Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label _Up Close and Personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label _Up Close and Personal. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

R.E. Slater - A Country Idyll (prose)



A Country Idyll
(prose)

by R.E. Slater


Today is one of those really cold wintry days in Michigan where time is a given and outdoor adventures are kept to a minimum unless you have the proper warm flannelled clothes, heavy coat, thick boots, hat, and scarf, and the personal ability to endure the cold and actually enjoy it.

Myself, though I am growing old, I still love winter, its wonder, solitude, silence, and ferocity. The worse it gets the more I love it. In childhood if there was a raging blizzard blowing and drifting outside I and my brother were in the "teeth of it" as we sledded down our tall hills to then scramble up them, then down, again-and-again until we tired.

And when not sliding we were testing our "daring do" abilities by jumping into deep snowdrifts nineteen feet down trying to hit bottom (we never did) to see if we could scale back up them or fight our way out of their massif miens. But do not worry, those hillside drifts were skinny, more tall than wide. Four feet at best, sometimes more.

Across our hills lay the old 150-year-old barn where the winds would gather to crest the frozen fence lines and blow across the hill tops ringing the wetland below. There, on the hills or up at the barn we could expect 25 to 30 feet of snowdrift four to six foot deep blown lengthwise and down the contour of the hills. When younger we built very long luge runs bored like tunnels through the bottoms of the drifts. And within their interiors we built one and two-person snow rooms from early morning until late at night when the bunny rabbits hopped about, and we could watch them like gophers from our dens. Later, when older, we learned how to "bust through their tops" with a snowmobile gunning the engine straight up the big hills, then slamming the drift front-on, trying to carry 30 or so feet of air before landing on the downward side of the sloped hill.

We had a lot of fun during the winters. Dad would plow the drives and stack large snow piles by the dilapidated chicken coop or barn and as the plowed snow grew higher and higher in height and girth we waited and waited until pulling out the iron shovel-spades from nearby garage, began carving out our own majestic snow castle; or play king-on-the-hill like we did at school, to be pushed down rolling all the way to the bottom of the massive snow pile.

And on icy days when not using our Radio Flyer metal-runner sleds on the hills, we would glide across the flat icy fields steering around tufted island of wild grasses where the snow gave in and stopped our fun. Sometimes we ran a hundred feet and sometimes we never stopped until we reached the icicled fence lines. It was a lot of fun.


And then there were the holidays of Christmas and forced winter school closures where we waxed luxuriant to play board games through the morning till bored then bundled up to visit our grand old grandma next door bereft of granddad back when we were too young to understand.

She would watch us slide down her chimney's "coal shute" built into the house as an anchorage to the outer chimney; or make labyrinthine mazes with our booted feet, scooting across the crusty snow working around-and-around or, in-and-out, then play catch-me-tag as we scampered about the maze trying to catch one another.

When cold, we would fly into the old farmhouse's back "work room" or "ready room" where dad, his brothers and sisters, and my uncles and aunts five generations back, would gather to dress for the fields and dairy barns; or undress and clean up after a long day of farming and husbandry.

Most days, we flew in to warm up our little bodies. Which delighted grandma no end. We would peel off our wet outer clothes and iced-up buckle boots to be lured within to Graham Crackers and milk as we explored again the old house with its framed pictures and family rooms.

And on special days when coming indoors we might find grandma working about two very large, vat-like, and rounded laundry tubs filled with steaming hot water rising about her fragile frame and filling the ready-room with much need heat. There we would watch with child-like eyes grandma move about the tubs stirring the wet clothes in the hot waters or winding them through a sturdy pre-1930s hand wringer before clothes pinning all to a strung line about the clapboard room.

She always gave a wry, toothy smile from her diminutive figure clad in thin gingham dress before measuring ourselves to her frame shoulder to shoulder to see if we might be as tall as she! By age ten we had caught up with our beloved "second mom" before scampering down the cement floor hall to a back anteroom where an inside - and importantly, an unfrozen hand pump served up the best of coldest waters in a speckled blue enameled tin cup.

We lived in paradise and didn't even know it...


And if our busy dad wasn't on the roads policing or, up at the fire barns cleaning up the ash soot of the fire equipment and trucks after a fire, or driving our school bus morning and afternoon, we might find him up at cold barn in the dark of night servicing the plow tractor so it would be ready for use. He would add oil, gas, grease, check the tire chains, and always place a trickle charger on the battery to keep it in good health on cold nights.

Looking around the night-filled blackened barn lay hundred-year whatnot and older, inexplicable, paraphernalia. The kind of stuff you see in Midwest antique stores. To us, it was junk, much used, and never removed by the hands that had placed it there years and years and years ago. There it lay with thick dust upon it underneath a mouldy atmosphere of age.

While dad worked, we would climb up a rickety wooden rung ladder nailed into the beams which rose above the iron implements of plow, disk or tractor, thirty feet into the air, then fling upon a heavy 3' X 3'-foot double planked door to gain entry into the loft. Within, what once held hay now held more disused antiques. On summer days the space was filled with floating/wafting dust motes... but in the black, only the shafts of light from the dim bulb below gained entry through the upper planked floor.

One especially good memory I have is that on the worst of the winter storms or summer gales, I would brave the elements to gain the barn, squeeze through between the jammed tractor doors, and sit in the loft above listening to the old barn groan and moan telling me of its hoary memories as I might imagine them from the dissolute litter lying about me.


In my mid-twenties I sadly tore down the old wood barn. We were selling all our homesteaded acreage as all my relatives were dying or too old to keep the farm with their day jobs. We had already sold the old sixty-foot Quonset steel barn which held the dairy herd below under heavy planked floor. It had been disassembled and rebuilt north of us on an active pig farm. Forty years later I was blessed to walk within its structure at the consent of the owner who had torn it down, and with my cousin and wife, we fell silent and simply listened to the movement of the old iron beams swaying and creaking for a while. It was the finest of symphonies to our humble hearts and ears.

As I took down my heritage, I first removed the attached-and-slated corn crib then proceeded to remove the ancient, boarded siding and overlapping ribs. Dad wanted all the old nails removed and bucketed, which took some time. Once stripped of naked of cladding I next tried to undowel the 6/8" wooden tendon pins and the massive 14/16" beam pins to no avail. Worse, I could see all the work down 150 years ago by my ancestor who had hand-adzed each beam across the length of all four of its sides. This was truly a labor I did not like nor one I had wished to do.

Watching, my dad and his brother (my uncle) suggested pulling down the structure with the old tractor. It was an old, rusted Farmall M that had been well cared for and never spent one night outside in the rain or snow. We strapped a length of chains to the back frame of the tractor then commenced tugging-and-pulling 8 of the 12 main upright beams holding everything up: Imagine walking alongside a broken, tottering structure to attach chains to several corner and side beams... we left the interior beams alone of course.

One by one we broke the bottoms of the grand, noble, upright beams, until the whole skeleton finally gave in along with the falling tinned plated roof. In our moment of glory, we each found a deep sadness which comes from living too long. I have grieved for years over the loss of our pioneered land, our farm buildings, my grandparents, and the many overwhelming memories of family and friends working the fields and gardens together, picnicking, hunting, or playing baseball on the hay fields.

We lived in paradise and didn't even know it...


To grant homage to the pre-industrial, agrarian pioneering days of yesteryear, I was listening one winter day in early December to my schoolteacher read to me in second of third grade the wintry idyll, Snowbound, by John Greenleaf Whittier. As I sat at my old fold-top desk listening to the verse's tones and lights I felt a deep, inner affinity for the words and imagery being read.

Here, as my own generations had done for many years, in this simple one-room school built 150 years ago by my ancestors; where I walked every morning and mid-afternoon across the hay and grain fields, and dairy pastures; climbing up-and-over the boxed-wired rotting fence posts and lines; or drawing through the barbed-wired and rusted post fence lines; grudgingly wading through wet morning dews of field clover with my lunchbox in one hand and books in the other; where my pants, thin socks, and worn shoes took all morning to dry; here, I fell in love with a well-scripted verse by a poet I never knew. And though I have tried my own hand at this written art I realize it is only for the gifted few who have the muse and verve within the souls which might spill their words across the gilded page welling-up deeply held, visceral feelings we thought had long died within us long ago.

So, here, at the start of January's dark wintry days and blacker, moonless nights, is a poem you may, or may not like. But at the poetry site I am directing you too, you may find other poems to explore, read, muse, or share.

To all wintry travellers seeking a warm fire to sit by,
and a soft light to read by in socked feet and flannel shirt,
of versed dreams remembering yesteryear's youth,
or loss loves and refound fortitudes...
enjoy these seldom moments of distant memory
dulled by the intervening years of a lived life....

- re slater


R.E. Slater
January 16, 2024


John Greenleaf Whittier - Snowbound, A Winter Idyl



Sunday, October 8, 2023

Remembering Who We Are Against All Which Tells Us We Are Not



Remembering Who We Are Against
All Which Tells Us We Are Not

by R.E. Slater

I have been developing a process theology which speaks to love surmounting hate and goodness prevailing over evil. Neil speaks to the cosmic creation we know as avariciously survivalistic in an environment which is always harsh and live denying.
It is hard to argue against what we feel, know, and sense in our day-to-day struggle to survive. Yet I believe that the cosmos we have been placed in can be surmounted by our own individualistic choices to love, be kind, be helpful, and healing.
These are God given graces meant to survive in an otherwise harsh world. Without these graces life is a misery of suffering, pain, aloneness, and without sense or purpose. But with these graces we may heal, recreate, reconnect, redeem, and repurpose what is bent and gone astray.
Which is also how I see Jesus as God Incarnate come to resurrect all the death daily found in creation. Without Jesus' atonement, redemption, and resurrection we have no theme to our lives. But with it we can see the world differently. Act in it magnanimously. And bring back to it it's own sense of identity and purpose.
Thus and thus the Gospel, ecological theologies of repurposing civilization and societies, and atoning ministry throughout every stratum of humanity's endeavors.
This I know and preach as a pancessual negentropy of life-restoring panentheism (not pantheism) where God's Self that is imbued in creation may itself be resurrected to recreate the heavens we long for and not the hells we experience.
Peace,
R.E. Slater
October 8, 2023

* * * * * *



A Story of Life and Death and Resurrection

by R.E. Slater


My neighbor and friend recently passed away at 97. I came to know Bob about five years ago when moving next door and having to rebuild the house I had just bought. He came to the site, introduced himself, I showed him around, and everyday after that when he visited our friendship grew.

He was the one who said to me to not fret over our loss when discovering a rotting foundation but to move on and rebuild. Over all other words spoken to me his alone was the one which made the most sense to me at the time. I valued him for his wisdom.

Soon after our meeting he introduced me to his church fellowship in town nearby. A smallish local church with a classic white steeple soaring over the village which thought itself a town. A friendly group who suffered my presence to their little cliche of towns people.

Bob also introduced me to another group of his friends which also met daily like his church group at a local coffee shop. My experience was little different from the other. Oldish, friendly but wary, and preferring their own company to new attendees. Still, they took me in as I spent the next 14 months rebuilding a disaster.

Bob was known as the "mayor" amongst his church friends and as a 90 year old winter snow skier, resident pilot who flew for "Wings of Mercy" delivering sick people to regional hospitals as needed. A fellow respect elder of his church and long lived marital couple of 75 years to his teenage sweetheart. 

Bob was also know for his service to the Naval Pacific Fleet off the coast of Japan with many WW2 engagements across the Pacific. Which is what Grand Valley State University's interview concentrated upon years before I had met him.

As my own father had died near his 84th birthday many years earlier in 2014 of Parkinson's, Bob became the "stand-in-father" I have daily missed. He was a good listener, advisor, and steadying presence in my life when I needed it. To this I will ever be grateful.

Thank you Bob for your faith and friendship. I will miss you.

R.E. Slater
October 8, 2023


* * * * * *


Clarence Robert "Bob" VanStrien
(1927 - 2023)


Clarence VanStrien Obituary

Van Strien, Clarence Robert "Bob"
10/16/1927 - 9/19/2023


Clarence Robert "Bob" Van Strien passed away at his home in Cascade on September 19th, 2023, surrounded by his children and loved ones. He was preceded in death by Pauline, his wife of 72 years and his brother, Dave Van Strien (Lois)....

Bob was a profoundly devoted son, brother, husband, and father as well as one of our last remaining WWII Navy Veterans. After the war he bought a milk truck and married the farmer's daughter, Pauline. His love of farms and the farming community remained throughout his life. He made his livelihood in the trucking business as an owner, operator, dispatcher, salesperson, and manager. His last business was C. R. Transport that moved sand, gravel, and rocks...hence, his love of gravel pits and construction sites.

Bob built the family's first home along the Thornapple River and later purchased several tracts of land in Cascade township and divided them for homesites. A sod farm along the Grand River became Van Strien Airport with the help of son Greg. Bob made it possible for Lowell Township to complete the development of Grand River Riverfront Park with a section of that land.

Bob loved to travel, and he and his wife Pauline journeyed all across North America in their private plane and RV (which they fondly referred to as "the box"). They visited all 50 states together and made many friends along the way. Bob was also an avid skier with the local Silver Streakers and others into his 90's.

Giving back was a constant theme throughout Bob's life. He was a fixture at Cascade Christian Church for 72 years, eventually becoming a lifetime elder. No service was beneath him; whether it was mowing lawns, fixing the steeple, driving kids to camp, steering the property committee, sitting on the board or many other unsung jobs that served the church. He also served as trustee on the Cascade Township Board, transported patients in need for Wings of Mercy, volunteered with Operation Santa Clause and delivered Meals on Wheels for many years.


I could not embed the video but it may be found at the link below.



Van Strien, Robert
(Interview outline and video)
August 15, 2008

Digital Collections.html


TITLE
Van Strien, Robert (Interview outline and video), 2008

CREATOR
Van Strien, Robert

CONTRIBUTOR
Moore, Debra (Interviewer)

DESCRIPTION
Robert Van Strien was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and graduated from Byron Center High School in 1945. After high school he and three of his friends joined the Navy. After basic training he was assigned to be a typist for a Commander aboard the USS Columbus. He served after the war during the Occupation of Japan and typed part of the ships newsletter. After his discharge in 1946 he used his GI bill money to learn how to fly and has owned three planes.

DATE
2008-08-15

SOURCE
Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)

SUMMARY OF INTERVIEW
Robert Van Strien (29:00)
(00:18) Background Information

• Robert was born in Grand Rapids, MI and moved to Byron Center, MI when he was 10
• His dad was a cashier at Byron Center Bank
• He graduated from Byron Center High School in 1945
• Robert joined the Navy with three of his friends after high school

(1:42) Training
• Robert went to Virginia for basic training in late September for 3 months
• He got to go home for one week during training
• Robert then went to the west coast and boarded a ship to Japan

(4:18) Occupation of Japan
• Robert was assigned to be a typist for a commander on the USS Columbus
• The war was over and there was not much work to do
• He was on a radar machine at one time and got to watch them plot out the ship’s route
• Robert helped type part of the ship’s news letter
• They went to Kobe, Japan where the Japanese had a submarine base and took about a
dozen or two subs out to sea and blew them up
• He got assigned to do work on the USS Chicago which had more than 3 thousand people
on board

(11:45) Leave
• Robert and other men had time on leave to go to Tokyo and go shopping
• He would trade his cigarettes for things because he didn’t smoke
• Robert went to Nagasaki to see where the Atom Bomb had been dropped
• A lot of guys went to the bars
• Prostitution was a problem and many of the men on the ships had STDs

(15:38) Impression of Japan
• A lot of Japan was “bombed out flat”
• The mountain sides were full of caves
• He mostly ate on board the ship and didn’t eat Japanese food
• Robert would visit friends on an Army base near by

(20:30) Discharge
• He went to the California and then to the Great Lakes Naval Academy where he was
discharged in 1946
• Robert used the GI Bill to learn how to fly
• He has owned 3 different planes
• After his discharge he bought a truck and hauled milk for 25 years
• He got a deferment from the Korean War because he was married and had a baby
• Robert appreciates living in the United States after being in Japan
• He belongs to the American Legion

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Personal Update: A Life Reconstructed, Part II


May-August 2023


Personal Update:
A Life Reconstructed
Part II


I'm back on heavy drugs again to clean out my body from the infection(s) I've borne over the past eight year since January 2016. Hence, my limited articles through this year.

Because I am conscientious about my conversations and commentary I do not wish to "dream walk" through my material as I present them. Especially as it tends to be "cutting edge" across a variety of topics. It takes a clear mind to imagine what can be in a world which fights for the old ways of disunity, isolation, and suspicion.

And with my present drug sedation I find keeping my focus can be a problem. The other difficulty is the lack of energy and exhaustion I bear through the day because of the infection-fighting drugs.

However, I hope to do what I can even as I have since the first of May 2023 of this year. All the while I am praying my health journey will find successful completion sometime in the first quarter of 2024 after several more foot-and-ankle surgeries as I have shown below.

As always, thank you for your support and prayers. Please take what has been offered here at Relevancy22 since 2011 to extend and expand process philosophy, theology, science, and ecology across all areas of endeavor.

We are in need of a world united by difference and love. As Friedrich Schleiermacher had well said, "There are miracles all around us." We just need to lift up our eyes and look around.

However, for those bearing personal cruelty, abuse, suffering, and oppression, let us alter Schleiermacher's statement just a bit and make as our own motto: "Be the miracle to those needing miracles." In this way we may rightfully say there are miracles all around us.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
September 19, 2023

Warning: Below is part of my health journey this summer. Some pictures will be ugly to look at while other pics show a bit of progress before collapse and failure. To that end my doctors have removed my internal prosthetic which I've had since 2016 (8 years ago).
At present, there is no structure in the empty space except medical cement in my foot. Thus the boot I'm wearing with restricted walking. Sometime later this November or December there will a second surgery (fourth this summer) should the infection(s) be gone.
The last images show a customized 3D printed durable titanium cage which will be implanted in the foot and ankle area. I have no idea what the structure will look like as opposed to the picture shown.
Then we wait again for any new infections to show up. If not, a third - and hopefully final - surgery will fuse the foot to the ankle.
Again, some pictures below will not be pretty to view however, in 2016 I had two very long (14-20") open wounds x 4" wide running along both sides of my calf (top and outer areas) with picc lines directly into the heart and a overworked eou d pump sucking out crap. That experience was a lot worse. I nearly didn't make it mentally or emotionally by the third month after reviving from a fully septic crisis.
- res

May-August 2023 with wound pump

May-August 2023 w/ wound pump; eventually there were 3 open wounds with a
fourth would opening up. Thus the removal of the internal foot-and-ankle prosthetic.

May-August 2023 with wound pump

Third surgery: September 2023 w/ removal of device

Next Surgery is the installation of a structural support device. (To implant
a new internal motility device risks a 35% rejection rate. Thus the cage.)



A third surgery fuses the foot to the ankle sans any infections...

Xrays of a foot fusion to the ankle


Monday, September 18, 2023

The Agony of Moving Through Personal Deconstruction



The Agony of Moving Through
Personal Deconstruction

R.E. Slater


I have a number of articles on deconstruction on this website having once entered a spiritually dark period in my own life. It was a personal space in which I did not wish to go when called by the Spirit into an unformed space filled with personal agony and disillusionment.

When entering into this unsettling space it immediately filled up with a definitive solitude which became a seemingly endless wilderness of striking aloneness. I remember it lasted a little over eleven months and felt distinctly uninhabited by the God I knew of everywhere presence. But here, the heavens were brass and answers were not to be found. I was in an existential space of personal abandonment and aloneness. More curious was the emotional fact thst I found I had no interest in ever leaving this space.

As the days and weeks came and went I began writing of my despair and struggling with the failings of my Christian faith as I looked out across the once familiar religious landscapes now seeing the shadowed ruins lying across the empty hills where crosses once stood and lives once lived and loved with a vibrancy of faith fresh and new as the fallen rain.

Paradoxically, through these early days and weeks of darkness and despair, of abandonment and steely heavens, the Spirit came to abide without leaving to comfort by broken heart. My ruins hung in my soul like Jesus' Cross on Golgatha's hill, or like Jeremiah's famed pit of despair. Here I sat in a wilderness I did not wish to leave. And when multiple opportunities came to grant a way out, I did not leave. Nor would I leave unless my Father God came to me with the direction and answers I yearned. Otherwise, I remained in spiritual limbo quite disinterested in my ashes having none come and sit with me to disturb, disrupt, or mock. Those malicious gigures would come later. For now, I was alone seeking my God.

I had said in my heart I would only leave my disillusionment with my faith when God was done with me so that I could know from God where-and-how to proceed. Otherwise, I would stubbornly remain, praying, thinking, reading, writing.... I needed direction and needed to allow the fellowship of God's Spirit time to work in my heart a new way of faith or none at all. I refused all other misdirections. I needed clairity and discernment. What came was most curious of all... not answers but the manigold blessings of uncertainty and doubt to sit with me as my newest companions around tge ashes of my faith.

Here, with my companions I began to learn the value of asking questions I was never taught to ask of the Chtistian dogma I was taught to accept. My dialogue with my shattered faith began to resurrect. As it rose I began to see the work I was commissiined to do on behalf of those I once sheparded. Now this commissiin left the Sunday School rooms for those who came like mysrlelf broken of faith bearing spiritual grief and disillusionment.

Because my experience of solitude and brokenness was so extreme, I would never recommend this kind of deconstructive experience to anyone. It was extremely hard in every way... and spiritually dangerous because of the many misleading paths leading out of it. Paths offering forms of help and answers which I rejected. The path ahead of me didn't offer answers but required me to ask harder questions of my faith. The path I chose was uncertainty and doubt and when completed would save me from leaving my faith.

At the last, my Spirit world was re-forming and I knew exactly what I was being called to do when falling headlong into a pit of darkness. The Spirit's vision was requiring me to deconstruct my past faith and thereby reconstruct it again in a totally radical way. It took many years of breakage and rebuilding as it couldn't be done in a moment. I was to reform and remake my emergent faith into a contemporarily progressive faith. But to do this required removing its very foundations on which it stood. In those moments, my ministry turned from the caretaking of traditional Christians to the caretaking of shattered faith communities. More specifically, to the ministry of the older Nones-and-Dones and to the younger audiences under 35 years of age. My focus was to center on the Spirit of life and a renewal of faith practices in loving speech and action by creating a "Theology of Love" rather than theologies of separation and hate.

To this vision I also was guided by the Lord to build a new theological foundation built upon a better, more expansive philosophic foundation than those the church has been clinging to over tge past 2000 years. Such a foundation was forcing bad Christian theology, beliefs, rituals, practices, worship experiences, and missional policies and practices. Again, this was not a task I wanted from God, but it was God's burden which became my own. I knew it would be hard, unwanted, and rejected by my former faith. And frankly, I was too old and worn out from years of bible study and ministry, work, and family to start over again. I did not want this Spirit burden but accepted this mantle to walk the desert lands of faith composed of seared hard hearts, indifference, ignorance, mockery, rejection, and unrepentant souls.

It also would limit my activity in promoting the much-needed earth policies of green (habitat) and blue (water) organizations to political groups who were activrly ignoring these subjects of vital currency to their messages of economic reform and betterment. After earning a Master Ecologist Certification from MSU's extension program the need to address-and-instate better ecological and clean water policies (known as "green infrastructural practices") became my other unpaid, fulltime job. Thsnkfully, after retirement, the Lord gave me 15 years in participatory environmental politics and at the same time 12 years in developing a post-evangelical process theology built upon Whitehead's earlier ((Hegelian) process philosophy.

Fifteen years ago I couldn't have done this. I had no grand vision nor ability to remake a better form of Chridtisn faith. Nor any vision on which to build a vision for vibrant ecological societies and embracing communities. Yet God had other plans and directed me into a (1) post-faith resurrection of Christianity and towards a (2) reinforcing democratically balanced socio-ecological political organizations both of whom I needed to learn from. Along the way, I discovered their heart beat as my own; that we each beat together in re-visioning the presence of our future. That I was not alone but had joined communities of deconstructionists looking to rebuild betters ways of living and believing together. I also found a God I could preach again and a more proper ecological response commensurate with my new faith vision for community and world.

The Spirit had broken my heart in rejecting my older, out-of-date faith, and healed my soul out of this same spirit-darkness of personal deconstruction. Within this intense year-long arrangement between God and mysrlf I was being prepared to speak of a better God than the one my faith once believed. A God who had become an idol. An idol I was to break, like Moses did to Aaron's golden calf, and to reconstitute back to a living God for all peoples. Not just to the lost flocks of the church - but to the non-churched, religious and nonreligious, broken, dismayed, and spiritually lost. It all began with deconstructing my perceived beliefs, my arguable dogmas and fsith tenets, my misleading apologia, and my refusal to admit uncertainty and doubt as my Spirit guides.

For those interested in my ongoing ramblings and lessons learned check the topics list found on the right side of my website labeled "deconstruction". All topical discussions had once started with deconstruction as the Lord helped me to resurrect each topic towards more uplifting iterations of non-dogmatically reconstructed forms of themselves by the loving Spirit's illuminating breath forming a new, living gospel which is equally consistent in its message to the church and the world.

To this efffort I have layered each article on top of all previous articles as I build upon each thought and topic towards a fuller range of faith encompassing processually based Christian structure centered in Jesus and in love. I think of it as a theology - or compendium - of love which Christianity has lost sight of... which then broke me... and has motivated me to question all the bad, dead doctrines which have missed all the good, living doctrines formed from a loving resurrected Creator God.

R.E. Slater
August 29, 2023

*I attached the CT article below to share how those churches or church associations which have not deconstructed themselves but have placed the onus of repentance on the other rather than doing the hard work of introspection and repentance amongst themselves. The CT writer thinks of deconstruction by the unhelpfully incorrect name of "burnout" as a way of socio-religious avoidance. I would rather see his editorial efforts to the evangelical church focus on throwing off the chains of hate to follow Jesus in his atoning crucifixion and redemption to life eternal in practices of love. - re slater



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The Most Dangerous Form of Deconstruction

by Russell Moore
February 9, 2022


What if some evangelicals are so burned out on church that they don’t even know it?



With all this talk of deconstruction these days, one problem is that very few people mean precisely the same thing when they use that word.

For some people, deconstructing means losing their faith altogether—becoming atheists, agnostics, or spiritual-but-not-religious nones. For others, deconstructing means still believing in Jesus but struggling with how religious institutions have failed.

And there are also many for whom deconstructing means maintaining an ongoing commitment to orthodox Christianity, as well as a robust commitment to the church—but without the cultural-political baggage associated with the label “evangelicalism.”

On one level, these divergent meanings may suggest that the term deconstruction doesn’t signify any one thing specifically—not without a great deal of qualification, that is. This is true, come to think of it, of the word evangelical these days as well.

But that doesn’t mean that deconstruction is a lesser phenomenon than we think. As a matter of fact, I think the case could be made that all of American evangelical Christianity is deconstructing—at least in some sense of the word.

It’s just that I believe there’s more than one way to deconstruct.

At one level, we can see deconstruction happening in terms of institutions. Someone asked me a few weeks ago what percentage of churches or ministries I thought were divided by the same political and cultural tumults ripping through almost every other facet of American life. I answered, “All of them. One hundred percent.”

I don’t mean that every church is in conflict; many aren’t. But even the churches and ministries that are not descending into warfare are aware of the conflict, and many are vigilant—wondering if one word said, or an event scheduled, might set it off.

Beyond that, at the level of individuals and leaders, we are perhaps not aware that the most dangerous forms of deconstruction are not the people we know who are doubting, scandalized, or traumatized by what they’ve seen in the church. There’s a different form of deconstruction that that could actually destroy us.

I always thought of “burnout” as a rather banal way of communicating exhaustion from overwork. “Make sure you take a vacation,” one might say. “You don’t want to burn out.”

In his new book, The End of Burnout, though, Jonathan Malesic argues that burnout is something else entirely. It is instead “the experience of being pulled between expectations and reality at work.” To illustrate his point, he uses the metaphor of walking on stilts.

Walking on stilts, he writes, is the experience of holding both one’s ideals and the reality of one’s job together. When the two stilts are aligned, one can keep them together and move forward. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s possible for one to walk. However, when the stilts are misaligned—that is, when the ideal and the reality are radically different—people find different ways to cope, which can lead to a kind of burnout.

 

Some, he argues, might cling to their ideals while the reality swings away from them. In his case, the metaphor has clear limits—because his point is that we place too high of expectations on our work and careers, expecting them to give us meaning and purpose in life, which they cannot deliver.

In the case of the church, however, we have not expected too much, but too little. The church is meant to shape our character, and if not to grant meaning to our life, then to at least to point us toward the meaning—through worship, mission, and teaching.

Yet some have seen behind the veil to a kind of Christianity that does not even aspire to holiness, love, gentleness, Christlikeness, renewal of mind, bearing of burdens—the kind of church found in the New Testament. These people are often led to the point of exhaustion at the incongruity of it all, perhaps questioning if they were lied to all along.

For some, Malesic contends, the stilt walking falters when they ignore the reality and hold on to their ideals anyway. This is the sort of coping mechanism we see in those who wave away the current crisis in the church by saying, “Well, think of all the good things happening” or “Most people aren’t like that” or “The church was never meant to be made up of perfect people.”

Those things are easy to believe, because there’s a sense in which they are all true. But often, in times like these, what they really mean is “Don’t talk about these matters in public; we can handle them on our own in private, but we don’t want to give Jesus a bad reputation.” The problem is, Jesus never asked his church to protect his reputation, especially by covering up when something wrong or dangerous is done in his name.

But what’s more is that, as Malesic points out in the workplace, the “If we don’t talk about it, it will go away” mentality cannot hold. If our moral ideals are strong but we reassure ourselves with a false version of reality, we will end up seeing through our own delusions—and others certainly will.

And when that happens, it results in a different kind of burnout—frustration. That is, we begin to despair that anything ever can or will eventually be done to fix things.

The most dangerous form of deconstruction, however, is what we see happening in the lives of people who would never see themselves deconstructing. Many of them seem to believe what they’ve always believed, and they still belong to or lead the same institutions they always have.

In fact, they are often the ones heatedly denouncing those who are deconstructing—or the ones still left wondering how and why so much awful fruit could emerge from systems and institutions they presumed to be godly, trusted, and “confessional.”

For some of these people, there’s an entirely different kind of deconstruction or type of burnout.

Malesic argues that this form of burnout happens when their ideals and reality are so divergent that—having to choose one of the stilts on which to cling—they abandon the ideals to settle for the reality as it is.

At first, they can find all sorts of reasons why their former ideals are too unrealistic, even if these reasons are completely incongruent with what they once stood for. People who expect the church to live up to what Jesus demanded of it are said to be “currying favor with elites” or “not realistic about how the world works” or “not seeing what’s at stake if we don’t circle the wagons around ‘the base.’”

In following this strategy, people begin to depersonalize those around them. This leads to cynicism. Once the institution is all that’s left—or “the movement” or “the cause” or the “theology” or, even worse, their own position and platform—they have ultimately torn down their individual character, which is needed to protect and build those institutions.

Even worse, they have deadened the personal conscience needed to hear the call to repent. One can be a hack easily enough in the marketplace or in the political arena. But playing to whatever “the base” wants or expects from the church of Jesus Christ year after year does something far worse—and not just to the institution or the lives of those harmed, but to the very souls of those who play the game.

Once they have whittled down their moral principles to only those that are useful in maintaining their own place of belonging—they have essentially deconstructed themselves.

As we watch evangelicalism in the United States deconstructing in various ways, I wonder if what we should do is not avoid burnout but rather seek the right kind. After all, God’s most miraculous work seems to come at the point of our greatest frustration, helplessness, and even despair.

The prophet Elijah was not crazy to believe that he had encountered a hopeless situation. In his time, the people of God were captive to idols, and to vicious, predatory, narcissistic leadership. But Elijah had to get to the point where he could hear God saying to him, What are you doing here, Elijah?

John the Baptist was not being unreasonable when he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Luke 7:20) And when the disciples on the road to Emmaus said to their traveling companion, the recently crucified Jesus, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (24:21)—Jesus revealed to them that their hopes has been met in ways they couldn’t have imagined until that very moment.

The question is not whether we will deconstruct, but what we will deconstruct.

Will it be the wood, hay, and stubble that is destined to burn up and burn out? Or will it be our own souls? Sometimes the people we think are “deconstructing” are just grieving and asking God where he is at a moment like this. That has happened before.

By contrast, sometimes the people who appear most confident and certain—who are scanning the boundaries for heretics—are those who have given up belief in the new birth, in the renewal of the mind, and in the judgment seat of Christ. For them, all that’s left is an orthodoxy grounded not in a living Christ, but in a curated brand.

And that may be the saddest deconstruction of all.


*Russell Moore leads the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today.
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter.
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Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Personal Update - A Life Reconstructed, Part I


In 1903 Edvard Munch held an exhibition at the newly refurbished Kunsthandlung P. H. Beyer & Sohn in Leipzig, where Munch had been allocated the gallery’s skylit room. Eighteen paintings, inlaid in a light textile frame, were presented as a frieze in the room. Running as a horizontal band high up on three walls, the frieze essentially became a part of the room as a whole. The article therefore proposes to consider the exhibition as spatial art and examine it in light of the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. The documentation of the exhibition is a unique source for understanding Munch’s “Frieze of Life” and its spatial representation, even as the paintings highlight the role of the exhibition room at the turn of the twentieth century. The exhibition room played an instrumental role in how Munch developed his art.

Alan Sorrell: A Life Reconstructed


Personal Update:
A Life Reconstructed
Part I


With apologies, I have been sick most of the summer dealing with a surgical infection from eight years ago. At the end of last summer of 2022, I was dealing with a newly opened abscess on my foot which I managed until May of this year when a surgeon opened up the foot to clean it out and sent me home to let the newly opened gash heal.

However, the surgery failed and necessitated a second surgery weeks later resulting in the addition of a wound pump for the rest of the summer... this time with thrice weekly nursing visits to the home. But again, the open would wouldn't heal despite the care. In fact it got worse.

At which point, after eight years of sloughing it out, it was time to remove the infected foot-and-ankle titanium prosthetic which held my foot together. One I broken in my early teens attempting to stop my fall over the edge of a cliff I had intentionally and poorly navigated. And upon the same limb which I had played physical sports until my early fifties when needing a total knee replacement.

This hopeful prosthetic was removed a week ago, cleaned of gunk, and cemented in place with a time-released antibiotic. Since there was now extra skin all was bound up without the miserable wound pump I had come to detest. Nine days have past in morbid pain from loss of device, crutching around on tired arms, and awaiting removal of cast some nine days out. Thankfully, we found a couple knee scooters which helped immeasurably giving relief to my aching body and spirit.

Once this surgery heals there will be a minimum of two more surgeries until there is no longer any infection and the foot can be fused to the ankle without addition of any more mechanical devices. If unsuccessful then there might be a future holding an amputation with the addition of a fully mechanical half-limb and incumbrances to come. Hopefully not. But it is why I waited so long before finally allowing the doctors to remove the original prosthesis.

Tomorrow I speak once again to infectious services to determine if a picc line through the arteries to the heart will be necessary or not. I expect it will require a month or more of antibiotic infusions which I will manage along with a nursing visit once a week to change out the port placed into my arm. But I am no stranger to this practice either as my first wounds eight years ago were far, far worse... being quite long and wide, travelling up-and-down several parts of my leg. It is the main reason I will not "suffer" a second internal prosthetic; the other being that 35% of these second surgeries fail in infections again.

At that time I found myself slipping into despair, if not depression, as I looked into a black pit badding me step forward one more step. The pain was overwhelming. The worse being the first three months - though the next five months thereafter were no picnic either. And then there was the constant severed nerve pain which lasted 4.5 years. It required a steely will beginning with refusing to step forward into an oblivion I might not come out... though I remember blackness to seem a fathomless comfort to the septic fevers rolling through my body.

Anyway, I've been taking these past summer months to catch up with life. Find a little time for introspection. And to rest from writing, which task I've done regularly since the fall of 2009 upon retirement. A retirement I've not only filled with poetry and writing on the cutting edge of a new theology - which I've placed on my other website - but to leave my job and volunteer church ministries to work within my community.

During these past retirement years I held committee and board positions on City, County, and College panels; became a certified Master Naturalist through MSU's extension program (including a 100 hours of community service); and joined over two dozen environmental organizations working, planting, burning, strategizing, creating, and building a living ecology in West Michigan with others who bore the same passion and veracity as myself.

In so doing, we have created the foundations necessary for empowering regional green infrastructures and green business practices to our part of West Michigan across local and state levels and all parts in-between. I could never have done this while working or raising a family. After 30+ years in technology and lay ministries I finally laid all aside and took the time to participate in creating healthy sustainability practices for habitat and clean water projects.

Over the last fifteen years I worked, volunteered, learned, and gave input across a number of ecological areas. Many of them politically unwanted but expediently necessary knowing the climate change coming upon us in the decades ahead. In these tasks I have greatly enjoyed being a part of community seeking to aide strangers via innumerable opportunities and probabilities. It was fun. And it gave to me the experience, perspective, and depth I needed to write of social contracts and personal enlightenments.

Now lately, one I get pass these remaining hard monts, I hope to continue working on both websites to leave with my family, friends, and interested readers helpful ways in which we might think about our personal value to one another and the greater good we might attempt for humanity. I see no reason not to thrive during these times of pandemic, socio-political upheaval, failure of religious institutions. At no time should we give in to adversity, perversity, calamity, bleakness, or short-sightedness. But at all times we are to give ourselves to diversity, modality, veracity, and tonality in the trying years ahead. It's what get's me up in the morning to create, destroy, rebuild, and envision communities of life.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
September 5, 2023

* * * * * * *


We will always rebuild - a poem for the broken by Jeanette LeBlanc

We will always rebuild

(a poem for the grieving)

by Jeanette LeBlanc

You are here.
You are here.

Even though everything smells like love and loss and burning.
Start with this.

You are here and it hurts.
It hurts because of all you’ve lost.
Your heart is a 3am siren, driving through that sucker punch bruise of a night sky.
Never a sign of anything good.

Here, nothing feels good.
Now you’ve begun.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy.
There is not enough air in the room.
The quilt on your bed is eight hundred pounds of weight keeping you from movement.
There is no going back

There is never any going back.
Now you’re getting somewhere.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon.
He is listening but does nothing.
There is nothing he can do.

You are on your knees in the grass,
clutching handfuls of earth.
This is progress.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon and there is nobody else to hear you
It is the darkest night you’ve ever lived through
You’ve lived through.
You’ve lived.

Do you hear me?
You live.
You make it.
You survive.

There is a faint tinge of light on the horizon and you made it.
Now we’re finally moving forward

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon and there is nobody else to hear you and there is a grief wail building inside of you.
Through the earth, through your toes,
Your legs, your belly, your chest and lungs,
The reach of your arms, your curled fists.
Your neck
Your jaw
Your face
The top of your head.

Have you ever seen a building implode?
Yes. This is you.
Now you know you have begun the work of healing.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon and there is nobody else to hear you and there is a grief wail building inside of you and you crumbling.
The ground shakes as her own broken pieces slide rough against each other.
There is a red earth landslide and everything is tumbling into the sea.
On the ocean, a wall of water rushes toward land.
Disaster cannot be prevented, only survived or not.
The earth knows well the pain of things that cannot be fixed.

Your pain cannot be fixed.
There is no shortcut through this.
This knowledge is the key to everything that will come next.
There is more to come.

Sometimes healing looks like falling apart.
Sometimes falling apart is the path to what can be built.
Sometimes, we go through the darkest nights and there is nobody but the moon to hear.
He always listens.
Now you listen.

There is not enough air in the room but you are breathing.
There is nobody here but you are held.
You have broken and the world is breaking and we will always rebuild.

Do you hear me, love?
We will always rebuild.

Jeanette LeBlanc