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

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Evolutionary Biology & Social Network Diffusion

Here are two articles today speaking to the 6 degrees of separation involving real time network orthogonal structures and affective matrices moving towards efficiency for optimal affective innovative diffusion. Its found everywhere in life. Especially in living macro systems.

Practically it shows how social networking might include innovative macro-societal thinking and affective restructuring of behavior in postmodern environments requiring deep positive change vs post-truth societies refusing learning or change in the face of new global realities. This latter movement seems to be excessively pendantic or, marooned in slavish attention to doctrinaire traditions, without willingness to expand or explore contemporary non-traditional systems requiring a new set of orthogonal societal fundamentals.

Here then is described how social innovative thinking can be a boon to societies stuck within their older, inherited, identities requiring updating, renovation and liberation.

R.E. Slater
October 21, 2017

Social network diagram. Credit: Daniel Tenerife/Wikipedia

Six degrees of separation: Why it is a small world after all
https://m.phys.org/news/2017-10-degrees-small-world.html

October 19, 2017

It's a small world after all - and now science has explained why. A study conducted by the University of Leicester and KU Leuven, Belgium, examined how small worlds emerge spontaneously in all kinds of networks, including neuronal and social networks, giving rise to the well-known phenomenon of "six degrees of separation".

Many systems show complex structures, of which a distinctive feature is small-world network organization. They arise in society as well as ecological and protein networks, the networks of the mammalian brain, and even human-built networks such as the Boston subway and the World Wide Web.

The researchers set out to examine whether this is a coincidence that such structures are so wide-spread or is there a common mechanism driving their emergence?

A study recently published in Scientific Reports by an international team of academics from the University of Leicester and KU Leuven showed that these remarkable structures are reached and maintained by the network diffusion, i.e. the traffic flow or information transfer occurring on the network.

The research presents a solution to the long-standing question of why the vast majority of networks around us (WWW, brain, roads, power grid infrastructure) might have a peculiar yet common structure: small-world topology.

The study showed that these structures emerge naturally in systems in which the information flow is accounted for in their evolution.

Nicholas Jarman, who recently completed his PhD degree at the Department of Mathematics, and is first author of the study, said: "Algorithms that lead to small-world networks have been known in scientific community for many decades. The Watts-Strogatz algorithm is a good example. The Watts-Strogatz algorithm, however, was never meant to address the problem of how small-world structure emerges through self-organisation. The algorithm just modifies a network that is already highly organised."

Professor Cees van Leeuwen, who led the research at KU Leuven said:

"The network diffusion steers network evolution towards emergence of complex network structures. The emergence is effectuated through adaptive rewiring: progressive adaptation of structure to use, creating short-cuts where network diffusion is intensive while annihilating underused connections. The product of diffusion and adaptive rewiring is universally a small-world structure. The overall diffusion rate controls the system's adaptation, biasing local or global connectivity patterns, the latter providing a preferential attachment regime to adaptive rewiring. The resulting small-world structures shift accordingly between decentralised (modular) and centralised ones. At their critical transition, network structure is hierarchical, balancing modularity and centrality - a characteristic feature found in, for instance, the human brain."

Dr Ivan Tyukin from the University of Leicester added: "The fact that diffusion over network graph plays crucial role in keeping the system at a somewhat homeostatic equilibrium is particularly interesting. Here we were able to show that it is the diffusion process, however small or big gives rise to small-world network configurations that remain in this peculiar state over long intervals of time. At least as long as we were able to monitor the network development and continuous evolution".

Alexander Gorban, Professor in Applied Mathematics, University of Leicester commented:

"Small-world networks, in which most nodes are not neighbours of one another, but most nodes can be reached from every other node by a small number of steps, were described in mathematics and discovered in nature and human society long ago, in the middle of the previous century. The question, how these networks are developing by nature and society remained not completely solved despite of many efforts applied during last twenty years. The work of N. Jarman with co-authors discovers a new and realistic mechanism of emergence of such networks. The answer to the old question became much clearer! I am glad that the University of Leicester is a part of this exciting research."


* * * * * * * * * *

Social network

Social networks and the analysis of them is an inherently interdisciplinary academic field which emerged from socialpsychologysociologystatistics, and graph theoryGeorg Simmel authored early structural theories in sociology emphasizing the dynamics of triads and "web of group affiliations".[2] Jacob Moreno is credited with developing the first sociograms in the 1930s to study interpersonal relationships. These approaches were mathematically formalized in the 1950s and theories and methods of social networks became pervasive in the social and behavioral sciences by the 1980s.[1][3] Social network analysis is now one of the major paradigms in contemporary sociology, and is also employed in a number of other social and formal sciences. Together with other complex networks, it forms part of the nascent field of network science.[4][5]

Overview

Evolution graph of a social network: Barabási model.
The social network is a theoretical construct useful in the social sciences to study relationships between individuals, groupsorganizations, or even entire societies (social units, see differentiation). The term is used to describe a social structure determined by such interactions. The ties through which any given social unit connects represent the convergence of the various social contacts of that unit. This theoretical approach is, necessarily, relational. An axiom of the social network approach to understanding social interaction is that social phenomena should be primarily conceived and investigated through the properties of relations between and within units, instead of the properties of these units themselves. Thus, one common criticism of social network theory is that individual agency is often ignored[6] although this may not be the case in practice (see agent-based modeling). Precisely because many different types of relations, singular or in combination, form these network configurations, network analytics are useful to a broad range of research enterprises. In social science, these fields of study include, but are not limited to anthropologybiologycommunication studieseconomicsgeographyinformation scienceorganizational studiessocial psychologysociology, and sociolinguistics.

History

In the late 1890s, both Émile Durkheim and Ferdinand Tönnies foreshadowed the idea of social networks in their theories and research of social groups. Tönnies argued that social groups can exist as personal and direct social ties that either link individuals who share values and belief (Gemeinschaft, German, commonly translated as "community") or impersonal, formal, and instrumental social links (Gesellschaft, German, commonly translated as "society").[7] Durkheim gave a non-individualistic explanation of social facts, arguing that social phenomena arise when interacting individuals constitute a reality that can no longer be accounted for in terms of the properties of individual actors.[8] Georg Simmel, writing at the turn of the twentieth century, pointed to the nature of networks and the effect of network size on interaction and examined the likelihood of interaction in loosely knit networks rather than groups.[9]
Moreno's sociogram of a 2nd grade class
Major developments in the field can be seen in the 1930s by several groups in psychology, anthropology, and mathematics working independently.[6][10][11] In psychology, in the 1930s, Jacob L. Moreno began systematic recording and analysis of social interaction in small groups, especially classrooms and work groups (see sociometry). In anthropology, the foundation for social network theory is the theoretical and ethnographic work of Bronislaw Malinowski,[12] Alfred Radcliffe-Brown,[13][14] and Claude Lévi-Strauss.[15] A group of social anthropologists associated with Max Gluckman and the Manchester School, including John A. Barnes,[16] J. Clyde Mitchell and Elizabeth Bott Spillius,[17][18] often are credited with performing some of the first fieldwork from which network analyses were performed, investigating community networks in southern Africa, India and the United Kingdom.[6] Concomitantly, British anthropologist S. F. Nadel codified a theory of social structure that was influential in later network analysis.[19] In sociology, the early (1930s) work of Talcott Parsons set the stage for taking a relational approach to understanding social structure.[20][21] Later, drawing upon Parsons' theory, the work of sociologist Peter Blau provides a strong impetus for analyzing the relational ties of social units with his work on social exchange theory.[22][23][24]
By the 1970s, a growing number of scholars worked to combine the different tracks and traditions. One group consisted of sociologist Harrison White and his students at the Harvard University Department of Social Relations. Also independently active in the Harvard Social Relations department at the time were Charles Tilly, who focused on networks in political and community sociology and social movements, and Stanley Milgram, who developed the "six degrees of separation" thesis.[25] Mark Granovetter[26] and Barry Wellman[27] are among the former students of White who elaborated and championed the analysis of social networks.[26][28][29][30]
Beginning in the late 1990s, social network analysis experienced work by sociologists, political scientists, and physicists such as Duncan J. WattsAlbert-László BarabásiPeter BearmanNicholas A. ChristakisJames H. Fowler, and others, developing and applying new models and methods to emerging data available about online social networks, as well as "digital traces" regarding face-to-face networks.

Levels of analysis

Self-organization of a network, based on Nagler, Levina, & Timme, (2011)[31]
Centrality
In general, social networks are self-organizingemergent, and complex, such that a globally coherent pattern appears from the local interaction of the elements that make up the system.[32][33] These patterns become more apparent as network size increases. However, a global network analysis[34] of, for example, all interpersonal relationships in the world is not feasible and is likely to contain so much information as to be uninformative. Practical limitations of computing power, ethics and participant recruitment and payment also limit the scope of a social network analysis.[35][36] The nuances of a local system may be lost in a large network analysis, hence the quality of information may be more important than its scale for understanding network properties. Thus, social networks are analyzed at the scale relevant to the researcher's theoretical question. Although levels of analysis are not necessarily mutually exclusive, there are three general levels into which networks may fall: micro-levelmeso-level, and macro-level.

Micro level

At the micro-level, social network research typically begins with an individual, snowballing as social relationships are traced, or may begin with a small group of individuals in a particular social context.
Dyadic level: A dyad is a social relationship between two individuals. Network research on dyads may concentrate on structure of the relationship (e.g. multiplexity, strength), social equality, and tendencies toward reciprocity/mutuality.
Triadic level: Add one individual to a dyad, and you have a triad. Research at this level may concentrate on factors such as balance and transitivity, as well as social equality and tendencies toward reciprocity/mutuality.[35] In the balance theory of Fritz Heider the triad is the key to social dynamics. The discord in a rivalrous love triangle is an example of an unbalanced triad, likely to change to a balanced triad by a change in one of the relations. The dynamics of social friendships in society has been modeled by balancing triads. The study is carried forward with the theory of signed graphs.
Actor level: The smallest unit of analysis in a social network is an individual in their social setting, i.e., an "actor" or "ego". Egonetwork analysis focuses on network characteristics such as size, relationship strength, density, centralityprestige and roles such as isolates, liaisons, and bridges.[37] Such analyses, are most commonly used in the fields of psychology or social psychologyethnographic kinship analysis or other genealogical studies of relationships between individuals.
Subset levelSubset levels of network research problems begin at the micro-level, but may cross over into the meso-level of analysis. Subset level research may focus on distance and reachability, cliquescohesive subgroups, or other group actions or behavior.[38]

Meso level

In general, meso-level theories begin with a population size that falls between the micro- and macro-levels. However, meso-level may also refer to analyses that are specifically designed to reveal connections between micro- and macro-levels. Meso-level networks are low density and may exhibit causal processes distinct from interpersonal micro-level networks.[39]
Social network diagram, meso-level
Organizations: Formal organizations are social groups that distribute tasks for a collective goal.[40] Network research on organizations may focus on either intra-organizational or inter-organizational ties in terms of formal or informal relationships. Intra-organizational networks themselves often contain multiple levels of analysis, especially in larger organizations with multiple branches, franchises or semi-autonomous departments. In these cases, research is often conducted at a workgroup level and organization level, focusing on the interplay between the two structures.[40] Experiments with networked groups online have documented ways to optimize group-level coordination through diverse interventions, including the addition of autonomous agents to the groups.[41]
Randomly distributed networksExponential random graph models of social networks became state-of-the-art methods of social network analysis in the 1980s. This framework has the capacity to represent social-structural effects commonly observed in many human social networks, including general degree-based structural effects commonly observed in many human social networks as well as reciprocity and transitivity, and at the node-level, homophily and attribute-based activity and popularity effects, as derived from explicit hypotheses about dependencies among network ties. Parameters are given in terms of the prevalence of small subgraph configurations in the network and can be interpreted as describing the combinations of local social processes from which a given network emerges. These probability models for networks on a given set of actors allow generalization beyond the restrictive dyadic independence assumption of micro-networks, allowing models to be built from theoretical structural foundations of social behavior.[42]
Examples of a random network and a scale-free network. Each graph has 32 nodes and 32 links. Note the "hubs" (shaded) in the scale-free diagram (on the right).
Scale-free networks: A scale-free network is a network whose degree distribution follows a power law, at least asymptotically. In network theory a scale-free ideal network is a random network with a degree distribution that unravels the size distribution of social groups.[43] Specific characteristics of scale-free networks vary with the theories and analytical tools used to create them, however, in general, scale-free networks have some common characteristics. One notable characteristic in a scale-free network is the relative commonness of vertices with a degree that greatly exceeds the average. The highest-degree nodes are often called "hubs", and may serve specific purposes in their networks, although this depends greatly on the social context. Another general characteristic of scale-free networks is the clustering coefficientdistribution, which decreases as the node degree increases. This distribution also follows a power law.[44] The Barabási model of network evolution shown above is an example of a scale-free network.

Macro level

Rather than tracing interpersonal interactions, macro-level analyses generally trace the outcomes of interactions, such as economic or other resource transferinteractions over a large population.
Diagram: section of a large-scale social network
Large-scale networksLarge-scale network is a term somewhat synonymous with "macro-level" as used, primarily, in social and behavioral sciences, in economics. Originally, the term was used extensively in the computer sciences (see large-scale network mapping).
Complex networks: Most larger social networks display features of social complexity, which involves substantial non-trivial features of network topology, with patterns of complex connections between elements that are neither purely regular nor purely random (see, complexity sciencedynamical system and chaos theory), as do biological, and technological networks. Such complex network features include a heavy tail in the degree distribution, a high clustering coefficientassortativity or disassortativity among vertices, community structure (see stochastic block model), and hierarchical structure. In the case of agency-directed networks these features also include reciprocity, triad significance profile (TSP, see network motif), and other features. In contrast, many of the mathematical models of networks that have been studied in the past, such as lattices and random graphs, do not show these features.[45]

Theoretical links

Imported theories

Various theoretical frameworks have been imported for the use of social network analysis. The most prominent of these are Graph theoryBalance theorySocial comparison theory, and more recently, the Social identity approach.[46]

Indigenous theories

Few complete theories have been produced from social network analysis. Two that have are Structural Role Theory and Heterophily Theory.
The basis of Heterophily Theory was the finding in one study that more numerous weak ties can be important in seeking information and innovation, as cliques have a tendency to have more homogeneous opinions as well as share many common traits. This homophilic tendency was the reason for the members of the cliques to be attracted together in the first place. However, being similar, each member of the clique would also know more or less what the other members knew. To find new information or insights, members of the clique will have to look beyond the clique to its other friends and acquaintances. This is what Granovetter called "the strength of weak ties".[47]

Structural holes

In the context of networks, social capital exists where people have an advantage because of their location in a network. Contacts in a network provide information, opportunities and perspectives that can be beneficial to the central player in the network. Most social structures tend to be characterized by dense clusters of strong connections.[48] Information within these clusters tends to be rather homogeneous and redundant. Non-redundant information is most often obtained through contacts in different clusters.[49] When two separate clusters possess non-redundant information, there is said to be a structural hole between them.[49] Thus, a network that bridges structural holes will provide network benefits that are in some degree additive, rather than overlapping. An ideal network structure has a vine and cluster structure, providing access to many different clusters and structural holes.[49]
Networks rich in structural holes are a form of social capital in that they offer information benefits. The main player in a network that bridges structural holes is able to access information from diverse sources and clusters.[49] For example, in business networks, this is beneficial to an individual's career because he is more likely to hear of job openings and opportunities if his network spans a wide range of contacts in different industries/sectors. This concept is similar to Mark Granovetter's theory of weak ties, which rests on the basis that having a broad range of contacts is most effective for job attainment.

Research clusters

Communication

Communication Studies are often considered a part of both the social sciences and the humanities, drawing heavily on fields such as sociologypsychologyanthropologyinformation sciencebiologypolitical science, and economics as well as rhetoricliterary studies, and semiotics. Many communication concepts describe the transfer of information from one source to another, and can thus be conceived of in terms of a network.

Community

In J.A. Barnes' day, a "community" referred to a specific geographic location and studies of community ties had to do with who talked, associated, traded, and attended church with whom. Today, however, there are extended "online" communities developed through telecommunications devices and social network services. Such devices and services require extensive and ongoing maintenance and analysis, often using network science methods. Community development studies, today, also make extensive use of such methods.

Complex networks

Complex networks require methods specific to modelling and interpreting social complexity and complex adaptive systems, including techniques of dynamic network analysis. Mechanisms such as Dual-phase evolution explain how temporal changes in connectivity contribute to the formation of structure in social networks.

Criminal networks

In criminology and urban sociology, much attention has been paid to the social networks among criminal actors. For example, Andrew Papachristos[50] has studied gang murders as a series of exchanges between gangs. Murders can be seen to diffuse outwards from a single source, because weaker gangs cannot afford to kill members of stronger gangs in retaliation, but must commit other violent acts to maintain their reputation for strength.

Diffusion of innovations

Diffusion of ideas and innovations studies focus on the spread and use of ideas from one actor to another or one culture and another. This line of research seeks to explain why some become "early adopters" of ideas and innovations, and links social network structure with facilitating or impeding the spread of an innovation.

Demography

In demography, the study of social networks has led to new sampling methods for estimating and reaching populations that are hard to enumerate (for example, homeless people or intravenous drug users.) For example, respondent driven sampling is a network-based sampling technique that relies on respondents to a survey recommending further respondents.

Economic sociology

The field of sociology focuses almost entirely on networks of outcomes of social interactions. More narrowly, economic sociology considers behavioral interactions of individuals and groups through social capital and social "markets". Sociologists, such as Mark Granovetter, have developed core principles about the interactions of social structure, information, ability to punish or reward, and trust that frequently recur in their analyses of political, economic and other institutions. Granovetter examines how social structures and social networks can affect economic outcomes like hiring, price, productivity and innovation and describes sociologists' contributions to analyzing the impact of social structure and networks on the economy.[51]

Health care

Analysis of social networks is increasingly incorporated into health care analytics, not only in epidemiological studies but also in models of patient communication and education, disease prevention, mental health diagnosis and treatment, and in the study of health care organizations and systems.[52]

Human ecology

Human ecology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and  their naturalsocial, and built environments. The scientific philosophy of human ecology has a diffuse history with connections to geographysociologypsychologyanthropologyzoology, and natural ecology.[53][54]

Language and linguistics

Studies of language and linguistics, particularly evolutionary linguistics, focus on the development of linguistic forms and transfer of changes, sounds or words, from one language system to another through networks of social interaction. Social networks are also important in language shift, as groups of people add and/or abandon languages to their repertoire.

Literary networks

In the study of literary systems, network analysis has been applied by Anheier, Gerhards and Romo,[55] De Nooy,[56] and Senekal,[57] to study various aspects of how literature functions. The basic premise is that polysystem theory, which has been around since the writings of Even-Zohar, can be integrated with network theory and the relationships between different actors in the literary network, e.g. writers, critics, publishers, literary histories, etc., can be mapped using visualization from SNA.

Organizational studies

Research studies of formal or informal organization relationshipsorganizational communicationeconomicseconomic sociology, and other resource transfers. Social networks have also been used to examine how organizations interact with each other, characterizing the many informal connections that link executives together, as well as associations and connections between individual employees at different organizations.[58] Intra-organizational networks have been found to affect organizational commitment,[59] organizational identification,[37] interpersonal citizenship behaviour.[60]

Social capital

Social capital is a form of economic and cultural capital in which social networks are central, transactions are marked by reciprocitytrust, and cooperation, and market agents produce goods and services not mainly for themselves, but for a common good.
Social capital is a sociological concept about the value of social relations and the role of cooperation and confidence to achieve positive outcomes. The term refers to the value one can get from their social ties. For example, newly arrived immigrants can make use of their social ties to established migrants to acquire jobs they may otherwise have trouble getting (e.g., because of unfamiliarity with the local language). Studies show that a positive relationship exists between social capital and the intensity of social network use.[61][62]

Mobility benefits

In many organizations, members tend to focus their activities inside their own groups, which stifles creativity and restricts opportunities. A player whose network bridges structural holes has an advantage in detecting and developing rewarding opportunities.[48] Such a player can mobilize social capital by acting as a "broker" of information between two clusters that otherwise would not have been in contact, thus providing access to new ideas, opinions and opportunities. British philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill, writes, "it is hardly possible to overrate the value ... of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves.... Such communication [is] one of the primary sources of progress."[63] Thus, a player with a network rich in structural holes can add value to an organization through new ideas and opportunities. This in turn, helps an individual's career development and advancement.
A social capital broker also reaps control benefits of being the facilitator of information flow between contacts. In the case of consulting firm Eden McCallum, the founders were able to advance their careers by bridging their connections with former big 3 consulting firm consultants and mid-size industry firms.[64] By bridging structural holes and mobilizing social capital, players can advance their careers by executing new opportunities between contacts.
There has been research that both substantiates and refutes the benefits of information brokerage. A study of high tech Chinese firms by Zhixing Xiao found that the control benefits of structural holes are "dissonant to the dominant firm-wide spirit of cooperation and the information benefits cannot materialize due to the communal sharing values" of such organizations.[65] However, this study only analyzed Chinese firms, which tend to have strong communal sharing values. Information and control benefits of structural holes are still valuable in firms that are not quite as inclusive and cooperative on the firm-wide level. In 2004, Ronald Burt studied 673 managers who ran the supply chain for one of America's largest electronics companies. He found that managers who often discussed issues with other groups were better paid, received more positive job evaluations and were more likely to be promoted.[48] Thus, bridging structural holes can be beneficial to an organization, and in turn, to an individual's career.

Social media

Computer networks combined with social networking software produces a new medium for social interaction. A relationship over a computerized social networking service can be characterized by context, direction, and strength. The content of a relation refers to the resource that is exchanged. In a computer mediated communication context, social pairs exchange different kinds of information, including sending a data file or a computer program as well as providing emotional support or arranging a meeting. With the rise of electronic commerce, information exchanged may also correspond to exchanges of money, goods or services in the "real" world.[66] Social network analysis methods have become essential to examining these types of computer mediated communication.
In addition, the sheer size and the volatile nature of social media has given rise to new network metrics. A key concern with networks extracted from social media is the lack of robustness of network metrics given missing data.[67]


Thursday, October 12, 2017

Biologos - Evolutionary Creationism vs. All Other Christian Schemes


Leafs in Decay. A Lesson for the Christian Faith where Rebirth evolves continually.

Years ago as I was working through what it meant to be a Christian while holding to Darwin's Evolutionary Science. During this time I had to accept some very hard things about my faith, my bible, and how I thought about the God I loved and adored. What I learned is that God is amazing. And wonderful. And wonderfully complex in His Creatorship.

It allowed me to find an integration with the bible I couldn't find earlier in my university training of applied mathematics, organic chemistry, and classical physics (sadly, quantum physics hadn't been embraced yet by my college; this I had to later learn and teach myself). It brought reconciliation to my faith. And it deeply changed both me and my faith.

Basically, I had to let go of the old paradigms I grew up with which weren't working anymore as my world expanded and got more complex. Old bible teachings were out of date. Old traditions were too easily toppled by poignant academic studies. But when I did let go, I found a livelier bible, an open theology no longer closed off to the world, and a God who blew my mind and no longer was trapped in the box of religious belief I had accepted and allowed to stay too long.

This, among many other fundamental discoveries, began my journey towards an open and relational faith which brought a level of integration with the world I had never imagined before. It allowed the complexity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to live-and-move amongst a world become foreign to them in my belief system. For the first time I could see God's handiwork, actions, love, and presence all around me as if the bedroom curtains had been lifted to allow the morning's strong sun into my illumined sleeping eyes.

It was beautiful.

And it brought a kind of soul-healing I dearly needed.

Which brings me to the organization of Biologos. For many years I thought I labored alone (as you can tell from the vast array of articles I had worked on under the "Science section" found along the topic list on the right). But I was not alone. Many others were hashing this adventure out with me as well. One group which was has come to be known as Biologos. Unlike myself, as I tried to make sense of the subject within a wider matrix of theological truths, Biologos was simply concentrating on the one subject of Evolutionary Creationism.

Not Theistic Evolution. That was a different theology for an older time using an out of date theological system (that of Calvinism, mostly) as I've pointed out many times in the past. But a system which would place an emphasis upon God being fully involved and present in the process of chaos and random natural selection we know as evolution. An oxymoron if ever there was one. But this I have discussed many, many times as well. That the sovereignty of God, and His decree of creational indeterminism and free will, allows for the fullest explanation of how He has worked through the Divine process of evolution.

A process always tilted towards the evolutionary creation and survival of life against the worst environmental hazards of the earth's geologic ages as they come-and-go. When the world breathed in methane air, life survived. When the deadly gas of oxygen evolved, so did biologic life as we know it today. When the seas changed in their salinity content, so did the life within them. When the sun could no longer penetrate earth's atmospheres and species died off, new life went underground and thrived in the darkness.

There was always a deep longing within evolutionary life to live, to survive, and to evolve, according to the environment it was presented. This was the wisdom of God.

After discovering Biologos it allowed me to move from the basics of the subject to the complexity of the subject. And when I do, I no longer need to re-create the wheel, but may plow ahead into what evolution was, is, and is becoming in the world of science. Especially within the context of a developing corpus of contemporary, postmodern theologies as it does the same with the church's past, present, and future traditions and belief structures.

Biologos allows me to be more hard core. Perhaps less Christian while being more fully Christian. I don't have to explain subject ideas as much any more but may leap into the pile of gathered ideas, discoveries, and known facts to make sense of them all. Or, mostly, to elucidate what these new ideas now means to an open and openly complex faith as it too evolves in its permutations and labyrinths of thoughts and ideas.

I love it. And I love the world of theological imagination as it re-embraces God in dynamic ways of fullness and meaning in a world of beliefs which too often live in lands of fear and defense. These latter outcomes was never a help to the church. Mostly, it held back the church's mission to the world which might grant a holism of spirit with a holism of living.

But a living God heals. He heals the mind, the soul, the spirit. He breathes His divine breath upon mankind and says "I AM" the ONE who evolves with you in the symmetry of creation seeking life in  its disorders and chaos. It means my life may also be chaotic and out of order but that my God of Shalom will bring me into fellowship with Him through the redemption He has provided in Christ, and in this world He has made, if we but look and imagine His grace and wisdom.

R.E. Slater
October 12, 2017


http://biologos.org/common-questions/christianity-and-science/biologos-id-creationism

At BioLogos, we present the Evolutionary Creationism (EC) viewpoint on origins. Like all Christians, we fully affirm that God is the creator of all life—including human beings in his image. We fully affirm that the Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God. We also accept the science of evolution as the best description for how God brought about the diversity of life on earth.

But while we accept the scientific evidence for evolution, BioLogos emphatically rejects Evolutionism, the atheistic worldview that so often accompanies the acceptance of biological evolution in public discussion. Evolutionism is a kind of scientism, which holds that all of reality can in principle be explained by science. In contrast, BioLogos believes that science is limited to explaining the natural world, and that supernatural events like miracles are part of reality too.


According to Young Earth Creationism (YEC), a faithful reading of Scripture commits Christians to accepting that the earth is young, between 6,000 and 10,000 years old. YEC claims that Scripture is not compatible with the idea that humans share common ancestry with other life forms on earth, and most YEC proponents feel that evolution is a direct threat to Christianity.


According to Old Earth Creationism (OEC), the scientific evidence for the great age of the earth (4.6 billion years) and universe (13.7 billion years) is strong. This view typically maintains that the days of creation in Genesis 1 each refer to long periods of time. OEC does not accept the common ancestry of all life forms, often opting instead for a theory of progressive creation in which God miraculously created new species at key moments in the history of life.


We at BioLogos maintain that the scientific evidence from many branches of modern science would make little sense apart from common ancestry and evolution. We also believe that the cultural and theological contexts in which Scripture was written are key for determining the best interpretation of the creation accounts.

In contrast to EC, YEC, and OEC, Intelligent Design (ID) does not explicitly align itself with Christianity. It claims that the existence of an intelligent cause of the universe and of the development of life is a testable scientific hypothesis. ID arguments often point to parts of scientific theories where there is no consensus and claim that the best solution is to appeal to the direct action of an intelligent designer. At BioLogos, we believe that our intelligent God designed the universe, but we do not see scientific or biblical reasons to give up on pursuing natural explanations for how God governs natural phenomena. We believe that scientific explanations complement a robust theological understanding of God’s role as designer, creator, and sustainer of the universe.

While Christians differ on their views of the age of the earth and evolution, we all agree on the essentials of the faith: that all people have sinned and that salvation comes only through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We agree that the God of our salvation is the same God we see in the wonders of his creation. Whether we ponder the intricacy of DNA, the beauty of a dolphin, or the vastness of the Milky Way, we can lift our hearts together in praise to the divine Artist who made it all.

Saturday, October 7, 2017

The Sense & Sensibility of Process Theology Combined with the Gracious Orthodoxy of Church and Liturgy

What happens when church and liturgy meet real life the way it is meant to be? When we discover fellowship, service and ministry are the bedrocks for relational enjoyment, identity and being? When community opens up to embrace the fullness of its members, their cultures, and religions? Welcome to the healing lands of process theology which imbues all things with spirit of the living God flowing through the lands of the living like air, water and light as each flows through the connectedness of creation as one symmetry underlying all as music upon the heart of God.

R.E. Slater
October 7, 2017


Wings Of Love by Marilyn Biles. Posted in Episcopal Art Blog
by C. Robin Janning on May 11, 2013

What is Missing in Process Theology
by Jay McDaniel
and
What I Learn from Process Theology
by Teri Daily 


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What Is Missing in Process Theology
http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/what-is-missing-in-process-theology.html

by Jay McDaniel, Editor of JJB

Something's missing in process theology and I've known it a long time. Teri Daily helps me put a name to it. Process theology is not orthodox enough, at least in the way that Teri Daily is orthodox. Let me back up:

WHAT IS PROCESS THEOLOGY?

For me process theology is not a metaphysical philosophy but rather a set of sensibilities: a cluster of motivating intuitions, values, and attitudes. When process theology is reduced to a mere set of ideas to which people adhere -- or worse than that, a metaphysical system that seems to answer all important questions -- it lapses into a fundamentalism of its own. I've seen it with my own eyes, a couple of times while looking into the mirror.

That's why I say that, at least for me, process theology is a set of sensibilities rather than a system; and these sensibilities can be internalized by people from different religious traditions: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Unitarian, Taoist, Confucian, and Bahai, for example.

Process theology is now a multi-faith tradition. Most of us in the process community trust and hope that the sensibilities important to us will be concretized and particularized in different kinds of communities, which will add distinctive richness and wisdom of their own. As I write this I am reading an advance copy of a book called God of Becoming and Relationship by Rabbi Bradley Artson, of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles, to be published by Jewish Lights Publishing, in the Fall of 2013. It will be Jewish process theology. Hindu and Buddhist and Muslim process theologies are now being developed.

Teri Daily has named many of the sensibilities that are important to me and other process thinkers of different faiths:

  • Generosity of spirit embodied in the embrace of diversity
  • Common ground for interfaith dialog
  • The call to humility
  • Playfulness and imagination as part of the spiritual journey
  • Novelty in the face of tragedy
  • The tender nature of God

These are good things about process theology. It is what draws us to process theology and to the philosophy of Whitehead.

It is noteworthy to me that only THE second one -- common ground for interfaith dialog -- implies a reference to Whitehead's philosophy as a framework for appreciating the different yet complementary forms of beauty and wisdom that can be embodied by different religious traditions.

But it seems to me that the others can well be embraced, and are embraced, by people from different religious traditions and no religious tradition. You don't really need Whitehead to be humble, or to face tragedy in a spirit of novelty, or to trust in the tender nature of God. Many orthodox Christians -- and people of other faiths and no faith as well -- were doing these things long before process theology was ever conceived. That is good news.

Moreover, even the second item Teri names -- common ground for interfaith dialog -- presupposes an attitude of welcoming interfaith dialog, which likewise need not be based on Whitehead. Whitehead's philosophy is an invitation to have a hospitable heart and open mind, but [it is] not a precondition for those qualities. This is good news, too. And this is why process theologians rightly recognize that it would be a sad world indeed, all too devoid of diversity, if everyone became a Whiteheadian. In our world there needs to be competing worldviews, many of which can elicit the sensibilities identified above from radically different and opposing points of view. Teri has it right: "Agreement is overrated."

As I see things, Whitehead's philosophy is helpful because it offers a way of affirming these and other sensibilities, showing how they are all connected. It helps with many other topics, too:

  • It helps with a dialogue between religion and science;
  • it helps in affirming the value of aesthetic as well as ethical experience;
  • it helps with appreciating the intrinsic value of all living beings, not humans alone.

Perhaps most importantly,

  • it offers a powerful alternative to mechanistic ways of thinking that emerged in the West in the seventeenth century.

It is a philosophy of organism which helps people re-claim and also advance organic ways of thinking that have been part of many cultural traditions: Middle-Eastern, South Asian, African, East Asian, and American. Nevertheless, the verbalized propositions in Whitehead's philosophy are not the heart of the matter. They are, in his own words, lures for feeling and appeals to intuition. What is important about Whitehead's philosophy are the sensibilities to which his words point and the feelings they can help evoke.

Here is the problem. We humans cannot live by sensibilities alone. We need practices and traditions, community and rituals, meditation and prayer. We need stories, too, and opportunities for service. These offer wisdom and substance to a life that cannot be provided by theology alone, much less metaphysical systems. And this is one of the many things that I myself am reminded of, when I learn from orthodoxy, Teri Daily style.

How to put this? Teri Daily often uses two words as an abbreviation for practices and traditions, communities and rituals, meditation and prayer, stories and service: Church and Liturgy. Of course she has in mind the Christian church and Christian liturgy because, after all, she is a Christian priest. But if we widen our sense of church and liturgy to include other forms of community and tradition, then my point is that most of us -- maybe even all of us -- need something like church and liturgy, something like community and practice, to become the people we probably want to be: carriers of God's love: love of other people, love of the earth, love of heaven and, yes, love of ourselves.

Buddhists tell us that wisdom and compassion are the two most important virtues. I think the sensibilities are vessels for these virtues. But how do sensibilities gain a foothold in history, or even in a local community, unless they are enlivened, enriched, and deepened by church and liturgy.

Most process theologians know this. Many belong to churches, synagogues, sanghas, and temples. Or at least book clubs and maybe bowling clubs. But their weakness -- our weakness -- is that we too often focus on worldviews or, in my case, sensibilities, at the expense of the nitty-gritty of the incarnate life. We fall into the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Especially if we are Christian (but not as much if we are Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu) we fall into the bane of white, western, male-dominated Protestant Christianity [with an] an overemphasis on belief and worldviews. We dwell too much in our heads. The orthodox Christianity which Teri Daily so well represents is a healthy and wonderful antidote to head-based Christianity and, for that matter, head-based process theology.

There is something else missing in process theology, and that is a recognition that, as meaningful as the process idea of God is to many people, there's more to God than is contained in the idea. It is important to orthodox Christians not to reduce God to a being among beings who can be encapsulated within a philosophy and thus reduced to an object about which people have convictions. I will say more about this in closing, but first a further word about sensibilities.

RELATIONALITY

I want to add two sensibilities that are also important to many process thinkers, and that Teri doesn't list but are quite evident in her life and also entailed in orthodox Christianity as she understands it. The first is relationality.

Many turn to process theology because it emphasizes that we humans, while delightfully different from each other, are also formed through our relationships with each other and, for that matter, with other animals and the surrounding world. We process-influenced pilgrims agree with Teri Daily; these relationships can be deeply loving. She believes that the God is the perfection of love and we do, too. She believes that this love is deeply relational and we do, too. Indeed, what she says of the Trinity we say of the universe as well. Process theology affirms the primacy of what Buddhists call inter-being and propose that even the Soul of the universe -- even God -- is formed through loving relationships with the world. This is why we also call ourselves relational theologians.

Teri Daily finds a similar perspective in the Trinity, which for her is not simply an idea that is reflected upon but, more deeply, a reality that is felt and also, in the liturgy, danced. She speaks often of a space within the Trinity in which all beings, not Christians alone and not humans alone, are held, which seems to me very much like the spacious love of God as understood in process theology.

I see with her help that the Trinity -- as felt -- is both the reality of, and an invitation for, the kind of difference-respecting yet destiny-sharing love that is important to process theology. I find myself believing very much in "the space within the Trinity" and I hope that orthodox Christianity can help me better walk within this space. I do not ask people of other paths to be Trinitarian; I know that one in whose love I want to walk, Jesus, was no Trinitarian. But I suspect that his heart was opened in a Trinitarian way and I'd like for my heart to be opened in this way, too. Still, think he must have felt the Trinity. I suspect he danced it, too, at weddings, when he beheld lilies of the field, and when he suffered little children to come unto him. I learn from Teri Daily that the Trinity is not simply something we feel, it is also something we do.

CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION

The other idea that is so important to process thinkers is creative transformation. It's the idea that we walk with God by being open to novelty, not only in times of suffering but in all times. As I read what she has written I know that she has this in mind with two of her emphases: playfulness and imagination as part of the spiritual journey and novelty in the face of tragedy.

But what strikes me about her essay, and what I find helpful and inspiring, is that she herself so vividly exemplifies the spirit of creative transformation with help from, not despite, her orthodoxy. Hear the last line of her essay: "Perhaps there will be more changes along the way, and another installment of 'an orthodox-oriented Christian encounters process theology.' I look forward to it."

She explains earlier that this hospitable approach to being changed by the voice of other people and other ideas comes, not from process theology, but from orthodox Christianity itself. Hers is not a rigid or fixed orthodoxy. It is a creative orthodoxy that nourishes her with a freedom to listen and be changed, and with a freedom, if needed, to leave orthodoxy behind in fidelity to the very God to whom orthodoxy points. I can only hope that I have the courage to be changed in just this way, to listen to orthodoxy and a range of other perspectives in an open way, and to leave process theology behind if Wisdom calls. May those of us in the process community be as receptive to creative transformation as Teri Daily is.

But she knows and we know that the deepest forms of creative transformation are not exactly mental but more holistic. Hear these words of hers:

We encounter the Holy in brief, life-changing moments that can’t be described with words, that can’t be mapped out, that can’t in and of themselves be organized into an over-arching system of thought. Such experiences often don’t lend themselves to an adequate construction of meaning, and so we need the experiences of others in order for us to make sense of our own.

A danger of having a theology that means too much to you is that you will use it to organize the moments of your life into "an over-arching system of thought.." There is a resistance in orthodox Christians of the kind she represents to fall into such systemolatry. For orthodox Christians in her tradition, the liturgy and sacraments are much more important than systems; and this freedom from dogma, this freedom from system-worship, is at the heart of creative orthodoxy. In this and in so many other ways, orthodoxy offers a prophetic word to process theologians, and it is called liturgy. Liturgy opens us up into the possibility of life-changing moments in ways that systems can never understand. It opens us up into novelty or, as process theologians like to say, creative transformation.

THE SPIRIT OF THREE-NESS

We process-influenced travelers speak of God as the spirit of creative transformation in the world. We say that God is not a created good but is instead the creative good. This creative good is like a third person in an otherwise binary relationship, who perpetually unsettles pre-existing habits of thought, feelings, and actions by proposing new possibilities that the first two [individuals] never thought of. But the truth is they are third persons, too. Teri Daily helps me see that three is better than two, because it opens all partners involved into [a] newness [of imagination, living and worship.]

If this newness is part of what orthodox Christians mean by threeness, then process theologians of many faiths can learn from orthodoxy. We believe in threeness and call it the spirit, the creative good. There is a space within the three that is always moving and never still, productive of novelty and surprising all parties involved, changing them from who they have been into who they can become. There's an important social lesson here. Threeness takes us beyond binary thinking into multiplicity thinking where each particular is preciously odd, preciously unique, preciously queer, because not reducible to any other or any "system of categories" we might impose upon ourselves and the world. In a certain sense threeness is a metaphor for deep and creative multiplicity, both heavenly and earthly. It makes space for differences.

We process travellers know that we cannot contain the spirit of threeness and pretend that it is an object in our minds. We know that the spirit is like the wind, blowing wherever it will. At our best we remember that the spirit flows from a mystery that can never be contained by our minds or ensconced within our systems. It is not "the primordial nature of God" or "the consequent nature of God" or any such nature that fits within a conceptual whole. The very idea of "natures" is problematic, if hardened into fixed essences in the imagination.

I suspect that one of the deepest lessons we can learn from orthodoxy is that we have been far too sure of ourselves and insufficiently humble in the presence of mystery. The more we know our unknowing, the more we can dance freely, without pretending we have all the answers, in the space of the Trinity, however understood. And then we will better understand that transcendence belongs, not only to the creative good, but also to each finite being - each person, each plant, each animal -- who forever transcends whatever worldview we might bring to the world, thanks be to the mystery of life.


Objects congeal around little specks of Cosmos. Some objects hide and protect us from this immensity.
Some objects may form points of access to this immensity. Many are both – we need them to be both.


Images above, top: Altar of St. Francis; and, bottom: Bronze Altar #7356
by David OrthWords above from Threshold Objects by David Orth.
Read more HERE. And a special thanks to the Episcopal Cafe Art Blog
for sharing: http://www.episcopalcafe.com/art/. Originally posted by
C. Robin Janning on May 6, 2013


* * * * * * * * *


 What I Learn from Process Theology
http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/what-is-missing-in-process-theology.html

by Teri Daily, Episcopal Priest


Image by Jeanelle McCall. Originally posted
by C. Robin Janning in Episcopal Art Blog,
 April 9, 2013.
When Jay McDaniel suggested that I write an article for JJB along the lines of “an orthodox-oriented Christian encounters process theology,” I was pretty much immediately onboard. But some disclosures might be in order at the outset. I am not an academic theologian; I am a parish priest. And one with a fairly limited knowledge of process thought. My experience with process theology in seminary was limited to the following three occasions: 1) a brief encounter with Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming while making an argument myself for creatio ex nihilo, 2) reading Proverbs of Ashes by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker in a Feminist Theologies class, and 3) using an in-depth look at Catherine Keller’s Apocalypse Now and Then to suggest that a process understanding of eschatology might have a prophetic word to offer the Anglican Communion in the midst of conflict.

Recently, I have resumed my relationship with process theology. For the past eight months I have read JJB faithfully. I have also read Bob Mesle’s book Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead, The Handbook of Process Theology edited by Jay McDaniel and Donna Bowman, a few other books by Jay, The Metaphor Maker by Patricia Adams Farmer, and (with John B. Cobb Jr.’s Whitehead Word Book by my side) Whitehead’s Process and Reality. But that, I confess, is the sum total of my lifetime experience with process theology.

Finally, I consider myself an “orthodox” Christian who is deeply drawn to the sacraments. I say the creeds without embarrassment and without crossing my fingers behind my back, I find my life shaped by liturgical seasons and the rhythms of worship, and I accept (sometimes more easily than others) the meaningful and authoritative role of tradition in my own faith journey. That being said, I also find myself drawn to process theology—not despite, but precisely by way of, my orthodox understanding of God and my sacramental view of both religion and the world.

Let me try to make this connection—not meaning to imply that it is the only pathway from one to the other, just that it happens to be mine. For orthodox Christians, metaphysical (or analogical) transcendence—with God as source of all being and not one being among many—is the very means of intimacy with God. It allows God to be present with and in the world without competition between God and creation when it comes to agency, power, dignity, or will. By virtue of God’s transcendence, we participate in the life of God not as something separate from or reducible to our experience within the world, but as a dimension within our daily lives that is, at times, revealed unexpectedly to us.

We encounter the Holy in brief, life-changing moments that can’t be described with words, that can’t be mapped out, that can’t in and of themselves be organized into an over-arching system of thought. Such experiences often don’t lend themselves to an adequate construction of meaning, and so we need the experiences of others in order for us to make sense of our own. According to William Countryman in Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All, this is where the priesthood of all humanity comes in.

My own ordination to the priesthood is really a sacrament of sorts; my presence as a priest is meant to be “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace” that is, in reality, the priesthood as it exists in all humanity. The priesthood we see in religion is a reminder that we are all meant to be priests to one another—to share our experiences of the Holy and to help one another make sense of them in ways that bring meaning to our lives. Countryman describes this priesthood of all humanity beautifully in this passage:

Since we are, by nature, finite beings, each of us limited by time and space, none of us will ever experience directly more than one life’s worth of God, of Truth, of Reality. What each of us comes to know are fragments of something immeasurably larger than we can grasp. My neighbor knows other fragments, which may well be the ones to make sense of my own. Therefore, I must turn to my neighbor in search of understanding, in search of the priestly ministries that can flow from that person’s experience. And my neighbor will need to turn to others, too—perhaps to me.[1]

Image by Virginia Wieringa. Originally posted by
C. Robin Janning in Episcopal Art Blog, June 16, 2013.
Those interested in process theology may well want to expand this universal priesthood to include other aspects of creation—such as animals, rivers, trees, and distant galaxies. And rightly so. But the point I want to make is this: If I believe that all creation directly participates in and experiences God, that God is much greater than any single one of us (or even all of us together) can comprehend, and that the priesthood is both sacramental and universal in nature, then I have to acknowledge that truth can be found outside my well-constructed system of beliefs and practices. In short, I have to be willing to seek and honor truth as it is found in process theology, too.

There is an irony here: It is my own understanding of what it means to be an orthodox Christian that pushes me to explore process theology, and yet the exploration itself may ultimately change the very faith that brought me here. It already has. In fact, the willingness to be changed by an encounter is the defining characteristic of true and holy hospitality. As Scott Bader-Saye writes,

"The true practice of openness to the other, of hospitality, means that “we must be ready to let our identities morph over time, allowing the stranger to become friend and in so doing change in some way how we see ourselves.”[2]

Sometimes my encounter with process theology has felt like the collision of two theological tectonic plates, resulting in a radical change in the landscape.[3] At other times this encounter has seemed more like a blowing wind, slowly changing the landscape in subtle ways. Sometimes this encounter has been priestly in nature, revealing new understandings and ways of seeing. At other times it has borne the marks of the biblical prophetic tradition, calling me back to aspects of my faith that I have neglected or forgotten. But almost always this encounter with process theology has been a source of balance and grace within my own spiritual life.

So here are just a few aspects of process theology (as I have experienced it) that have enriched my own faith:

1) Generosity of spirit embodied in the embrace of diversity – I have found in process theology a generosity of spirit, embodied in its embrace of diversity. Perhaps this is one of the strongest pulls for me. An explicit distinction between contrast and incompatibility, a desire for contrasts (even contrasts of contrasts), an understanding of beauty that requires as much difference as can be harmonized, God as lure toward greater beauty—all this presents diversity not as a threat, but as an essential element in a beautiful life. In the Church, we often understand diversity through the lens of Paul’s description of various spiritual gifts within the Body of Christ—“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). There is definitely beauty in the harmonic, cooperative nature of community, no doubt. But can’t difference be beautiful in its own right, apart from the work it makes possible? Can’t we delight in the very existence of diversity, in a harmonization that is not purely functional? Process theologians would, I think, say “yes.”

2) Common ground for interfaith dialogue – While embracing diversity certainly stirs the desire for interfaith dialogue, I’m not sure that it alone makes such dialogue possible. Perhaps process thought is so conducive to interfaith dialogue because it allows conversation from the perspective of a philosophical system rather than a particular faith narrative. Of course, it can be argued that there is an embedded narrative within all systematic thought—in process thought, it’s a story of change and permanence woven throughout time, of the ever-present promise of newness, of a Love that always remembers. But when an explicit and dearly-held narrative alone is what undergirds one’s faith, such as the incarnation and the resurrection for many Christians, a starting place and common language for interfaith dialogue can be challenging to find.

3) The call to humility – In a world where contradictory certainties in the form of “talking heads” flood every twenty-four hour news channel, I find Whitehead’s humility in the preface to Process and Reality to be a prophetic reminder for this and every time:

There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.

For my own spiritual path, it is a reminder that faith and mystery go hand-in-hand, and that any absolute claim to truth is a form of idolatry.

4) Playfulness and imagination as part of the spiritual journey – Once we let go of the oppressive idea that we should or ever could grace the world with the complete knowledge of absolute Truth, playfulness and imagination quite naturally become part of our search to know God. I see it all over JJB—finding God in fudge, mashups, the self-dependence of cats, and everything in-between. Why in our culture do we always associate linear, rigid logic with truth and imagination or fantasy with falsehood? Maybe the storyline of modernity keeps us from seeing the crucial role imagination plays in the world. Maybe that’s why this statement from Whitehead in Process and Reality (Part I, Chapter 1) was, for me, a freeing revelation of sorts:

After the basis of a rational life, with a civilized language, has been laid, all productive thought has proceeded either by the poetic insight of artists, or by the imaginative elaboration of schemes of thought capable of utilization as logical premises. In some measure or other, progress is always a transcendence of what is obvious.

Image by Melissa Strickler. Originally posted
by C. Robin Janning in Episcopal Art Blog,
 June 16, 2013.
5) Novelty in the midst of tragedy – I admire process thought for its profound appreciation of novelty and hope, held in tension with its refusal to trivialize the tragic dimension of the world in which we live. It’s precisely this tension that resonates with my own understanding of the beauty of resurrection. Grace is not found in denying or trivializing the loss, suffering, and pain that are part of our story; instead, grace is found in the new life that comes through it.

6) The tender nature of God – I find the tenderness of God in process theology to be like a mother who meticulously gathers up the pain and joy of her children like pieces of glass scattered on a hard tile floor. She then creates from those shards of glass a totally new piece of art that embodies (in Whitehead’s words) “truth, beauty, and goodness.” In this work, all the sufferings, pain, joys, and triumphs are redeemed, made whole, and offered back in an act of love. To label this mother as “all-powerful” or “not all-powerful” is not something I feel compelled to do, for I can’t imagine anything more deeply powerful or salvific than a love like this.

Of course, there are other elements of process theology that have also influenced my spiritual life, and there are some that do not resonate with my own experience. Agreement is overrated. I suspect that there are as many understandings of God/Truth/Life as there are people on this planet (and maybe even beyond). At the end of the day, I trust that God is found in the journey itself and not just in the end, in the seeking and not just in the finding, in fellow travelers we encounter on the way and not just in those who have already arrived.

I am grateful to have the JJB community as companions on the way, as priests and prophets in my own spiritual journey. And I’m grateful to Jay McDaniel for a friendship of holy hospitality. Perhaps there will be more changes along the way, and another installment of “an orthodox-oriented Christian encounters process theology.” I look forward to it.




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