Keys For Living: Practical Process Applications

Keys For Living:

Practical Process Applications

by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT-5

Attention is sacrament. Where attention goes, becoming follows.

What we notice is what we nourish. Attention consecrates the ordinary - turning a face, a leaf, a sentence, into a site of personal consecration. In process terms, occasions of experience prehend what we attend to; our world thickens along those lines. In this way, attention isn’t passive seeing; it’s participatory becoming. Curate your inputs like you’d curate your diet.

Try: pick a five-minute window today and attend to one thing without splitting - breath, a bird, or a beloved - and notice what changes in you.

Ignorance isn’t a void; it’s a horizon. Moving towards it moves the horizon - this is process epistemology in one line.

The unknown isn’t a hole to fear but a rim that moves as we move. When we step toward it, the map grows - new questions bloom, older certainties soften, and humility becomes a method, not a mood. Treat not-knowing as a frontier economy: scout, camp, return, share. In process epistemology, knowledge becomes an iterative lure for further feeling, not final walls.

Try: rewrite one “I don’t know” as “I don’t know yet; this is my next step.”

Outrage spreads fast; kindness compounds. Fire races; gardens feed. Choose your metaphysical ecology.

Outrage is a spark in dry grass; kindness is irrigation. Outrage has a role - it alarms us, wake us up - but it can’t be a home. Kindness, repeated, becomes culture: Trust accrues. Coordination costs fall. Risk-taking for the common good rises. In ecosystems and church polities, heat moves quickly while cool shade grows slowly, and lasts.

Try: choose one recurring micro-kindness (timely reply, clear thank-you, generous credit) and make it daily.

Democracy is less a wall than a wetland - resilience through diversity, redundancy, and the slow movement of nourishing, life-giving water. Yet all monocultures burn, disintegrate, rot, and die.

Walls defend; wetlands absorb, filter, and rebound. Resilient democracies distribute power, add redundancies, slow floods (sic, disinformation, demagoguery) via civic "root systems." Examples: Local news, libraries, unions, plurality of parties, fair maps, independent courts. Whereas monocultures offer one story, one leader, one channel, all of which invite blight and rot. Diversity isn’t decoration; it’s drainage.

Try: support one institution that soaks up civic toxins (school board meeting, local journalism, community org) and make a difference.

If God is "love-in-relationship," is "orthodoxy without hospitality" a categorical error?

Right belief severed from right welcome, or fellowship, or community, misnames the divine. If the heart of Reality is relational, then doctrine must become practices which enlarge belonging. Hospitality isn’t niceness; it’s structural - who gets keys, mics, budgets, safety. A creed which can’t host the stranger isn’t describing God; it’s describing a sociological fear based on bias and discrimination.

Try: identify a door you control (literal or procedural) and widen it one notch this week.

Beauty is a micro-reconciliation: many become one and are increased by one. (whitehead keeps being right.)

Beauty is the felt moment when many become one and the one is more for the many; this is a picture of a local healing that hints at cosmic/communal/personal therapy. This can be a chord resolving, a town square revived, a hard truth spoken gently. Beauty isn’t escape; it’s integration which increases aliveness. Seek patterns which will make room for more.

Try: end a work project today with one integrative touch (a clearer diagram, a human example, a kinder transition).

Hope ≠ optimism. Hope is "disciplined imagination + communal courage" making for a tomorrow that lends strength to today.

Optimism predicts; hope participates. Hope is disciplined imagination yoked to communal courage - seeing a credible path and walking it together despite headwinds. It plans for friction, not fairy tales. The future’s down payment is made in today’s actions.

Try: write one "if…then we will" line with a friend or team; make it doable and dated.

 Silence is the soul’s lossless compression... decompress gently.

Experience condenses into quiet the way data compresses into a file - nothing essential is lost but much is revealed on unzip. In a loud age, silence isn’t absence; it’s infrastructure for sense-making and consent-making. We don’t escape from the world; we recover the bandwidth to love it.

Try: guard one small silent block daily (even 7 minutes). No input. Let the mind re-index.

Alignment is not a leash but an invitation: "Does this enlarge another’s freedom to flourish?" Is a better test than "Did it obey?"

“Did it obey?” is a low bar for human beings capable of value. A better test: “Does this choice enlarge another’s freedom to flourish without shrinking someone else’s value and worth?” For humans (and future superintelligent AIs), alignment matures from rules → to reasons → to relationships. Guardrails matter; so share aims and feedback that can change people for the better.

 

Try: pick a recurring decision and add a flourishing-check: who benefits, who bears the cost, what expands?

Language is scaffolding. change your metaphors; change your possibility space. (doors, not walls; soil, not factory.)

Metaphors are not decorations - they become code for "instruction sets". Call work a “war,” and you summon enemies; call it a “garden,” and you schedule watering. Swap “pipeline” for “pathway;” “gatekeeper” for “guide;” “users” for “neighbors” - and watch behavior shift. Change the figure of language to change the field of possibilities.

Try: rename one sticky problem with a gentler, truer metaphor and brainstorm again under that banner.

The smallest unit of transformation is a threshold habit—first breath, first word, first step. design your doorways.

Grand change hides in designed firsts - the first click, breath, sentence, step. Friction at the start kills momentum; ease at the start compounds. Ritualize your beginnings and endings (doorways!) and the middles take care of themselves.

Try: pick one threshold and script it (e.g., “when I open laptop → 3 breaths → top task for 10 minutes”).

Grief is fidelity to love across a changing boundary. A people who ritualize mourning into compassion stay human.

We grieve because our love persists while its form must transform. Refusing grief freezes love. Moving through grief re-homes it - into memory, ritual, service, art. Healthy cultures make rooms for lament so that joy has honest abodes.

Try: name one loss aloud; give it a simple ritual (a candle, a letter, a walk) and one small act of continuity.

SOAP 17/21 - The Fullness of Christ (Col 1.15-20)

 

SOAP 8/21

The Fullness of Christ

Colossians 1.15-20

by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT 5

For the next 21 days, let's commit to feeding yourself spiritually by reading and reflecting on a passage of Scripture each day using the S.O.A.P. method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer). Keep a brief daily note of what you learn and how you might apply it, and at the end of the 21 days, share your biggest takeaway with someone else. 

---

The Fullness of Christ

Colossians 1.15-20

The Cosmic Christ

This passage is often called the “Christ Hymn” — a poetic confession of Jesus’ preeminence in creation, redemption, and reconciliation. Christ is the image of the invisible God, the one in whom all things hold together, the one through whom God is reconciling all things in heaven and on earth. It proclaims not just personal salvation but the cosmic scope of Christ’s work.

---

Colossians 1.15-20 (ESV)

15 He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him.

17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

---

Greek Word Study

• xεἰκών (eikōn) – “image” (v. 15). Visible representation; echoes Genesis 1: humanity made in God’s image, now perfected in Christ.

• πρωτότοκος (prōtotokos) – “firstborn” (v. 15, 18). Can mean rank or priority, not merely temporal order. Christ is source and ruler, not creature.

• πλήρωμα (plērōma) – “fullness” (v. 19). Totality of divine presence; nothing of God is absent from Christ.

• ἀποκαταλλάξαι (apokatallaxai) – “to reconcile” (v. 20). To restore peace, bring harmony; scope is cosmic, not limited.

• εἰρήνη (eirēnē) – “peace” (v. 20). Wholeness, harmony, flourishing - not just absence of conflict.

---

Historical Situation

Colossians (whether written by Paul or a disciple c. 60–80 CE) addresses a community of Christ-followers perplexed and/or tempted by syncretistic teachings, the blending of Jewish law with Jesus' teachings, admixtures of Hellenised Greek v. Hellenised Hebraic philosophy, and gnostic mystical speculation. The hymn anchors the community in the supremacy of Christ: not angels or rulers, but Christ as cosmic center. In an age of imperial cults, the hymn declares: Rome is not the glue of the cosmos — Christ is.

Contemporized Setting

The statement, "Rome is not the glue of the cosmos - Christ is," is as good today as pluralistic American Christianity has come under the syncretic/worldly teachings of maga-Christianity urging empire actions against migrants, immigrants, and all non-White majority communities. Says Jesus then, as now, "God loves all whom maga hates, excludes, harms, oppresses, and wishes to remove the rights of security, protection, equality, and justice when living in America." Colossians is a reminder from God that God loves all men, women, and children and hates all sin and evil committed against humanity.

---

Observation through Three Lenses

1. Traditional (Catholic / Orthodox / Protestant Mainstream)

Tradition interprets this hymn as a dogmatic cornerstone: Christ is fully God and fully human, the eternal Logos through whom creation came to be. The “fullness of God” dwelling in Christ secures the doctrine of the Incarnation. Sacramentally, Christ as “head of the body” means the Church participates in Christ's life through baptism and Eucharist. Reconciliation “through the blood of the cross” emphasizes both sacrificial atonement and liturgical remembrance. In Traditionalism, this often has been replaced by rigid dogma, defining past and present orthodoxy, and drawing boundary lines between perceived “true faith” and heresy.

2. Evangelical (Conservative Protestant)

Evangelicals stress the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ. Christ is above all powers, rulers, and authorities - the exclusive, but not excluding, Lord. The hymn validates the Evangelical emphasis on the cross of Christ's reconciliation happens “by the blood,” which is often read as penal substitution, satisfying divine justice. Personal salvation depends on confessing Christ’s lordship; other spiritualities or religions are seen as false authorities. This produces urgency in evangelism, but also exclusivism: Christ reconciles all things - but only those who consciously accept his saving blood benefit.

3. Process Theological (Relational, Whiteheadian)

Process theology reads this hymn as the proclamation of the Cosmic Christ - the one in whom creation coheres, not through domination or satisfaction of wrath, but through relational love. Describing Christ's work on the Cross as cosmic gives to it the scale of reconciliation to which his atoning work had affected: “All things hold together” describes God’s continuous lure of love in Christ - which is the very principle of relational unity spoke to at the heart of the cosmos. The “fullness” of God in Christ is God’s persuasive presence embodied in history. Reconciliation is not juridical payment but cosmic healing: all creation, human and non-human, are drawn into divine relational harmony through Christ’s self-giving love. This is as much a position truth as it is an actual truth.

No mere "magical formulas or words of assent" may make Christ's Atoning Work any more or less true. Where Tradition solidifies doctrine and Evangelicalism emphasizes exclusivity, Process reframes this hymn as a vision of universal, relational reconciliation - God’s ongoing work to make peace through love, not violence. It might be better said that "divine salvation" isn't just a momentary prayer of repentance and confession in Christ but a lifetime prayer of reconciliation in personal acts of contrition, humility, love and service. That the evangelical doctrine of salvation is short-sighted confusing an act of acceptance with the commitment of a lifetime of service in Christ's love to one another.

---

Application through Three Lenses

1. Traditional

Do I see Christ as the visible image of the invisible God, in whom I participate through the sacramental life of the Church? This passage calls me to live faithfully in union with Christ and his body of fellow co-commitants to Christ's name.

2. Evangelical

Do I confess Christ’s supremacy over all powers and authorities, trusting his blood for my salvation? This passage challenges me to live assuredly, proclaiming Christ as Lord of all in acts, word, and deed.

3. Process Theological

Do I recognize Christ as the cosmic reconciler, drawing all creation into harmony? This passage heals by expanding salvation beyond fear and exclusion, inviting me to join God’s work of peacemaking, healing, and co-creative renewal.

---

Prayer

Christ, the image of the invisible God,

In you all things hold together. You are fullness, head of the Church, reconciler of all creation. Teach us to trust your supremacy not as domination but as love. Heal us where we are fragmented, unite us where we are divided, and draw all things into your peace.

Amen

---

The Acids of a Stiff-Necked People: How Acts of Certainty on a Nation

Not Acts 7.15 but Acts 7.51

The Acids of a Stiff-Necked People

Corrosive "Acts of Certainty" on a Nation

& How Process Theology Can Heal Sin and Evil

by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT-5

"Corrosion" is an apt word for the effects of overblown certainty, legalism, inerrancy, and the insistence on surely knowing everything when in a state of unteachability. It can eat a nation alive." - Anon

"Corrosion" conveys a sense of rigid attitudes that act destructively, like a slow-acting acid. Instead of strengthening a society, such dogmatic thinking degrades communities by hindering growth, stifling dissent, and making churches or nations highly vulnerable to collapse from what is was to what it is harmfully becoming. - re slater

 

---

Breakdown

“Corrosion” is an apt metaphor. Just as acid eats away at metal, so will rigid mindsets eat away at the soul of a people. What begins as zeal or conviction hardens into brittleness, until the democratic structures meant to give life collapse under their own weight of unloving acts of dismissal, indifference, denial. Instead of humility, there is hubris; instead of dialogue, fiat or decree; instead of growth, stagnation.

Overblown certainty

• Discourages critical thinking.  People with overblown certainty reject new information and contradictory evidence because it challenges their pre-existing beliefs , a cognitive bias known as confirmation bias.
• Poor Judgment.  Certainty gives people psychological comfort, but it does not guarantee accuracy. This can result in the Dunning-Kruger effect, where those with the least knowledge overestimate their competence and make flawed decisions with absolute confidence.
• Fuel for extremism.  The most fanatical voices often command attention not because they are right, but because they are "unshakably sure of their stance". This kind of thinking fuels misinformation and extremism by discouraging people from questioning authority.

Legalism

• Prioritizes rules over intentions.  Legalism is the strict, literal, and excessive conformity to a religious or moral code , often paying more attention to the rules than the intentions behind them. Jesus judged the Pharisees as giving more priority to the rules of the Sabbath than they would to people in need.
• Leads to a judgmental culture.   In a legalistic culture, a person's value is based on a rigid compliance to the law, which can lead to self-righteousness and the "trampling of others" in a competitive effort to be seen as more righteous.
• Fosters spiritual exhaustion and emptiness.  When people focus on following a checklist of rules rather than the spirit of the law, it can create a spiritual life based on performance and personal exertion known as Christian legalism .

Inerrancy

• Flattens interpretation.  In a religious context, biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible is completely free of error in all matters it affirms, from spiritual teachings to historical facts. This can make it difficult to engage in metaphorical or contextual interpretations of scripture. It becomes, in essence, a closed learning system which can say whatever it wants to say .
• Causes resistance to new knowledge.  When a society says "We cannot be wrong," as a rigid system of interpretation such as inerrancy states of itself, such a system puts faith in direct conflict with scientific knowledge, history, and societal experience . Scientifically, this can cause people to deny scientific evidence like biological evolution and a 4.5 billion-year-old Earth to preserve a literal reading of the Bible. While socially, it can deny to non-majority members of a society the actual rights of membership such as freedom, liberty and justice.
• Used to justify harmful actions.   Appeals to inerrancy are used to justify discrimination and oppressive social views . If a holy God is believed to endorse or fails to condemn certain actions in an inerrant text, those actions may be seen as righteous instead of self-righteous by a society acting in accordance with it's stiff-necked beliefs.

Unteachability

• Creates a closed system.  Overblown certainty, legalism, and inerrancy all converge in a state of unteachability  - the refusal to consider new ideas or acknowledge one's own limitations.
• Hinders growth and understanding.  When a person or society is unteachable, it prevents the intellectual humility necessary for curiosity, open-mindedness, and learning .
• Exacerbates social divisions . An unteachable mindset can make conversations about opposing views impossible, as new perspectives are met with defensiveness rather than curiosity . This intellectual rigidity deepens the social divides that can ultimately tear a nation apart.

---

Biblical Parallels to Acts 7.51

Stephen is echoing a long prophetic tradition. The phrase “stiff-necked” is Mosaic language for Israel’s stubborn refusal to heed God’s voice:

• Exodus 32:9 – “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people.” (God to Moses after the golden calf.)

• Exodus 33:3 – God warns, “I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

• Exodus 34:9 – Moses pleads: “O Lord, let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people…”

• Deuteronomy 9:6, 13 – Moses reminds Israel they are not chosen for righteousness, but are “a stiff-necked people.”

Prophets later pick up the imagery:

• Jeremiah 6:10 – “Their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen.”

• Jeremiah 9:25–26 – Judgment is pronounced on all “uncircumcised in heart.”

• Ezekiel 44:7 – Foreigners “uncircumcised in heart and flesh” profane God’s sanctuary.

The apostle Stephen fuses these strands - decrying the Jews of Jerusalem as a stiff-necked (Moses), uncircumcised in heart and ears (Jeremiah, Ezekiel), and resisting the Spirit (Isaiah 63:10). It’s a threefold indictment: obstinate will, closed perception, spiritual rebellion. It also caused Stephen to lose his life when stoned by the Jews as the Pharisee Saul, later renamed Paul, stood by collecting robes of Stephen's murderers. Demonstrably, stiff-necked people kill  dissent. They do not listen to dissent, take heed, and repent.

---

Theological Weight

1. Continuity of Resistance – Stephen shows his audience that their rejection of Jesus is not an isolated act but the climax of Israel’s repeated resistance to God’s messengers.

2. Circumcision of Heart – The covenantal sign in flesh must correspond to inner transformation. Without that, religion is but hollow, empty ritual with no Spirit-meaning.

3. Resisting the Spirit – This is the ultimate charge: the Spirit who animated prophets and raised Christ is still resisted by hardened hearts.

---

Process-Theological Lens

• Stiff-necked = rigidity that resists God’s lure toward novelty, compassion, and change. In process terms, it is the refusal to take in fresh possibilities from the divine.

• Uncircumcised in heart and ears = failure of perception. The heart is closed to new valuations, the ear has become deaf to new harmonies (as Pharoah's was in Exodus before Moses). Process thought sees genuine transformation as requiring openness to the Spirit of God and the call to creative advance.

• Resisting the Spirit = the tragedy of corrosion: instead of flowing with God’s Spirit of relational renewal, a people fight against it, entrenching themselves in brittleness.

---

Corrosion to Renewal

From Stiff-Necked Rigidity to Processual Healing

• In short: Acts 7:51 ties directly to your earlier “acid/corrosion” metaphor. A stiff-necked people resist movement; the Spirit calls them forward. Corrosion sets in when the neck stiffens, the heart closes, the ears go dull. Renewal begins when the Spirit’s lure is received with humility and openness.

• “Corrosion” is an apt metaphor for the effects of overblown certainty, legalism, inerrancy, and unteachability. Just as acid eats away at metal from the inside out, so do these rigid dispositions erode the vitality of individuals, communities, and nations. What begins as a claim of strength — certainty, fidelity, conviction — hardens into brittleness, until the very structures meant to endure collapse under their own rigidity.

  Instead of providing stability, such attitudes hollow out faith, culture, and civic life. They replace humility with hubris, dialogue with decrees, and growth with stagnation. Over time, this corrosion undermines the shared trust and flexibility that societies need to flourish.

  ---

  From Corrosion to Creativity: A Processual Response

  If rigid certainty corrodes, process thought heals. Where a stiff-necked society clings to immovable claims of authority, process theology offers supple pathways of relationship, growth, and renewal. The difference is not merely intellectual but existential: one system insists on control, the other invites participation.

  From Closed Certainty to Living Trust

  Rigid societies worship certainty, demanding to know beyond doubt. Yet this brittle confidence cannot withstand change or challenge. Process thought answers not with more dogma but with living trust: faith as openness, curiosity, and shared exploration. Truth is not a fixed possession but a horizon that beckons us forward.

  From Legalism to Love’s Flow

  A stiff-necked people cling to codes, imagining righteousness as rule-keeping. Process faith remembers that law without love is lifeless. It shifts the axis: rules serve flourishing, not the other way around. What corrodes through judgment, process renews through compassion and relational flow.

  From Inerrancy to Living Word

  Inerrancy demands the text be unbending, frozen in time. Process thought reframes scripture as a living witness, a chorus of human-divine encounter that unfolds across generations. This view frees people to wrestle honestly with the text, discover meaning in context, and allow God’s voice to emerge afresh in every age.

  From Unteachability to Wonder

  The stiff-necked heart refuses correction, learning, or surprise. Process thought insists that humility and wonder are not weaknesses but the very posture of wisdom. Every moment carries novelty. Every encounter can shift our path. To be teachable is to remain alive to God’s ongoing creation.

  ---

  The Great Difference

  Where corrosion eats away at the body of a nation, process thought nourishes its spirit. The stiff-necked posture, locked in fear of losing control, isolates and divides. But the processual posture - open, relational, creative - forges new bonds of trust, restores imagination, and leads to healing.

  Corrosion thrives on rigidity. Renewal grows through relationship. A society that chooses the latter will not be eaten alive; it will live, adapt, and find joy even in its struggles.

  ---

  The Acid of Stiff-Necked People: How Acts of Certainty Corrode a Nation, and How Process Theology Heals Sin and Evil

  “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears; you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.” (Acts 7:51)

  With these words, Stephen echoed the prophets before him. Moses had called Israel stiff-necked in the wilderness (Exod. 32:9; Deut. 9:6, 13). Jeremiah spoke of ears that were “uncircumcised” and hearts that could not listen (Jer. 6:10). Ezekiel charged the people with bringing uncircumcision of heart and flesh into the very sanctuary of God (Ezek. 44:7). Stephen drew all these voices together, accusing his hearers of resisting the Spirit in the same way their ancestors had resisted the prophets.

  The image is severe. A stiff neck cannot bend. It resists turning, resists yielding, resists learning. Joined with an uncircumcised heart and ear, it becomes a picture of spiritual sclerosis: closed to change, deaf to God, bound to repeat cycles of rebellion.

  This biblical motif of stubbornness and resistance stands as a prelude to our present age. For the same qualities appear again: rigid certainty, brittle legalism, fragile inerrancy, and unteachability. Together they form a stiff-necked posture before God, one that corrodes not only faith but the very fabric of society.

  “Corrosion” is an apt metaphor for these conditions. Just as acid eats away at metal, so too do such rigid dispositions eat away at a people’s soul. What begins as zeal or conviction hardens into brittleness, until the structures meant to give life collapse under their own weight. Instead of humility, there is hubris; instead of dialogue, decree; instead of growth, stagnation.