God is the Poet of the World

"“God is the poet of the world, with tender patience leading it,” wrote [Alfred North] Whitehead, in a “vision of truth, beauty, and goodness.” These values are pure possibilities, only actualized in the particular becomings of the creation. The content of the divine aim for the particular creature is that moment’s best possibility. Thus the divine is within each of us, as an influence, an influx of desire– whether or not we share that desire as our own. In this sense the aim is like the ancient concept of prevenient grace. Amidst the mess of our past stuff and present inclinations, God calls. Love lures and lets be. Our mess becomes our potential. And we creatures be-come, come forth. You this moment come forth, a wave freshly breaking on the face of the deep. In an ocean of overlapping waves, all new, all different."

— Catherine Keller, On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), 100.