Unfolding

Dec 8, 2019

By Reverend Rebecca Bryan

“God is not inevitable.”

I was sitting in meditation when this thought came to me. “God is not inevitable.” It brought me great joy. I felt like a light had been turned on in my mind, leaving years of spiritual seeking, questioning, and learning hanging in abeyance.

I had been living in a spiritual conundrum for as long as I could remember. I felt as though, and sometimes even knew intuitively that, there is more to life than meets the eye. I longed for a connection to that something greater, larger than I, a guiding force of love. I grew up steeped in Western thought, philosophy, and religion, specifically Christianity. God was portrayed as male, a being not of this realm that never changed. Above all, God was all powerful. As you might imagine, all of this caused conflict within me.

How could this all-powerful God cause bad things to happen in this world? Worse yet, how could God possibly allow evil to exist?

Why weren’t my prayers answered? I knew the anthropomorphized white male, bearded God in the sky wasn’t real, and yet my longing for God, whatever that was, never stopped. It was maddening, distressing, and sometimes all-consuming.

My efforts to reconcile all of this included trying to not believe in anything spiritual, returning to the beliefs of my childhood, and exploring many different religions. The one thing that didn’t occur to me was that my underlying assumptions were wrong, assumptions like God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and never changing. I kept trying to solve my quandary by either changing the extrapolations of these underlying premises or discarding the premises entirely. The one philosophy that allows me to integrate my rational mind and spiritual longings is process theology.

I was introduced to process theology during seminary. It intrigued me then, but it didn’t change me. My recent revelation during meditation, that “God is not inevitable,” led me to revisit and reconsider what process theology has to offer. It has been a joyous, an exciting, and most of all a liberating experience.

Process theology, or process philosophy as it was originally termed, was developed by Alfred North Whitehead in the 1920s. Whitehead was a British mathematician and philosopher looking for a unifying, underlying theory that could apply to and explain everything. His resultant process theology has been furthered by various academics, philosophers and theologians. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his dissertation on a process theologian named Henry Nelson Wieman. The principles of this thinking have striking resonance with our Unitarian Universalist principles.

Sources of information for this sermon come from the writings of Alfred Whitehead as analyzed by one of his mentees, Robert Mesle, and from two contemporary sources: Adrienne Maree Brown, an activist and student of Octavia Brown and Grace Lee Boggs, and Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, the first Jewish theologian, and non-Christian to apply this philosophy to his or her religion. I have particularly enjoyed and learned a lot from Rabbi Artson’s book, God of Becoming and Relationship. If anyone is interested in reading and discussing it, please let me know. I’d be happy to facilitate a discussion group.

Process theology can be summarized by this sentence: We live in and are co-creators of a connected, relational, dynamic universe. This means that the future is not predetermined. Though the past is an indelible part of that yet-to-be-determined future, we still have choices. Thus, how we act matters. If we are part of this connected, relational, dynamic universe, then so are everyone and everything else, including all people, the Earth and her creatures, and God.

Process theologians believe God is not an ever-constant, all-knowing force outside of this universe. Rather, they believe that God is a part of the universe, malleable and changed as a result of the decisions being made every day by humans and other living creatures. Yes, process theologians believe that God changes.

Artson writes: The world and God are expressions of continuous, dynamic relational change. We and the world are not solid substances, but rather recurrent patterns of energy, occasions that change with each new instantiation, but also maintain continuity from moment to moment. We are interconnected, each to each and each to all. Therefore, all creation – not just humanity or a subset of humanity – has value and dignity. We respond to the decisions of each other and of the totality, as we ourselves are re-created in each instant.[1]

For those of you who enjoy quantum physics, this may sound familiar. For example, consider Brownian Motion or Random Walk, which Ken Kretsch taught me about in our most recent conversation. Brownian Motion is how molecules relate to one another in air. The molecules go along parallel to each other until they collide, at which point each molecule veers off in a new direction, changed by the interaction. You can’t predict where things will go. Every collision is the result of many collisions in the past, each leading toward the present moment. This is known as a Random Walk.

It’s important to discuss how process thinkers understand and define God.  For them, God is a source of goodness, ever present, but not all powerful or all knowing. Therefore, predestination does not exist. God understands the past and invites us to choose our actions. God is an energy that actually makes our relating possible. God does not coerce. God persuades.

Mesle writes, “…In the fullest sense possible, then, God is love: God is perfect relational power.”[2] He goes on to describe God in terms of relatedness and process rather than an unchanging, static being unaffected by the world.[3]

This way of thinking allows us to consider God anew. Artson writes that people in the west assume the only way to understand religion is by applying traditional Western thought including dualism, which forces us to choose between mind and body, science and faith, spiritual and physical. “They take neo-Platonized Aristotelian scholastic presuppositions and filter religion through those ideas.”[4]

Mesle writes about the possibilities that come with applying the process thinking of connected relationality over dualistic Platonic thinking: “…we could finally leave behind the last vestiges of Cartesian dualism… and … see ourselves as 100 percent natural instances of the larger world around us.”[5]

What does all of this mean? What are its implications as they relate to joy and our day-to-day lives? I answer those questions with two words: wonder and responsibility. Thinking from a process approach allows us to experience wonder, amazement, and joy and to be touched by the world. At the same time it creates a sense of responsibility, calling us to respond to what we experience in this world in ways that point toward good, wholeness, and equity for all living beings.

Living in a dualistic world, believing we must choose between our head and our heart, between spirituality and reason, and science and faith, leads us to be cut off from our own integrated self and thus from the interconnected web of which we are a part.

Whitehead believed that “morality is tied up with the breadth of vision…” and said, “If I see my life as totally disconnected from others, no moral vision is possible.”[6]

As co-creators living with the knowledge that we are connected to all, there is no other option but to act in ways that uphold and further the inherent worth and dignity of all people.

A colleague of mine uses process theology to talk to the youth in her congregation about God. In youth group one day, she was asked if she believed in God. She answered “Yes” and then explained what that means to her. “Think of the Boston Marathon bombing,” she told them, “and remember the people who ran back into the explosion and flames, risking their safety to rescue other people. That is God, as I understand God.” I agree.

These people at the bombing were faced with a decision. They certainly didn’t ask to be in the situation they found themselves in that day, victims of a bombing. It was, as we discussed earlier, an example of Brownian Motion or Random Walk of life. They chose to follow the persuasion that called them toward love. We are faced with decisions hundreds of times each day, most apparently innocuous, but are they?

Fred Rogers, may he rest in peace, told children to look for the helpers in any crisis. Yes, and as adults we are also called to be those helpers so that when our children look for them, helpers exist.

We can choose to lean into what is unfolding, act in love, and allow that same love to support us. It isn’t about whether our actions are big or small. We generally don’t know the results of our actions. Choosing love includes writing a postcard to Unitarian Universalists who are incarcerated, letting them know they are not forgotten, visiting homebound congregants and delivering the beautiful ornaments our children are making right now in Young Church, getting proximate to people who are oppressed, or sending loving kindness in your meditations.

Contrary to what media may want us to believe, it is in our DNA to do this, to follow the persuasion of goodness. Rebecca Solnit studies how people react in times of crisis. Her book A Paradise Built in Hell tells stories of crises, including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, 9-11, and Hurricane Katrina. In all of these situations and more, most people reacted with selflessness, benevolence, and love toward their fellows. People grew closer during the crisis, building community through their shared challenges.

Solnit writes, “When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up – not all, but the great preponderance – to become their brothers’ keepers. And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amid death, chaos, fear and loss.”[7]

Whether or not process theology appeals to you, Unitarian Universalists believe that revelation is not sealed. We are part of what is called a living tradition. We believe in dialectical humanism. This means that we will change as a result of learning new information and will come to believe something different from what we had believed before. This is at the core of process thinking and process theology.

At every moment we can decide whether to choose love, or God, to use the terms of process theologians. In other words, God is not inevitable. It is our choice whether to choose God.

Above all, process thinking asks us to open ourselves and to see what is unfolding within, around, and between us. In her poem “The Servant Girl at Emmaus” Denise Levertov reminds us of this need to see – referring to the people that do not recognize the risen deity:

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table

don’t recognize yet with whom they sit.

But she in the kitchen, absently touching the wine jug she’s to take in,

a young Black servant intently listening,

swings round and sees

the light around him

and is sure.

At that moment, the Brownian Movement or Random Walk, when the past comes together and two things connect in the present, the servant has a choice to see. I have no doubt how she will respond.

Amen and blessed be.

[1] Artson, Rabbi Bradley Shavit, God of Becoming and Relationship, Jewish Light Publishing, Nashville, TN, 2016. Pg xv-xvi.

 

[2] Mesle C. Robert, Process Relational Philosophy, Templeton Press, West Conshohocken, PA. 2008. Pg. 87.

[3] Ibid. Pg. 10.

[4] Artson, Rabbi Bradley Shavit, God of Becoming and Relationship, Jewish Light Publishing, Nashville, TN, 2016. Pg xiii

[5] Mesle C. Robert, Process Relational Philosophy, Templeton Press, West Conshohocken, PA. 2008. Pg. 37.

 

[6] Ibid pg. 18.

[7] Solnit, Rebecca, A Paradise Built in Hell, Penguin Group, New York, NY, 2009. Pg. 3.

 

Questions to ponder, discuss and hold…

Remember a time when someone stepped in as a “helper” in your life. What unfolded as a result of that experience?

What helps you to take notice of life unfolding?

How do you react to the concept of process theology? Do you think God, however you understand God, changes?

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