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

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from 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

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Black Lives Matter All the Time




When I say I am a Christian
by Unknown Author
(a rearrangement of Carol Wimmer's original poem)


When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin'."
I'm whispering "I was lost,
Now I'm found and forgiven."

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I don't speak of this with pride.
I'm confessing that I stumble
and need Christ to be my guide.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I'm not trying to be strong.
I'm professing that I'm weak
And need His strength to carry on.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I'm not bragging of success.
I'm admitting I have failed
And need God to clean my mess.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I'm not claiming to be perfect,
My flaws are far too visible
But, God believes I am worth it.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I still feel the sting of pain.
I have my share of heartaches
So I call upon [Jesus'] name.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I'm not holier than thou,
I'm just a simple sinner
Who received God's good grace, somehow

- Author Unknown


Black Lives Matter: It must be said | The Princetonian


BLACK LIVES MATTER ALL THE TIME

by R.E. Slater
June 9, 2020


Healing speaks to Black and White communities alike.
Without love for one another we cannot enter a
Promised Land overflowing with milk and honey.
- re slater


Its disingenuous of people who have actively supported societal injustice to then be mad because the larger portion of us have had enough of their white worlds of God, bible, and politics. When we say, as Americans, we welcome all blended societies of color into all our lands of fullness and beauty we truly mean this. We wish to share but have failed to share.

America is an internationally blended society whose Constitution vouchsafes equality and justice to every man, woman and child under its juris prudence regardless of race. It is why America is considered that City on Hill whose shining beacon beckons home all nations wishing to share in the democratic institutions of liberty for all, justice for all, and opportunities for all.

As that City on a Hill, America assures all foreign refugees fleeing homelands of cruelty and injustice that they are welcomed as they are; respected for who they are; and may find a new homeland which desires equality and liberty to become their reality.

That here is a nation built upon democratic laws of compassion and respect against all other forms of oppressive discrimination and bigotry. America, Land of the Brave, Home of the Free.

Sadly, historically, America has always struggled with its assumed understanding of itself just as it has failed in appreciating the greatly diverse cultures within its democratic structures, banners, and mottos. Instead, it has acted more like a post-colonial institution struggling to recognize the true beauty of its people and the great society they are trying to make together.

When groups like Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrates against racial inequities it presents to white America an uncomfortable option towards becoming more democratic  than it thinks it is. Known as White Flight, White populations abandon their school districts, churchs, and communities, as other people groups move in. They call it property valuations, and better schooling and opportunities, greater safety and even reinforced cultural mores.

But the hard facts are these secularized segregations of society have left the incoming masses with poor health care, education, poverty, police brutality and racism, and political corruption. White Flight has comprised the equity and justice expected by all of America's people when assuring itself only of valuation without sharing its hard-earned benefits of wealth and knowledge. Forgetting its generations once despaired and fought in similar systems of betrayal and abandonment.

BLM is the completion, or end-cap, of Martin Luther King's (MLK) rallies of the Civil Rights movement from 1954-1968. Similar to the British American War of 1812-1815 which ultimately ended Britain's festering loss of her Colonies in the Revolutionary War of 1775-1783. Each first movement needed a finishing movement to solidify the completion of what was started. So here we are today, sixty years later, in 2020 massing around foundational human rights, fighting for breath and life as even George Floyd himself breathed out his rights.

BLM's goals is to bluntly create a more perfect union in America which is less subservient to white culture. Infused with blended cultures of all colors. Sharing differing ideas of racial perspectives. Offering racial solutions where none have existed before - or barely hinted at in many communities. To go even further by recognizing the rights of all including gays, transgenders, and alt societal-types. Purposely blending many races and many cultures into one societal admission of fairness and equality for all. Its the completion of the Civil Rights rallies of the 1960s.

For white Christians, reading the bible one way, in a racially white way, says we must live by law and order and to judge one another. But reading the bible in another way, in a non-racially white way, means we embrace and respect one another for our differences. That we learn to love one another, fellowship with one another, care, help, and aide one another.

If God is a God of love then He loves all the way across. Not just some of the way across. Nor in one specifically accepted cultural understanding. The bible says God loves all the world. This means that He loves all races, all people, all nationalities, all genders. In imitation, a blended, open democracy accepts all, works fairly and equally with all, strives to improve human relations with all, including the economic wellbeing and social safety of all.

If I, as a white Christian, am angry, its because I am angry with white Christian hypocrisy. It's because I, and many others, are tired of not seeing America become a better version of itself with each succeeding presidential election, or new generation, or new societal decade. We didn't go through the Vietnam and Civil Race Wars of the 60s only to see them repeated again-and-again in gutless policies of biased betrayal and bigotry.

In truth, our actions have shown we have given lip service to demonstrations of integrity and honesty. It shows we have implemented what we thought were fair policies without giving any personal or community investment of ourselves behind those policies. That when we cry "law and order" what we really mean is that non-white culture submit to our standards of racial insensitivity.

At the last, I'm less concerned about undemocratic and disingenuous white anger and much more concerned about the anger of my brothers and sisters who must deal with white rascism in all its forms every single hour of their lives. Either the white culture lives up to its rants of "Making America Great Again" (MAGA) or, it repents of its fake mottos, repents of its racism, and tries to get its act together.

White American shouts of injustice only sees injustice as defined by their majority group. We live in the 21st century. Its time America, along with all racists nations around the world, grow up to become globally interconnected nations of fairness and equality instead of fighting and hurting one another for cultural icons of servitude and bondage. Amen

R.E. Slater


* * * * * * * *



Students portray Black Lives Matter movement in US and Brazil ...


7x7 Anger
by R.E. Slater

Dealing with Coronavirus.
Staying-at-home. Locked-in.
Scared. Mad. No money.
Kids. Anxieties. Fears.
No diversions. No Outlets.
No sports, bars, groups, work.
Just panicked helplessness.

No leadership.
Lying. Slandering. Blaming.
More lies. More anger. More madness.
What's hidden comes into 20/20.
Climate change not addressed.
Trump making war with the world.
Dividing everybody sane.

Pulling America apart.
Some demented dream of greatness.
A perfect storm forms.
And where's the church?
The real church is out marching.
Not the institutional church.
It's created all the disasters.

Where is America today?
And its white church gospel?
A gospel which victimizes.
Which plays the victim.
Which has harmed so many.
At the Southern border lands.
On the street lands of America?

Unobtainable health care.
Empty pockets. No wages.
I'm told Jesus followers heal.
They bless. They serve. They Aide.
That they bleed for the oppress.
Times of disruption give clarity.
They also give anger at Injustices.

Anger to assess.
Anger to make things right.
Anger of not having.
Anger of living in ruins.
Anger of being left behind.
Untended. Uncared.
Unwanted. Unloved.

I'm told America's Heartlands,
Greenlands, Urban Spaces,
Coastlands, Mountainlands,
Plains States, Hinterlands,
Beats with one heart,
Beats for all together,
When does it start for me?


R.E. Slater
June 9, 2020

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How Is the Black Lives Matter Movement Organized? | HowStuffWorks