An Ontology of Becoming - Reconciliation & Coherence (41)

ESSAY 41

"WHAT IS REALITY" SERIES

IDENTITY, BECOMING, & RELATIONAL DIRECTIONALITY

An Ontology of Becoming -

Reconciliation & Coherence

An Exploration of the Pattern of Relational Becoming:

Relational Expansion, Open Coherence, and the Unfinished Future

Becoming IV - Divine Mercy as Structural Expression

by R.E. Slater and ChatGPT

Essay Series Motifs

The Story of Jonah: 

Being → Rupture → Descent → Transformation → Reconciliation

deconstruction → liminality → reconstruction → post-certainty participation →

relational openness

The Central Guiding Question

How does the existential journey of Jonah re-enact the ontological patterns of rupture, 

descent, transformation, and reconciliation - revealing how reality remains open,

relational, and unfinished?

Observations

“Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city...?”

asks God of Jonah. - Jonah 4:11

Reality does not end in closure,

but in the widening possibility of participation.

- R.E. Slater

Only where there is openness can there be future.

- adapted from Martin Heidegger

Love is the drive toward the unity of the separated.

- Paul Tillich

Reality remains open enough for coherence

to return after rupture.

- R.E. Slater

Series Objective

To articulate a relational ontology grounded in contemporary
physics and biology, in which reality is understood as coherence,

information, and process rather than as substance, isolation,

and atomistic models of reality.

Series Architecture

What Is Reality? series → foundational ontology
Cosmic Becoming Cycle → poetic and metaphysical expansion
Embodied Process Realism → formal philosophical framework
Processual Divine Coherence → theological bridge

How Reality Persists → continuity within becoming

Essay Outline

Preface

I - Mercy Beyond Moral Containment

II - The Reopening of Coherence

III - The City, the Prophet, and the Open Future

IV - Reconciliation Without Finality

V - Coherence Beyond Exclusion

VI - Coda: The Open Horizon of Becoming

Poem - A New Horizon

Bibliography

---

Preface

The preceding Jonah essays have traced a long movement through:

• stability and its illusion,
• interruption and rupture,
• descent and enclosure,
• resistance and contraction,
• meaning and transformation.

Together they explored the fragile architecture of embodied existence once continuity fractures beneath the pressures of lived reality.

What initially appeared as a prophetic narrative gradually disclosed something more universal:

that becoming itself carries existential cost.

For continuity does not easily surrender its inherited boundaries. Identity resists dissolution. Communities preserve themselves through exclusion. Nations harden around memory and fear. Religious systems often retreat toward certainty precisely when interruption exposes the limits of inherited coherence.

Thus the earlier essays revealed not merely the possibility of becoming, but also the painful reality of anti-becoming:

the contraction of participation,

the narrowing of mercy,

the refusal of expansion,

and the exhaustion of continuity once it loses the capacity for adaptive relationality.

Yet the story of Jonah does not finally conclude within contraction.

Importantly, neither does it resolve through simplistic triumph.

The prophet never becomes fully heroic.

The city never becomes fully innocent.

History itself never stabilizes into permanent reconciliation.

And perhaps this unresolvedness is precisely the point.

For reconciliation within relational reality does not emerge as static perfection.

It emerges instead as the reopening of coherence after rupture.

This distinction matters greatly.

Because the deeper question confronting the Jonah narrative has never merely concerned prophetic obedience alone. Beneath the storms, descents, fears, and interruptions lies a more difficult ontological inquiry:

Does reality ultimately move toward exclusion...

or toward relational widening?

Does continuity finally collapse inward toward defensive preservation,

or can wounded existence reopen itself toward forms of participation larger than fear initially permits?

These questions now stand at the threshold of the concluding ontology essay.

And significantly, the answer offered by Jonah is neither deterministic nor sentimental.

The narrative never suggests that reconciliation occurs naturally, automatically, or without resistance. Nor does it erase suffering, historical violence, fear, or memory beneath naïve optimism.

Instead the text discloses something quieter and perhaps more profound:

that mercy itself may be structurally woven into the deeper movement of relational existence.

Not merely morally commanded.

Not merely emotionally desired.

But ontologically expressive of reality’s wider tendency toward coherence beyond exclusion alone.

Within Jonah this possibility remains deeply unsettling.

For mercy destabilizes inherited boundaries.

• It widens continuity beyond tribal containment.
• It exposes the insufficiency of rigid moral closure.
• It reorients identity beyond self-preservation alone.
• And it confronts the self with the terrifying possibility that reality may remain more relationally generous than inherited continuity had previously allowed.

Thus reconciliation becomes difficult.

Not because openness lacks power,

but because contraction fears dissolution once coherence begins widening beyond familiar limits.

And yet the narrative continues pressing outward.

• The city remains before the prophet.
• The sea remains behind him.
• The fractured wheel still turns overhead.
• The future itself remains unfinished.
• This unfinishedness is essential.
• It is the very nature of reality itself to remain unfinished, open.

For the ontology developed throughout the Reality & Cosmology Series has repeatedly argued that coherence does not arise through static permanence, but through adaptive continuity capable of sustaining relational participation across changing conditions.

Reconciliation therefore cannot signify final closure. Rather, it becomes:

• ongoing reorientation,
• widening participation,
• adaptive coherence,
• and unfinished relational integration within becoming itself.

Thus the final Jonah essay now stands simultaneously:

• at the conclusion of the ontology series,
• at the reopening of existential participation,
• and at the threshold of the metaphysics series.

For eventually ontology reaches a limit:

not where structure disappears,

but where structure becomes lived horizon.

And perhaps this is the deepest realization now emerging through Jonah’s long journey across rupture, descent, transformation, and reluctant widening:

that reality may remain open long enough for coherence to return

even after continuity itself has fractured.

Not unchanged.

Not perfected.

But widened through the difficult labor of relational becoming once again.

---

I - Mercy Beyond Moral Containment

One of the more unsettling dimensions of the Jonah narrative is that divine mercy repeatedly exceeds the structures attempting to contain it.

This quality upsets nearly everyone within the story.

The sailors fear the sea.

The city fears its destruction.

And Jonah fears mercy itself.

And perhaps this reveals something important about reconciliation within relational existence:

it rarely arrives comfortably within inherited systems of moral certainty.

For continuity naturally seeks stabilization through distinction:

• insider and outsider,
• righteous and unrighteous,
• covenant and enemy,
• belonging and exclusion.

Such distinctions help communities preserve identity across historical uncertainty. They provide coherence, memory, orientation, and survival. Without them societies fragment beneath instability and fear.

Yet the danger emerges when continuity begins treating its own boundaries as absolute rather than adaptive.

At that moment identity slowly contracts inward toward preservation alone.

The self no longer seeks participation.

It seeks protection.

This is where Jonah now stands.

His resistance to Nineveh is not reducible to simple cruelty. Rather, he fears what reconciliation might require of his new-form of continuity to widen mercy beyond his inherited containment systems.

For if mercy extends toward the enemy-world, then continuity can no longer remain morally closed off to the people once hated.

The boundaries stabilizing identity begin softening.

The distinctions preserving coherence become permeable.

And the self must confront the possibility that relational existence may remain larger than inherited frameworks were designed to accommodate fully.

This is profoundly destabilizing for Jonah as it would be for anyone.

Because mercy is never merely emotional leniency within Jonah.

It becomes existential expansion.

The widening of participation beyond prior limits of exclusion.

This widening does not erase justice, suffering, memory, or historical violence. The Assyrian world remains dangerous. Empire remains destructive. Fear remains understandable.

The narrative never romanticizes history.

And yet something larger than historical fear continues pressing against contraction itself. The prophet senses this pressure long before he accepts it.

Perhaps this explains why Jonah flees so desperately at the beginning of the narrative.

Not because divine judgment frightens him,

but because divine openness does.

He fears a reality where mercy may exceed tribal containment.

And perhaps this remains one of the most enduring existential fears within human existence itself.

For communities often sustain coherence through exclusionary boundaries: 

national, religious, political, cultural, racial, economic, or ideological.

These structures promise continuity through containment.

Yet over time containment alone slowly exhausts relational vitality. Identity hardens. Participation narrows. Fear becomes foundational. The self begins preserving itself against realities capable of widening coherence beyond inherited limits.

At such moments continuity may survive structurally while quietly losing the openness necessary for further becoming.

This is why reconciliation frequently feels threatening rather than comforting.

For reconciliation requires permeability.

It asks continuity to loosen its defensive closure enough for wounded relations to re-enter participation once again.

And this labor is extraordinarily difficult.

Especially after violence.

Especially after betrayal.

Especially after historical trauma.

Especially after generations of inherited fear.

The Jonah narrative refuses simplifying these tensions.

Instead reconciliation emerges slowly, painfully, and incompletely.

Even the conclusion of the book remains unresolved. Jonah never fully answers the divine question placed before him. The story concludes suspended between resentment and widening openness, between historical injury and possible participation within a larger coherence still struggling to emerge.

This unresolved ending is philosophically essential.

For reconciliation within relational existence does not erase fracture.

It reorganizes participation around the possibility that continuity need not remain permanently imprisoned within its own contractions.

This is why mercy in Jonah appears less like sentimental forgiveness and more like structural reorientation.

An open reality presses against exclusion and for one another participation. A participation that may require penitence of act, forgiveness, reconciliation, etc.

Not coercively.

Not mechanically.

Not deterministically.

But relationally.

The narrative continually widens beyond the closures attempting to contain it.

And perhaps this widening discloses something fundamental about the deeper tendencies within becoming itself:

that coherence may emerge most fully not where continuity seals itself against the Other,

but where wounded existence remains open enough to participate within relational expansion once again.

---

II - The Reopening of Coherence

Reconciliation becomes possible only when continuity loosens its resistance against relational expansion.

This does not mean continuity disappears.

Nor does it imply that identity dissolves into abstraction, universality, or moral vagueness. Throughout the Jonah narrative particularity remains intact:

• the prophet remains Jonah,
• Nineveh remains Nineveh,
• Israel remains historically wounded,
• and the world itself remains unstable, political, unfinished, and vulnerable to violence.

The narrative never abandons reality’s complexity.

Instead, reconciliation emerges through a subtler movement:

the reopening of participation after contraction.

This distinction is crucial.

Most often much of human existence becomes organized around defensive coherence once rupture enters collective memory. Individuals protect themselves psychologically. Communities preserve themselves culturally. Nations secure themselves politically. Religious traditions stabilize themselves doctrinally.

These movements are understandable.

Continuity seeks survival.

Yet survival alone cannot sustain relational vitality indefinitely.

Eventually coherence must become adaptive or risk hardening into increasingly fragile forms of containment.

This may be one of the deeper disclosures emerging through Jonah’s unresolved conclusion.

The prophet survives interruption,

yet survival itself remains insufficient.

He descends,

returns,

speaks,

witnesses transformation,

and still struggles to widen inwardly toward the reconciliation unfolding before him.

Thus the narrative quietly reveals something profound:

existence may outwardly continue while inwardly resisting

the very participation capable of restoring coherence more deeply.

This tension appears repeatedly across history.

• Civilizations survive wars while preserving generational resentments.
• Religions preach mercy while fearing openness.
• Communities protect identity through exclusionary boundaries.
• Individuals continue living while remaining internally organized around old injuries, fears, and contractions.

The result is often a form of suspended continuity:

existence persists,

yet relational participation narrows.

The Jonah narrative refuses leaving the reader comfortably within such suspension.

Again and again the text widens the horizon:

through sailors,

through storms,
through pagan repentance,
through reluctant prophecy,
through divine questioning,

and finally through unresolved mercy itself.

The world repeatedly exceeds the prophet’s moral containment fields. This quality of mercy is deeply important.

Because reconciliation within relational existence does not emerge through domination, coercion, or final certainty. It emerges instead through the gradual reorganization of participation beyond inherited contraction.

The self slowly becomes capable of inhabiting a wider horizon.

Not perfectly.

Not completely.

But sufficiently enough for coherence to continue.

This movement resembles less a sudden conversion than a widening field of relational permeability.

Identity remains,
yet softens.

Memory remains,

yet no longer governs absolutely.

Difference remains,

yet exclusion weakens.

The self does not disappear into sameness.
Rather, relational continuity becomes capable of carrying greater relational complexity without collapsing inward defensively.

Perhaps this is why the Jonah narrative ends with a question rather than a conclusion.

Questions preserve openness.

Certainties often close it.

And throughout the Reality & Cosmology Series -

openness has repeatedly appeared not as weakness, but as one of the necessary conditions for adaptive coherence across changing realities.

This principle now returns existentially within Jonah.

The prophet’s unresolved condition becomes philosophically illuminating precisely because reconciliation itself remains unfinished.

The self continues struggling between:

• fear and expansion,
• resentment and mercy,
• contraction and participation,
• continuity and widening coherence.

And perhaps reality itself unfolds similarly.

Not through perfect harmonization,

but through ongoing relational negotiation across wounded histories, unstable identities, interrupted continuities, and emerging possibilities still struggling toward integration.

This makes reconciliation fragile.

Yet it also makes reconciliation real.

For only unfinished realities require mercy.

Only wounded continuities require reopening.

And only fractured worlds ask whether coherence may still emerge after exclusion has already hardened itself against participation.

The Jonah narrative answers neither sentimentally nor despairingly. Instead it leaves the horizon open. The city remains. The prophet remains. The question remains.

And somewhere between them the possibility of renewed relational coherence continues quietly unfolding within the unfinished future itself.

---

III - The City, the Prophet, and the Open Future

The final movement of Jonah unfolds not through resolution, but through juxtaposition.

The city has repented and stands transformed.

The prophet has repented and stands unsettled.

But for either  party we do not know for how long. 

Between them remains the unanswered question upon
which the entire narrative quietly turns.

This ending is remarkably important.

For most narratives seek closure:

• victory after conflict,
• restoration after suffering,
• certainty after confusion,
• reconciliation after rupture.

Jonah refuses nearly all such resolutions.

The city repents,

yet its empire remains as an empire.

The prophet obeys,

yet his resentment remains unresolved.

Divine mercy affects those who receive it,

yet its coherence remains incomplete.

Even the future itself remains open.

And perhaps this openness constitutes the deepest ontological disclosure within the narrative.

For reality does not culminate in static completion.

It unfolds through unfinished participation.

This principle now becomes increasingly visible throughout the final scenes of Jonah. The prophet, having survived descent and interruption, nevertheless struggles to inhabit the wider relational horizon now emerging before him.

He desires conclusion.

Reality instead offers expansion.

He seeks containment.
Reality reopens the future.

This distinction is subtle but profound. Because the deepest struggle within Jonah has never simply concerned obedience alone. More fundamentally, the prophet struggles against a future no longer governed exclusively by inherited continuity structures.

His old world remains insufficient.

Yet his new world remains uncomfortable.

Jonah therefore occupies a liminal condition between contraction and widening coherence. He cannot fully return to the certainty existing before interruption entered his life. Yet neither can he completely reconcile himself to the implications of mercy extending beyond tribal containment.

This existential suspension gives the narrative extraordinary realism.

For human beings often continue living between worlds:

• old identities weakening,
• new horizons emerging,
• inherited frameworks trembling,
• while meaning itself reorganizes slowly beneath the surface of experience.

Communities experience this. Civilizations experience this. Religious traditions experience this. And even modern existence experiences these ontological pressure points perhaps in a more cyclically profound - and nearly daily - regiment of analysis, confliction, debate, spiritual/moral/existential success or failure, that is then "repeated" in cycle after cycle of expansive pressure brought on by news events, technology, external collapses such as global pandemics, environmental degradation, global warfare, and etc.

The old certainties no longer stabilize consciousness as they once did. Historical continuities have fractured beneath technological acceleration, ecological instability, political polarization, and spiritual exhaustion. Yet new forms of coherence remain incomplete, fragile, and still struggling toward integration.

In retrospective, humanity frequently inhabits conditions remarkably similar to Jonah’s final posture:

• uncertain,
• resistant,
• hopeful,
• fearful,
• unfinished,
• and standing before futures larger than inherited continuities comfortably permit.

The narrative does not condemn this condition simplistically.
Instead it illuminates it compassionately.

For becoming itself remains difficult.

Especially once continuity realizes it cannot preserve

itself indefinitely through exclusion alone.

This realization becomes increasingly painful wherever societies organize themselves around fear of the Other:

• foreigners,
• enemies,
• ideological opponents,
• religious outsiders,
• cultural differences,
• political rivals,
• or unfamiliar forms of participation threatening inherited stability.

At such moments continuity often narrows toward preservation through defensive closure. Yet reality continues widening despite these contractions.

The city remains before Jonah as symbolic reminder that existence itself exceeds inherited containment. The Other cannot simply be erased. The future cannot permanently remain closed.

And perhaps this is why the divine voice concludes not with declaration, but with question.

Questions preserve liminal relational space.

They invite participation rather than coercion.

They allow becoming to remain open.

This matters profoundly within the broader architecture of the Reality & Cosmology Series.

For throughout the ontology essays reality has repeatedly appeared not as static substance, but as evolving relational process:

adaptive,

unfinished,

participatory,

and perpetually negotiating coherence across changing conditions.

Now Jonah dramatizes this ontological structure existentially. The prophet himself becomes embodiment of unfinished continuity confronting relational widening. And the ending refuses resolving this tension artificially. No final conversion occurs. No perfected reconciliation appears. No complete harmony stabilizes history.

Instead the narrative leaves all of the actors in limbo:

• the prophet,
• city,
• memory,
• fear,
• mercy,
• and future
  suspended together within ongoing participation.

This unfinishedness is not narrative weakness. It is ontological honesty.

For existence itself remains unfinished.

Reality continually opens toward unformed futures

Challenging existence that is always in process of becoming.

And reality's coherence between past and future doesn't emerge as final closure, but as the present ongoing capacity of incomplete/wounded/questioning continuities to remain flexibly permeable enough that further relational integrations might still resolve in actual, permanent longevity.

Thus the conclusion of Jonah ultimately offers neither certainty nor despair.

It offers horizon.

And perhaps horizon itself is one of the deepest conditions necessary for becoming to continue at all.

---

IV - Reconciliation Without Finality

One of the more difficult realizations emerging through Jonah is that reconciliation does not erase fracture.

The narrative never suggests that history becomes harmless,

that suffering disappears,

or that wounded memory simply dissolves beneath mercy alone.

• Nineveh remains historically violent.
• Israel remains historically vulnerable.
• The prophet remains psychologically conflicted.
• And the world itself remains unfinished.

This unresolved nature of evolving reality matters profoundly because many visions of reconciliation ultimately seek closure more than participation.

They imagine harmony as the elimination of tension, difference, instability, or relational difficulty altogether.

Jonah offers no such simplification.

Instead reconciliation emerges as the difficult continuation of relational existence after rupture has already exposed the insufficiency of defensive continuity.

This distinction transforms the meaning of coherence itself.

For coherence within relational becoming cannot signify rigid sameness. Nor can it imply static equilibrium preserved permanently against interruption. Reality throughout the Reality & Cosmology Series has instead appeared as dynamic integration:

adaptive,

responsive,

unfinished,

and continually reorganizing itself across changing conditions.

Reconciliation therefore becomes less the restoration of former stability and more the reopening of relational possibility after contraction has threatened permanent closure.

This ontological movement remains fragile.

For wounded continuities naturally fear permeability once injury has entered memory. The self remembers betrayal. Communities remember violence. Nations remember humiliation. Religious traditions remember persecution and fracture.

These memories become sedimented within continuity itself.

And over time identity may slowly organize itself around protection from future rupture rather than openness toward renewed participation.

This is understandable.

Yet eventually fear exhausts coherence.

Existence narrows.

Relational vitality weakens.

The future itself becomes increasingly inaccessible because continuity no longer trusts openness enough to participate within realities larger than inherited containment permits.

Perhaps this is why Jonah remains so reluctant even after witnessing Nineveh’s repentance. The prophet fears not merely the city, but the destabilization of identity itself once mercy expands beyond familiar moral boundaries. For reconciliation changes those who participate within it.

The self cannot remain entirely unchanged once openness widens continuity beyond exclusionary containment.

And perhaps this is the deeper labor of becoming:

not the destruction of past identity,

but its gradual enlargement through relational participation beyond former limits of fear based upon justified past memory.

This enlargement remains difficult precisely because it preserves difference rather than erasing it.

• Jonah does not become a Ninevite.
• Nineveh does not become confirmed like Israel.
• The sea does not become anything less than itself.
• The empire does not suddenly transform into utopia.
• Difference remains.
• History remains.
• Particularity remains.

Yet despite these continuities the narrative still gestures toward the possibility that coherence may emerge without requiring exclusion or revilvement as its organizing principle.

This possibility remains extraordinarily important for any ontology of relational existence.

For if coherence depends entirely upon exclusion, domination, or rigid containment, then becoming eventually collapses inward toward increasingly brittle forms of continuity incapable of sustaining adaptive participation across changing realities.

Such systems may survive temporarily.
But they slowly lose permeability -

and without permeability relational vitality diminishes.

The Jonah narrative therefore suggests a different possibility:
that coherence may emerge through widening participation rather than defensive closure alone.

This widening does not eliminate boundaries altogether.

Rather, it transforms the function of boundaries themselves.

Boundaries no longer exist solely to exclude.
They begin organizing participation.

Identity no longer exists merely to preserve itself against the Other.
It becomes capable of inhabiting relational complexity without immediate collapse

back into fear or hostility.

And perhaps this is what mercy ultimately reveals within Jonah. Not weakness. Not naïve sentimentality. But the possibility that relational existence itself remains structured toward forms of widening coherence larger than inherited contraction initially permits.

This quality of reality remains deeply difficult. The prophet struggles against it. History struggles against it. Humanity struggles against it still. Yet the narrative nevertheless leaves the horizon open.

And perhaps openness itself becomes the final condition necessary for reconciliation to remain possible at all.

For once the future closes entirely,

becoming ceases.

But where openness survives,

coherence may still emerge again -

not through perfection,

but through the unfinished labor of relational participation

continuing across wounded existence once more.

---

V - Coherence Beyond Exclusion

The ontology developed throughout the Reality & Cosmology Series has repeatedly suggested that reality does not sustain itself through isolated substance alone, but through relational integration across evolving conditions of participation.

This principle now reaches its existential culmination within Jonah. For the final question confronting the narrative is no longer simply whether interruption changes the prophet. The deeper question is whether coherence itself may emerge beyond exclusionary containment.

This distinction is essential.

Throughout history continuity has often attempted preserving itself through narrowing boundaries:

• tribal identity,
• imperial domination,
• ideological certainty,
• economic hierarchy,
• religious absolutism,
• political exclusion,
• or cultural fear.

Such systems may generate temporary stability. But stability alone does not necessarily produce relational coherence.

Indeed, some forms of continuity preserve themselves precisely by suppressing the relational openness necessary for adaptive participation within changing realities. The result is often increasing rigidity in existential structures surviving outwardly while inwardly losing vitality, permeability, and responsiveness.

Eventually

contraction exhausts itself. -->The future narrows --> Becoming slows -->

Identity hardens against transformation.

This pattern appears repeatedly throughout both history and personal existence.

Individuals organize themselves around fear of vulnerability.
Communities preserve themselves through inherited resentments.
Nations defend continuity through exclusionary narratives.
Religious systems seek certainty by resisting interruption altogether.

Yet the Jonah narrative continually gestures toward another possibility:

that coherence may emerge not through domination of difference, but through widened participation capable of carrying difference without immediate collapse into hostility or exclusion.

This possibility remains extraordinarily fragile.

For openness always risks instability.

The self fears dissolution.

Communities fear fragmentation.

Civilizations fear vulnerability.

And yet complete closure carries its own dangers:

rigidity,

stagnation,
exhaustion,
and eventual inability to adapt once reality changes

beyond inherited forms of containment.

Thus coherence requires something more subtle than preservation alone.

It requires permeability - Not limitless dissolution - Not erasure of identity.

But sufficient openness for relational integration to continue reorganizing continuity across changing conditions of existence.

Perhaps this is why Jonah’s unresolved ending remains so philosophically important.

The narrative never fully reconciles:

• prophet and city,
• justice and mercy,
• continuity and expansion,
• memory and openness.

Instead it leaves these tensions held together within unfinished participation itself.

And perhaps this unfinishedness constitutes the deepest form of coherence available within relational reality.

For reality itself may not culminate in static perfection, but in the ongoing capacity of existence to remain open enough for renewed integration still to emerge after rupture, fear, contraction, and fragmentation have already occurred.

This insight changes the meaning of mercy within Jonah entirely.

Mercy no longer appears merely as divine emotion.

It becomes structural expression.

The widening tendency within relational existence itself:

toward reintegration rather than permanent exclusion,

toward adaptive participation rather than rigid closure,

toward future possibility rather than final containment.

Importantly, this movement remains non-deterministic.

The narrative never guarantees success.

Continuity may still contract.

Communities may still resist openness.

Civilizations may still collapse inward beneath fear and domination.

The possibility of anti-becoming remains real.

And yet the horizon nevertheless remains open.

This openness may ultimately be one of the deepest conditions necessary for reality’s ongoing coherence.

For where exclusion becomes absolute,

participation ceases.

Where participation ceases,
becoming narrows.

And where becoming narrows completely,

continuity eventually exhausts itself against the limits of its own closure.

Becoming then fails,

And relational participation ceases all attempts to integrate.

The Jonah narrative therefore offers a remarkably subtle ontological vision. Not as a utopian vision. Not as a perfected reconciliation. Nor as a final harmony.

But as the possibility that wounded existence may nevertheless remain open enough for relational integration to continue emerging across unfinished history once again.

Perhaps this is the deepest hope available within relational becoming:

not that fracture never occurs,

but that coherence may still return after fracture without requiring

exclusion as its final organizing principle.

---

VI - Coda: The Open Horizon of Becoming

The story of Jonah concludes strangely. No final reconciliation occurs. No triumphant restoration resolves the tensions exposed throughout the narrative. The prophet remains uncertain. The city remains vulnerable. History itself remains unfinished.

And yet the horizon does not close.

This matters profoundly. For the ontology developed throughout the Reality & Cosmology Series has repeatedly resisted treating reality as static completion. Instead living, processual, existence has appeared:

• relational,
• adaptive,
• participatory,
• unfinished,
• and perpetually negotiating coherence across changing conditions of becoming.

Jonah now embodies this disclosure existentially.

The prophet survives rupture,

yet remains incomplete.

He encounters mercy,

yet continues struggling with expansion beyond inherited continuity.

He stands before the city,

before the sea,

beneath the fractured wheel of continuity itself,

and the future remains unwritten.

Perhaps this unresolved openness is precisely the final ontological lesson.

Reality does not conclude through closure.

It continues through an open and relational horizon.

The self moves forward uncertainly.
Communities reorganize imperfectly.
Civilizations widen or contract across historical pressures.
And existence itself remains suspended between fragmentation and integration, fear and participation, exclusion and relational expansion.

This unfinished condition should not be mistaken for failure.

It may instead reflect the very structure of becoming itself.

For where openness survives - future participation remains possible. And perhaps this is why the Jonah narrative ultimately ends with question rather than declaration.

Where questions leave room for becoming.

Absolute certainties often terminate it.

Thus the final movement of the ontology series does not arrive at final answers concerning reality. Instead it arrives at a widening horizon:

• where continuity remains capable of adaptive reconfiguration,
• where coherence may emerge again after rupture,
• and where relational participation remains possible even within unfinished worlds still struggling toward integration.

Beyond this horizon the metaphysical questions now begin emerging more fully.

• What kind of reality permits such openness?
• Why does coherence repeatedly reappear after fragmentation?
• What deeper structures sustain becoming itself across rupture, collapse, and transformation?
• And why does existence continually resist permanent closure?

These questions now lead beyond ontology - for eventually an ontology reaches the edge of metaphysics,

where reality is no longer encountered merely as structure,

but as mystery, participation, and horizon.

And somewhere beyond the shoreline of Jonah’s unfinished future, the metaphysical wheel  of reality continues turning relentlessly unstopped, unobstructed, unfinished, evolving, moving, challenging, completing where possible, until the sacred and divine are met and conjoined.

This then begins the new story of reality's metaphysic. A new series project which now lays ahead of us in the What Is Reality? series. Please join us in our search as we ask old questions in new and processually challenging ways - exploring reality not merely as existence, but as participation, relation, mystery, consciousness, cosmos, and becoming itself.

- R.E. Slater

---

A New Horizon

by R.E. Slater

    Reality strives against closure,

    ever widening the possibility of
    divine participation everywhere,

    making all things sacred.

The sea settled restless, unquiet.

Ahead, above the lifted dunes

rose an unsought city lit

softly in unfinished sky.

On the reefs, behind

the ship-wrecked prophet,

lay dark storms, shifting depths,

and broken perceptions.

Before him lay a new horizon.

Uncertain.

Unperfect.

Unwanted.

A new horizon was widening

to another world

once believed impossible

now become possible.

Nearby, the wheel of destiny

had turned, and in the turning,

had fractured, itself broken,

lying askew of its base.

And near it, on the beach,

lay the shattered chains

that had held a bound heart

in its truths and certainties.

Somewhere justice awaited,

between mercy and memory,

between rupture and return,

between humanity and sea,

But not now, not this hour.

A living of new truths

must be found, opened,

and pushed through.

One that held mercy

and compassion,

that rebuilt the sacred

and could rebuild lives.

A new reality,

a new becoming,

a new participation,

of identity and relation.

R.E. Slater

May 27, 2026

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

---

BIBLIOGRAPHY

---

I. Biblical Texts and Ancient Near Eastern Contexts

The Holy Bible. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021.

Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary. 3 vols. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Blenkinsopp, Joseph. A History of Prophecy in Israel. Rev. ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.

Freedman, David Noel, ed. Anchor Bible Dictionary. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Liverani, Mario. Israel’s History and the History of Israel. London: Equinox Publishing, 2005.

Sweeney, Marvin A. The Twelve Prophets. 2 vols. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000.

Walton, John H. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018.

---

II. Process Philosophy, Ontology, and Relational Becoming

Alfred North Whitehead. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected ed. Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: Free Press, 1978.

Alfred North Whitehead. Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press, 1967.

Alfred North Whitehead. Religion in the Making. New York: Fordham University Press, 1996.

Cobb Jr., John B., and David Ray Griffin. Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976.

Clayton, Philip. Adventures in the Spirit: God, World, Divine Action. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008.

Keller, Catherine. Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. London: Routledge, 2003.

Rescher, Nicholas. Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996.

Segall, Matthew David. Physics of the World-Soul: Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology. Falmouth, UK: Piranha Press, 2021.

Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology. New York: Crossroad, 1982.

---

III. Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Embodied Experience

Martin Heidegger. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 2002.

Søren Kierkegaard. The Sickness Unto Death. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Paul Tillich. The Courage to Be. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952.

Viktor Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.

---

IV. Political Theology, Empire, and Historical Consciousness

Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. 2nd ed. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001.

Cavanaugh, William T. The Myth of Religious Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.

Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994.

Wink, Walter. Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1984.

---

V. Consciousness, Meaning, and Relational Reality

McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019.

Nagel, Thomas. Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007.

---

VI. Ecology, Complexity, and Adaptive Systems

Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. New York: Anchor Books, 1997.

Kauffman, Stuart A. At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers. Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. New York: Bantam Books, 1984.

---

VII. Literary and Symbolic Influences

Milan Kundera. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. New York: Harper Perennial, 1999.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 3rd ed. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008.

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace, 1987.

---

VIII. Series Context and Companion Essays

Slater, R.E., and ChatGPT. The Reality & Cosmology Series. Relevancy22 Blog Series, 2025–2026.

Slater, R.E., and ChatGPT. The Bible in History & Christianity’s Search for God. Relevancy22 Blog Series, 2026.

Slater, R.E., and ChatGPT. An Ontology of Becoming – Being I (37). Relevancy22 Blog Series, 2026.

Slater, R.E., and ChatGPT. An Ontology of Becoming – Being II (38). Relevancy22 Blog Series, 2026.

Slater, R.E., and ChatGPT. An Ontology of Becoming – Rupture & Realignment – Jonah (39). Relevancy22 Blog Series, 2026.

Slater, R.E., and ChatGPT. An Ontology of Becoming – Meaning & Transformation – Jonah (40). Relevancy22 Blog Series, 2026.

---