conceptions because it (a) helps him better find the bits of substance in his beliefs and (b) opens his thoughts to the possibility of new ways of seeing things.

As I understand it, there’s beauty to be found in the diversity, particularly when we couple that with a respect for what each of us, coming from different traditions and experiences, brings to the table to share. As you said, ideally, we each have something to learn and something to teach to each other.

I’ve often considered my faith evolution more in terms of a meandering river than a religious trellis, but once the sharing started last night, the trellis thing fell into place. So here’s kind of what I think I shared in class (plus some that insisted on popping into this as I wrote it):

Growing up: I grew up in Disciples of Christ or Presbyterian churches, depending on where we lived. Both denominations focused more on love, grace, and mercy than on doctrine. However, I also grew up in communities dominated by conservative fundamentalist churches, for which love and grace took a back seat to obedience, control, patriarchy, and doctrine. I had friends who talked about the traumas they experienced for being disobedient and I had “friends” who would tell me I was going to hell because I was going to the wrong church. I came away from this with a sense that following Jesus was more about trying to do as Jesus did, love as Jesus loves, and knowing I wasn’t condemned to hell if I fell short on that. I also came away feeling I was okay with Jesus but not so sure about some of his followers.

Evolving in the Wilderness: I rarely went to church between my college years and when I got married and we adopted kids in my late 30s. This was a time of wandering in the wilderness, except wilderness for me was the great outdoors, where I had time to reflect on life, the presence of the divine, and a sense of a spiritual side I didn’t know was there. I’d still talk with some friends who shared their traumas – most had moved on from church, although one returned. I also became friends with others who had been ostracized from their churches and, in some cases, their families, because of their sexual orientation. I struggled to put their treatment in context with the love and grace I saw in Jesus as I grew up. This was a time of deconstructing and reconstructing my faith to resolve these conflicts, although now I consider it more as an evolution of my faith as new experiences and perspectives pushed me away from the “orthodox” traditions out toward the edges of faith, where I found more people to connect with.

Returning to Church, Still Evolving, Bridging Science and Faith: After getting married, I started going to a Presbyterian church where my wife grew up. This church took seriously Jesus’s ministry of loving others and reaching out to the marginalized. Like any church, it wasn’t perfect, but it did its best to practice grace. I was an earth/environmental scientist, filled with ideas that all of creation is tied together in a web of life and not only is evolution something that happens, but that it says something about the creator (also, that creation is still happening, not something that stopped on the seventh day). I grew tired of imagining I was straddling my faith in a Christian tradition that emphasizes love and my career as an environmental scientist. So I decided to let them mix and resolve themselves (or not, however they chose). Not only has that been a wild ride, but it’s turned out better than I anticipated.

Multi-faith Communities: We live in a very multi-cultural area in Northern Virginia, outside of Washington, DC. Our kids had friends of different faith traditions. We had friends and neighbors of different faith traditions. I worked with people of different traditions. We didn’t always tread on such seeming taboo topics. Except when we had already found common ground with each other and had built enough trust and respect to feel we could talk about our traditions (even when we they were still evolving) without feeling defensive or fearing harsh judgment.

Maybe Not a Heretic: Many more years ago, I started reading Brian McLaren, Diana Butler Bass, Sallie McFague, Barbara Brown Taylor, Richard Rohr, and other progressive Christians, and found a community called Homebrewed Christianity, in which I first became aware of John Cobb and process theology. I was already wrestling with the problem of evil and an omnipotent God, and that was exasperated when our youngest son died from a seizure as a teenager. I knew that an all-loving God doesn’t fit with an all-powerful God that could prevent bad things from happening but seemingly doesn’t. I also don’t believe an all-loving God fits with common (mis)conceptions about hell and damnation. Something had to give. For me, it was the notion that God is all-powerful, vindictive, and punishing. I’m still sorting through that. I was also bothered by Christians who either were not supportive of efforts to address climate change or opted to sit on the sidelines. I found connections in ecotheology and in a wild church network that drew from Celtic, Indigenous, and Christian traditions and encouraged people to seek and connect with the divine in the natural world around us. This is where I am now. I may not be a heretic but, as a friend likes to put it, I’m more of an edge-walker on the “boundary” of Christianity and the world beyond (where I Imagine Jesus would likely be).

Brian,

I found your reflection of the Road to Emmaus passage refreshing. It’s an illustration of how we can view/experience scripture in light of process thinking. That is an Easter sermon I would love to experience and be inspired by (well, for that matter, it does inspire me!). Thank you for sharing it with us.

[Nelson Thurman]

Beautiful reflection, Christie!

One of my (many) disappointments with Western Christianity is that it’s adherents largely ignore the experiences and articulations that other people (i.e., people who weren’t immersed in their version of religion) have of the divine. For me, it’s all about the experience (rather than the indoctrination) and Western Christianity is all the poorer for not acknowledging it.

What attracted me to process thought and this program was the bit I had been exposed to through process theology (including a 6-week exploration of process theology through the Cobb Institute and Homebrewed Christianity in 2022). I wanted to learn more about Whitehead’s overall philosophy before I ran off misappropriating it for myself. Session 4 was the firehose of new information for me; I agreed with much of Whitehead’s critique of Christianity and the need for reform in Session 5.

Along the way, I’ve found a deeper connection with the entity you describe so well in your last paragraph. And I can go back with a better understanding of the many process philosophy concepts I encountered for the first time in that 2022 course, with a humility that there’s still much to wonder about and to encounter fresh.

Peace and many continuing wonderings for you!

• This reply was modified 1 year ago by Nelson Thurman.

Paula,

I find myself agreeing with much of Whitehead’s critique of Christianity in practice. Rather than a wholesale wrong turn, I imagine diverging branches, albeit, one in which a dominant view of Christian theology has strayed from the Gospel of Love we find in the life of Christ to one of fear, control, patriarchy, and condemnation of the other. Whitehead’s philosophy points to a tender God that experiences along with us, is a companion and not a distant harsh judge, and shows compassion, suffering as we suffer. This is how I have come to see God through the life of Jesus captured in the Gospels and, even more so, what I’ve experienced in my life. It’s why I turned away from the branch of fear/control and have held to the branch of love.

Whitehead wrote: ‘If the modern world is to find God, …it must find him through love and not fear, with the help of John and not Paul’ (RM, 76).” [Chapter 17 of Dr. Davis’s draft, p. 8] I agree with that.

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk, wrote in his book Universal Christ:

“Love, which might be called the attraction of all things toward all things, is a universal language and underlying energy that shows itself despite our best efforts to resist it.” (p. 70)

“Love is constantly creating future possibilities for the good of all concerned – even, and especially, when things go wrong. Love allows and accommodates everything in human experience, both the good and the bad, and nothing else can really do this. Love flows unstoppably downward, around every obstacle, like water. …That’s why forgiveness is often the most powerful display of love in action. When we forgive, we acknowledge that there is, in fact, something to forgive – a mistake, and offense, an error – but instead of reverting to survival mode, we release the offending party from the need for punishment or recrimination. In so doing, we bear witness to the Ever Risen and Always Loving Christ…” (p. 71)

Rohr may not be a process theologian but he reflects a process-esque view of love. In these very troubling times when it seems that the rogue branch of Christian theology uses its doctrine of fear and loathing as a weapon, I cling to the hope of a gospel of love reflected in process thinking and in writings such as Richard Rohr’s.

In Chapter 18 of his draft, Dr. Davis asks: “Is persuasive relational love, as the origin of the Christian revelation, enough to continue the reformation of modern Christian theology?” [Chapter 18 of Dr. Davis’s draft, p. 22]

To hear so-called Christian nationalists today, that answer seems to be a resounding no. The question for those of us who aren’t in that camp, is whether it’s enough for us to offer it as a viable alternative to a message of power, control, and materialism. Maybe that’s fodder for the class paper.

Peace,
Nelson

Kaeti,

I appreciate both your animation and your explanation – it offers a more visual imagining of concrescence and of the interactions between the primordial and consequent natures. I’ve viewed the animation several times while pausing to read the explanations. It has been very useful.

Thank you!
Nelson

I should clarify that the multitude of institutional church entities is even more complex than I made it. Each church institution is more of a society of societies of societies (and so on), such that it can be mind-boggling to consider how many series of concrescing events would be needed to get to where we are today, much less to steer those societies of societies of societies toward converging possibilities. So perhaps it is even more inevitable that we see so many diverse communities clustering around differing doctrines that originate from one(ish) beginning.

Andrew,

Assuming you’re referring to the Christian institutional church, I don’t really see it as a single entity as much as a multitude of entities, each with their own particular set of institutional doctrines. I was raised in a church that was not the prevailing “brand” of Christianity in my community. I’ll leave out the longer story except to say that the contrasting views led me to evaluate, reevaluate, deconstruct, and reconstruct what I thought I knew and believed throughout most of my life. There’s been a lot of benefit in that, even if I’ve been in a perpetual state of flux. While I didn’t encounter process thought and process theology until recently, it has been very helpful in this journey. I’ve found a lot of common ground with the process concept of a tender, caring, loving “poet of the world” who, rather than controlling and manipulating, lures us toward possibilities… and continues to offer new possibilities with each choice we make.

I like your view of the church (or collection of churches, if you will) as a “living, evolving community” rather than a fixed institution. If God, as Whitehead and other process theologists envision, doesn’t force a particular pathway, then each time entities within that “living, evolving community” opts for things other than the preferred possibilities offered them, God then offers the next best possibility over and over, rather than giving up. So, maybe a diverse evolving community is inevitable when each is left to make their own choice among possibilities. And maybe the God of this process world continues to offer possibilities in hopes of luring them back to a more loving, caring harmony (which doesn’t have to be uniform thought).

Like you, I hope this is a move forward in a positive direction.

Bill,

I applaud your bold attempt to put Whitehead’s complex ideas about God into illustration. As a visual learner/ponderer, I’ve tried to sketch out what I think Whitehead was saying, but not very successfully. So I appreciated it when Dr. Davis mentioned last night how hard it is for philosophers to illustrate Whitehead’s ideas. I didn’t fully grasp Dr. Davis’s overlapping circles illustration of God’s dipolar nature interacting with the dipolar world until he walked through it with his cursor last night. All that is to say it’s hard to critique another person’s illustration. I’ll offer some thoughts on what I envision, which may or may not line up with your thinking. Take them with a block of salt.

First, in my understanding of panentheism, God not only encompasses the universe, but goes beyond it. The universe is a part of God but doesn’t completely define God. That’s an understanding I began embracing before digging into Whitehead’s philosophy, so it may not completely fit Whitehead’s concept. In my mind, God would not have well-defined boundaries – more of a cloud or a blur. Actually, I think of God as more of an energy than a defined entity, but that’s even harder to illustrate. However, if you were to try to illustrate it, God would be the larger circle that encompasses and extends beyond everything else in your illustration and the universe would be the smaller circle.

Thinking in terms of Whitehead’s philosophy about God, things got messy quick. I imagined an illustration that depicts the inter-relationships between God and the universe/actual entities (I recognize you omitted those connections between God and actual entities but they’re a key part of my imaginings). Accounting for God’s dipolar nature, I imagined a cloud of infinite possibilities, in which the cloud would extend beyond the illustration, offering those possibilities to the actual occasions. This would be the interaction between God’s primordial nature and the universe. This cloud wouldn’t be static since each time an AE makes a decision, which may or may not involve God’s preferred possibility, the cloud of possibilities shift/shuffle to put forth the “best” possibility for the next occasion. This has a quantum feel in that the “best” possibility continues to shift for each entity with each decision. And now we’re into the realm of animation.

The second part of my imagined illustration is the interaction between the resulting enduring object in your illustration and God’s consequent nature. Another cloud, perhaps? This consequential nature cloud feeds back into the primordial nature cloud.

As I said before, take my musings with a block of salt.

Nelson

[Nelson Thurman]

Dr. Davis touches on this in Chapter 16 of his book in the section “Isn’t a Dipolar God (Theo)Logically Incoherent?” I’m still trying to make sense of the issue myself, so I offer it here for further discussion:

“Where is the logical contradiction in saying, for example, that God’s primordial existence is eternal and unchanging, but God’s consequent experience is temporal and ever-becoming? Hint: There is none. The reason for this is that we really can coherently distinguish the abstract fact that God exists from the concrete how of God’s experience in each moment. One is permanent and unchanging; the other is fluid and ever-changing in relation to the world. Analogously, think of the way in which the character of your best friend has been steadfast and unchanging throughout the years, even though the actuality of their experience ceaselessly changes. Again, no contradiction committed.” (Davis, Ch. 16, p. 44)

If I understand this correctly (and I may not), the primordial nature (God’s underlying “character”) that holds, evaluates, orders, and offers possibilities to the world is “eternal and unchanging.” However, the consequent nature of God that receives and integrates the resulting actual occasion does experience and remember the resulting change, which may or may not have fallen in line with God’s preferred valuation of possibilities in the primordial nature.

This is why Whitehead says that God suffers with us when we experience things that cause pain. God, in receiving and integrating that painful actual occasion, also experiences the pain.

While I understand what Dr. Davis is getting at when he says that a person’s underlying character may remain “steadfast and unchanging” while their “experience ceaselessly changes,” I think there’s a limit to how far that goes. I’m pretty sure I’m not the same person now (as a retired old guy who had careers in environmental sciences) that I was when I was a naive high school graduate heading off to college (in fact, I had no intention of studying science when I started college). I could easily draw a completely different trajectory in life for that HS grad that would not have gone in the direction of science. And I can look back at several key “turning points” in my life that could have taken me in different directions that would impact who I now am. Whether that means my underlying “character” has remained unchanged could be debated, and would likely depend on what is meant by “character.”

That leaves me wondering: since God’s primordial nature holds all of the infinite possibilities in the world and, with each actual occasion resulting in a new experience in addition to all of the possibilities (the many plus one), would God’s evaluation and ordering of all those possibilities ever change as a result of what is ultimately received through God’s consequent nature? And, if it did, would that constitute a change in God’s primordial existence?

Nelson

• This reply was modified 1 year ago by Nelson Thurman.

Greetings all!

This response began this morning but sat as I had to deal with something else. On returning, I discovered that Bill has taken a deep dive into Hosinski and Whitehead – a brave undertaking! The comments that follow are more on the earlier comments in this thread:

I’m more of a “learn by practicing rather than merely observing” kind of person. I get more out of scribbling notes, outlining, and digging into a lecture than in only listening to it. Part of that learning-by-practice in this class is to take what I’m wrestling with and play it out in my imagination (I appreciate Bill’s A Word from Our Sponsors invitation because it gave me an opportunity to do that). Same here as I try to make sense of how the concept of actual occasions plays out. Bill’s earlier observation is helpful:

Experiencing is our participation in the cosmos. Only experiencing is actual, ours and all our relations. The point is not to try to experience the actual occasions constituting us, the point is, they constitute and enact us as our experiencing.

I will participate with that and Bill’s follow-up comment for a while now.
On another note, both Bill and Dean mentioned their experiences meditating on bushes. My epiphany came not from a bush but from meditating/contemplating among trees, trying to find a deeper connection. Only when the birds come singing that my mind finds a wider focus and I’m pulled into a deeper connection with the birds, trees, and all the other non-human entities around me. There’s a lesson (or a few) there if I take some time to sort through it.

Peace!
Nelson

Well said, Andrew! One of my career paths involved mapping landscapes in a then-rapidly suburbanizing area with an eye toward “responsible development” of the land while providing protection for environmentally sensitive landscapes and communities. That’s where the notion of nature as a web of life, of which we humans are only a part, became very real for me. I wish I could say that “responsible development” back then (25-30 years ago) provided sufficient, sustainable protection for all of the non-humans in these communities. We manages to set aside green spaces and protect waterways and some of the more environmentally-sensitive ecosystems, but development pressures also pushed back. Intrinsic value alone was deemed a sufficient reason for protecting a particular area. The decision-makers wanted to know how protecting a wetland habitat, for example, benefited the human community. We still have a way to go before it is common practice to extend our ethical responsibilities to include the non-human entities in the world around us. And part of that includes getting more humans to first recognize that they are part of nature and not outside of it and then recognize we’re all part of the same web of life.

The concept of ecological civilization is a big reason I’ve been drawn to process-relational thinking and Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. You describe the spirit of that concept well! I’m hoping to bring it more into the things I’m doing in my post-retirement “non-career”.