Interconnection

This sense of God as inherent in all things, yet greater, is articulated in a diversity of ways within with Christian tradition and beyond it. While biblical texts can offer windows into this all-pervasive God, more recent theologians have articulated relation in more explicit ways. Alfred North Whitehead developed a cosmological system in which he insisted that all of life was intrinsically connected. This relatedness “...means that the value an actual occasion achieves is not merely for itself, but contributes to the value for others in the future, and for God.”(1) Each atom in our bodies is connected to every other atom in the universe in a way that requires us to consider what that means. If God is, indeed, inherent in every element of the universe, my kindness, love, and compassion must extend to all of God in a way that asks me to heighten my awareness of my actions and in a way that highlights the absolute importance of my life in my unique manifestation as a conscious, moral being. For economically privileged members of the Global North, like myself, this means curbing consumption, most specifically of products which serve to enslave and degrade our planet and the lives in the Global South.

As a first-person Whiteheadian, I see each of us as what Whitehead might call “actual occasions.” To illustrate, if we can imagine the two halfs of a Venn Diagram as actual occasions, God is the relational newness, growth, and transformation that happens when each of us “prehends” the other-- the space shared by two circles-- we absorb parts of each other and are forever different and more individually diverse and creative than we were before our encounter. This encounter with the tangible fecundity of life is the space in which the grandeur of God becomes real-- where the veil becomes thin. These moments of encounter in which we delve immersively into the world with the conscious intent of seeking God, elicit the emotional responses that convey a sense of transcendence. The gift of Process Theology allows me to glimpse a God that loves the most menial and intimate spaces of life, yet is also articulated by propensity for creative potential and transformation. The God with the unspeakable YHVH name beyond our comprehension is also the God that forms life out of mud in one of the foundational stories of our faith.

True Relationship-oriented faith must seek deep community engagement, but must also be aware of the ripple effects of our most mundane and seemingly meaningless actions on our distant brothers and sisters. It must engage our histories with our current world, helping us to understand how our theologies and church structures have engaged in the damage and good that make up our current world.

1) Dr. Donna Bowman and Dr. Jay McDaniel, eds., Handbook of Process Theology (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2006), 151.