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

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Cultivating Spirituality in Daily Life: March 15 - May 10, 2023

 free: enroll herehttps://processandfaith.org/event/interfaith-explorations-spring-2023-cultivating-spirituality-in-daily-life/2023-04-12/

Interfaith Explorations Spring 2023: Cultivating Spirituality in Daily Life

April 12 10:00 am – 11:00 am PDT

In this offering, qualities of heart and mind to help us in our daily life at home, in family, in the workplace, and other situations in the journey of life, such as births, deaths, joys, traumas will be explored through the framework of Spiritual Alphabet, developed by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Our sessions will be facilitated by Dr. Jay McDaniel and Sophia Said, who will bring two “letters” from the spiritual alphabet to each session (“A” is for attention, “B” is for beauty, “C” is for connection, etc.), sharing quotations, poems, and stories from personal experiences that illuminate them; and then, with help from prompting questions, invite others to do the same.

Interfaith Explorations is a program of the Interfaith Center of Arkansas, and is co-sponsored by the Cobb InstituteSpirituality & Practice, and Process & Faith.

This event is free and open to the public.

New Interfaith Process Class - April 12-26, 2023

 

Here is an instance where it can be shown that Process-based Christianity can play well with other religions without losing it's own substance and interiority. It still is Christian but it is willing to find common ground in relationality, experientiality, morality, and the common good. Basically, the ingredients of love based upon a loving God and Savior/Redeemer in outreach to all mankind. Which also means, as it did to the Apostle Paul, you adapt Christ without losing Christ. - R.E. Slater 


free enrollment herehttps://processandfaith.org/groups/compassion-here-and-now/


Compassion Here and Now: The Buddhist Way in Process Perspective

Compassion Here & Now: The Buddhist Way in Process Perspective facilitated by Jay McDaniel & Kazi Adi Shakti - Process & Faith

A Discussion Group Exploring Buddhism
Through the Lens of Process Thought

WHAT?Learning Circle
WHEN?April 12 thru April 26
Wednesdays at 5:00 PM Pacific / 8:00 PM Eastern
WHERE?Online via Zoom

This 3-week learning circle, facilitated by Jay McDaniel and Kazi Adi Shakti, explores how people might learn from Buddhism with help from process philosophy and theology. The focus is on Mayanana Buddhism in the Zen tradition. The circle is open to anyone who has an interest in Buddhism and process thought; no prior knowledge of either is required. Themes to be explored are momentariness, inter-becoming, mindfulness, breathing meditation, the Bodhisattva vow, the Buddha nature in all things, compassionate living, emptiness, God, ecological civilization, and service to the world.

“This Unthinkable Power [of Amida Buddha] stronger than ourselves, this persistent urge impelling the self to transcend itself, is a call to us of the All feeling Compassionate Heart, the Eternal Spirit of Sympathy, who is in his essence the Light and Life of all, who is World-conscious. To feel all, to be conscious of everything, is the Spirit. . . . [T]his Light and Life, this All-feeling Being is in our hearts.”
–Kanamatsu

About the Facilitators

Jay McDaniel, PhD, is professor emeritus of world religions at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas who has written several books on process-relational thought and its application in religion, spirituality, and ecology. His works include Living from the Center: Spirituality in an Age of ConsumerismWhat is Process Thought?: Seven Answers to Seven Questions, and Choosing Life: Ecological Civilization as the World’s Best Hope. Jay is editor of the website Open Horizons, serves as an advisor to Process & Faith, and is also chair of the board of the Cobb Institute.

Kazi Adi Shakti is an artist and independent researcher studying and theorizing on the intersections of Process thought, Madhyamaka Buddhism, Western Marxism and Ecofeminism, with a special focus on the unique role each might play in a holistic soteriology that includes them all. Kazi blogs regularly on her site, www.holo-poiesis.com. Kazi graduated with a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art where she majored in Interdisciplinary Sculpture with a focus on computer modeling, 3D scanning and digital fabrication. She currently works as a specialist in the 3D digitization industry, working with museums and cultural institutions to capture and produce high-fidelity virtual representations of historical artifacts as part of the on-going process of their conservation and documentation. 

Zoom Meeting Information

WHEN: Wednesdays at 5:00 PM Pacific, from April 12 thru April 26, 2023
URL: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84658805929?pwd=QmxxbUFETmJzM2pJVkFQUzlSS0s1Zz09
ID: 846 5880 5929
PASSCODE: 405543
ONE TAP MOBILE (US): +16694449171,,84658805929#,,,,*405543#
PHONE # (US): 669-444-9171
Find your local dial-in number here: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kdL36hQyQy

Resources

  • Group resources will be provided here