Relevancy22: Contemporary Process Christianity: Post-Evangelic Topics and Theology: Sep 19, 2023

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, 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