R.E. Slater - Butterfly Wings of Promise

 

Butterfly Wings of Promise

by R.E. Slater

There is wisdom in renewing silence in one's life

When far too many souls speak noise and death.

Using special times of the year like the season

Of Lent, in aiding removal of worldly uproar.

Seeking olden paths of yesterday's lessons

To guide tomorrow's paths its glades

And shaded arbors, restoring peace

To the disquiet of restless voices.

Unweary the discord or havoc

Sown into the lives of those 

Around living desperate

days of want and need

Unheard, unsought,

Overlooked their

Casualties.

Nay, then,

Such silence

Is unequal to the

Noise erupting both

Streets and congresses

Of unwise souls fueling

Anger's injustices on aires

Of silent nods by unrighteous

Congregants across unrelenting

Pulpits shouting bondage's chains

To the ruin of lands and cities once

United by common civil bonds of grace

And mercy to all who seek public accord.

Yearning freedom's promised equalities of

Endless life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

R.E. Slater

February 19, 2021

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

An Accompanying Note

Stylistically: Because this is a visual poem I originally had it centered in the page but later noticed when viewed on cell phones or tablets it became distorted. Hence the smaller font and usage of left justification for viewing variety.

Subject Matter: I'm not sure I can consciously agree to stay silent even during the Lental period of spiritual reflection and penitence of spirit with so much noise filling the world by its oppressive rhetorics and actions from church and state here in America. To sit by and watch in silence may be the greatest crime of all - if not the greatest hypocrisy of all. Thus, have I thought these past recent years when witnessing again America's rising apartheidism and now, the dearth of hoary wisdom of Constitutional voices it once leaned so heavily upon but as soon conveniently forgetting when it comes to standing united with mixed cultures, races, nationalities, religions, and genders.

Now, in difference to America's civil unrests in the 50s and 60s, such as those led by Martin Luther King's civil rights protests, there but lies silent nods of granite approval about me embracing white racism and Christian Nationalism by friend and neighbor who grieve not as I grieve. Rather, in strident voice, yell and shout their rights to their ignominy and shame in my ear. Yet, for those who like myself yearn for a special kind of reverent silence during the holy seasons of the church year I find in its practice a grave rarity knowing its healing force if applied aright by the ones who would practice it.

These are not the silent, cheering portals to bondage and injustice but numbed souls held in pained worlds already haunted by the tyrannies of the day's trials and blames. Here, to those souls, may all wounded find healing in the refreshingly quiet breezes of unconquered hearts contemplating how to heal and aide amid the noise of fools more willing to extend suffering then to ease another's pain. May these small measures of fleshly grace overflow unquiet hearts seeking voice and direction how to do and to act in the tomorrows lying ahead.

R.E. Slater

February 19, 2021

Art: Heinrich Vogeler

 

“To those who contemplate the beauty of the earth may they find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated whispered refrains of nature... the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” ~Rachel Carson 

Artist: Jim Holland (American, 1955)

Title: ”Hopper's House" (2008)

Medium: Oil on canvas

Cape Cod artist Jim Holland's "Hopper's House”, one of the contemporary landscapes featured in Lauren P. Della Monica's new book, pays homage to 19th-century artist Edward Hopper.

 

Lauren P. Della Monica

Amazon link

 

Painted Landscapes, Contemporary Views explores American landscape painting today, its relevance in the contemporary art world, and its historic roots. This volume profiles sixty individual living artists (and over 200 color images) whose contributions distinguish important aspects of the genre and address land use, nature appreciation, and ecology through landscape painting. Encompassing every style from traditional realism (with a contemporary edge) to abstraction and non-objectivity, these contemporary artists range from today's art stars to emerging or regionally recognized talent in the Eastern, Western, and Southwestern regions of the nation.

 

Amazon link

 

Human forms can be intensely intimate or broadly universal. Here, figurative artists use the human form as a tool to express varied content and contemporary issues. These paintings depict our feelings and sentiments, our sense of belonging to a larger community in the contemporary world, while capturing the impulses behind the range of figuration presented by today's contemporary international artists. Portraitist Marlene Dumas presents figures in a gritty, unsentimental manner, evoking the essence of the human condition, while Kerry James Marshall paints the life of African-Americans in the twentieth-century, employing recent historical review to document the social challenges. British artist Jenny Saville paints the figure in massive scale, combined with an overt, never-ending interest in the pure rendering of human flesh. Hope Gangloff paints her figures as characters, intimate friends, and acquaintances, narrating a drama from their canvases. An important resource for those interested in contemporary figurative painting.

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article link

A Silent Lent

By Br. Timothy Danaher, O.P.

February 11, 2016

Image: Mirai Takahashi, Standing Alone

Imagine that the ghost of Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, appeared to you in a dream. So you ask him, “Sir, what do you suggest I do for Lent this year? I’m already late in choosing.” Before vanishing, he might reply solemnly with his famous words:

If I were a physician, and if I were allowed to prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence.

 

How much silence do you have in your life? That question is directly connected to the impatience, anxiety, and distraction we feel on a daily basis.

Silence is an age-old secret—not even exclusively Christian—with enormous benefits.

Time to testify.

I have been amazed by the energy I recover from silence. This happened last month when I was on retreat in the Shenandoah Valley. How many hours of sleep did I get per night? About six. How many do I get on average? About six. Yet after very full days—reading, thinking, hiking, praying—I felt amazingly refreshed. Because I had more silence.

Silence also helps us notice things around us. We Dominicans usually eat breakfast together, but whenever I eat alone in silence, I notice amazing things: “This bread actually has taste! I don’t even need to butter it,” or, “Look, my schedule has only a few simple things. It’s totally do-able. It’s stupid that I wake up with such anxiety.” Silence to the rescue again. 

Finally, silence actually isn’t silent. We hear ourselves in silence, and we hear God. Mother Teresa wrote much about this silence. For instance:

The essential thing is not what we say but what God says to us and through us. In that silence, He will listen to us; there He will speak to our soul, and there we will hear His voice. 

But right here, exactly at the deepest possibility of silence—to hear God’s voice speak to our most honest self—we hit a wall. Silence is scary. Few of us feel ready to hear God speak to us. What might he say? And are we also ready to even face ourselves? Those unpracticed in silence often come up immediately against an inner storm: worries, anger, lusts, projections about the future, snippets of what he or she said, and above all, memories.

If we need silence but lack the courage, how can we begin?

Here we need the wisdom of Nike: Just do it! We have to first choose silence—40 days is a great chance for a first attempt. Like exercise, there’s an initial painful conditioning period, but it doesn’t last very long! If someone who knows silence has promised you its benefits, you can keep at it and fight for it. 

But what if we lack the time or space for silence?

True, not everyone has the silence of Bl. Charles de Foucauld, living out in the African desert, a lone Christian alone with Jesus. We can only create silence in our lives if we first learn to STOP. Developing a habit of stopping is so absolutely rare and absolutely essential in our day and age. For one person it’s not turning on the radio during their commute; for another it’s leaving the iPod at home when you jog; for another it’s carving out ten minutes to sit alone in the early morning or late night.

It’s not too late. This Lent, choose silence!

To finish, I’ll share a poem that I wrote awhile back. It tells of a time in my life when I was uncomfortable with silence. I was 18 years old, and some friends had talked me into attending a retreat on the property of Camaldolese hermits—men who so prefer the richness and adventure of silence that they leave much else in life untended…

"Orchard"
by Br. Timothy Danaher, O.P.
 

We slept in the barn and listened to the rain
And woke to the morning chill
And through the bay door, I heard him pass outside
And lay there motionless until

I rose to glimpse him crossing the yard
His long nose and worn robes, as he tread
To his hut, putting wood smoke up on the wind
And at my feet was a note, he’d left in his stead

“Orchard down the path” was the phrase
So we laced our shoes and headed that way
Anything to escape the dreary silence
Of that wet and pointless and dreary day

I walked with thoughts of heavy golden fruit
And leaves turned red with sugar
And we laughed and joked and shouted in youth
Until our path met with another

We had missed our mark and doubled back
Then there at a bend in the way
Lay the old orchard, in overgrown turf
Unnoticed for it was shoddy, decrepit, and gray

As they had kept vigil, battling themselves
We rambled with dreams in our head
Only to find dead trees, rotting in the light rain
I should have stayed in and learned silence instead

✠

Br. Timothy Danaher entered the Order of Preachers in 2011. He is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he studied Theology and American Literature. Before Dominican life he worked as a life guard in San Diego, CA, and as a youth minister in Denver, CO.

Relational Theology. What Is It?

The Potter and the Clay

Relational Theology. What Is It?

by R.E. Slater

A letter to my niece, who innocently asked:

"What is Relational Theology?"

Here was my long-winded response...  ;)

Background

Relational Theology works both within a closed and an open system. Because most of what theology has been in its classical sense has been as a closed system which speaks to a predetermined future. A good Calvinist loves this. Many Arminians do too (aka Wesleyans sic, Jacob Arminus). John Calvin wrote of a predetermined, non-freewill universe (TULIP). Jacob, his student, disagreed and said the universe is run by agency (DAISY) as given by God thus nothing is determined except with what we do with our lives.

[Wikipedia] Jacobus Arminius (10 October 1560 – 19 October 1609), the Latinized name of Jakob Hermanszoon,[a] was a Dutch theologian from the Protestant Reformation period whose views became the basis of Arminianism and the Dutch Remonstrant movement. He served from 1603 as professor in theology at the University of Leiden and wrote many books and treatises on theology.

Following his death, his challenge to the Reformed standard, the Belgic Confession, provoked ample discussion at the Synod of Dort, which crafted the five points of Calvinism in response to Arminius's teaching.

In the last 40 years (1980) a newer theology has come along uplifting Jacob’s thoughts to what is know as “Open & Relational Theology” (ORT). Again, relational theology works in both a closed and an open universe. But it works best in an unlimited future of opportunity rather than a closed future of doom and destruction. In this regard the Calvinist scheme is less hopeful, more dramatic. But with ORT hope thrives within its environment while placing the onus on Christians, and mankind in general, to create the best future they can rather than giving up, doing nothing, and waiting for the world to fall in on everybody’s heads.

Definition

Ok, so what is it? Relational Theology speaks to a God of relationships. Its nothing more than that but its profound when ppl feel God has abandoned them, is far away, has consigned this world to hell, etc. Relational theology (or relational theism) says “No. God is uniquely close to this world because this is how He made it." How? From Himself. Who is ultimately, maximally, infinitely relational. So all the classic doom and gloom preachings of God, of blasphemous prognostications, even of mankind's deep personal or group guilt, simply flies away in the face of God's state of Being. Who is intricately, majestically, integrally absorbed into the world we live in. God is truly here amongst us.

And if we take this one step farther, the world as it was made by a relational God is itself relational in every part of its essence, structure, movement, and panpsychic collective mass (‘cause I wanted to throw the inexact word “feeling” in there to mess with you.) Thus we live in a relational world which feels it parts to its whole and its whole to its parts. Whether it is in the form of displaced energies, forces, or sentient, animalistic, or even biologic feeling as we should wish to describe it.

Why is Open Theology Important? 

Next, to speak of Open Theology or Open Theism is to speak of an open future. Amazingly, people like Greg Boyd get this and have used it. But in what sense I do not know. Probably not in the process sense as is ultimately preferable. But other theologians like Tom Oord use it properly within its originating sense of process theology which naturally couples up then with relational theology as process theology and is where both have been generated when properly understood. They go together like “peas and carrots,” as Forrest Gump would say. I’ll get to process in a sec…

Forrest Gump, Like Peas and Carrots

Open theology speaks to an open future which says that a God of Love has given agency to creation to use as it will. However this does not mean that agency is without divine structure, impetus, ability, or direction. It only implies that freewill is indeterminant and may stray outside of divine goodness and love if it wishes. This then is where sin and evil arise. Always with us, never with God. There are implications for this kind of theology as well. The key word here is indeterminant. That is, the future is wide open without any prophetic end except a fateful end should sin and evil reign to the exclusion of beauty and harmony. Make of it what you will, but the biblical prophecies could become something akin to a fateful future of a world having abandoned God. Though in all of man's sin and evil God does not abandon us nor condemn us to a hellish end. Sin does this. Agency used poorly, if not purposely, against how it's suppose to run towards God and not away from God. Towards goodness and love and not away from these healing, structural virtues.

If we carry this out logically, Hell is a place already here where ppl live. But so too is heaven. And if one wishes, these can be in the afterlife as well. But uncaused by God but caused by sin. If you wish Hell to be a real place, rather than a metaphorical description, then go ahead, just remember God never made it and does not consign ppl to it. They cast their own selves into it, both now and perhaps later, unless Spirit-bourne penitence arises in their souls. To which God is always calling, both evil and good, by His Spirit of grace and mercy.

Which is why I have moved to a position of self-annihilation beginning now with seared hearts (which are never abandoned by God; though I do sadly think of --------- in this regard, who, at the end of life I'm told, through close questioning of his last girlfriend, made a repentance of sorts before ending his life). However, unlike Rob Bell and other friends I know, I cannot accept universalism. For myself, I believe there must always be accountability for our actions which propel us either to godly growth or nihilistic behavior. Otherwise what would the Atoning Work of Christ mean if only positionally and not practically? Thus, for me, I propose a theology of annihilation over a theology of hell. (Btw, at my bible college they taught a form of this through four stages moving outwards to inwards: a lost of relationships to the world, to others, to self, and finally to God. 1 John mentions this too. But being good Baptists they kept to Hell anyway because it preached good). 

Why Whitehead? Why Process?

Ok, now for the fun part… process philosophy and theology go together in Alfred North Whitehead. He was a Christian philosopher who saw a huge need to speak to metaphysical cosmologies and ontologic essence which had been abandoned since Hegel in the 1700s for dualistic, binary, reductionistic, or even machinistic processes. After 200-300 years of organic cosmologic absence Whitehead felt it was time to bring back an Integral Theory which could quite easily subsume all previous efforts of the ancients, classicists, and enlightened modernists into the postmodern era of process thought begun by Hegel but having drifted towards another direction. After a lifetime of mathematics, and as a fellow to the Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society, Whitehead had retired from mathematics and in his retirement years, between the ages of 62 and 68, he wrote a treatise titled, “Process and Reality.” It was profound and is profoundly changing the world even as we speak. 

What is process? Many, many things. Most simply, God is the first order of all proceeding processes. From God become all things filled with life, beauty, boundless novelty, and agency. Above all, it's process proceeds from God’s Love, never by divine fiat. Which is also where agency was birthed. Never by fiat. These things are as natural as God is in all that He is as metaphysical Process and ontological, relational Love. It also bespeaks of “B/being becoming.” Your Aunt Lori always likes to say, “Lord Come.” But she is incorrect. The Lord is already here, remember? God is in full relationship with creation. He has never left it but is intricately part of it, absorbed in it, filling it as it's all-in-all.

A God Who Is In Process

So your Aunt Lori should rather have said, “Thank you Lord for being here! For your majestic presence in our lives!” However, though this would be a true statement, a more correct process statement would declare, “Dear Lord, Become”! Remember the phrase in the bible, “I AM WHO I AM?” Is better translated in the Hebrew as the phrase, “I AM WHO I AM BECOMING TO BE.”

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh means "I (God) will be that who I (God) have yet to become." (Ex 3.14)

Which states very clearly an open future for even God Himself whose Being is the very epitome of process. So when Aunt Lori says, "Even so, Lord Come!" Our replay is, "Yeah Lord, even so Become! And we, ourselves, with you!"  ;)

So process thought goes way beyond Disney’s trite phrase, the “Circle of Life” speaking to creation's infinitely complex connectivity with itself (Whitehead calls “process thought” the “philosophy of organism” which I love). And within this cosmic organism (not, orgasm... organ-ism) of God and creation all is bearing forth in multiplexed spectrums of becoming from one instance to the next. 

Process is a simple but very deep and complex philosophy. But it is an all-encompassing philosophy of cosmic streams and panpsychisms which can be rightly embedded into everything from nursing, to the business-industrial process, to ecology, to ecological civilizations, as well as to any of the sciences from the physical (or natural) sciences to the social sciences, psychologies, and political sciences and economies. As example, Darwinian Evolution is process based. So to is the Cosmological Big Bang. So too Jungian Archtypes. And on and on and on. Process Thought is a metaphysical Integral Theory of Everything (the quantum equivalent of its own T.O.E. hoping to lay a basis for everything, GUT).

Out with All Dualisms!

One last, just to blow your Hellenistic, Platonic, Neo-Platonic, and Aristotelian mindset. So you’ll have to dump the dualistic/reductionistic between God and creation (sic, Rene Descrates, Mind v. Matter syllogisms).

Statement: "God is no more pronounced over creation than creation over God." Classic theism keeps God at a distance. He comes and goes as He feels like it. Not dissimilar to the the Greek Gods who even themselves succumbed to the eternal objects or metaphors of Fate and Fortune. However, in a Process-based arrangement creation is not a God but a proceeding process of the (first?) second order from God. Thus we decry pantheism which says "All is God and God is All." But process theology must assert pan-en-theism where God and world are organically one together, intimately so. Not in ontologic essence but in metaphysical conjunction. Panentheists like to place “novelty or creativity” over this organic whole to describe the process features of a God-to-World marriage. That being said, we may rightly conclude that God will be with us for the long ride and we can kiss “adios” to the biblically asserted classical proposition of God v. Matter dipolarity. 

Below are some index links to help you explore further. Be mindful I completed everything I wished to complete last August of 2020 after eight intense years of research and writing. I have accomplished what I set out to discover - that of a fuller hermeneutic more helpful to Christianity than what I was trained in. Call it a self-paced, post-doctoral studies sort-of-arrangement with myself. From that concluding point of last August I am now more committed to describing the post-structuralist process in philosophy, theology, natural theology (the sciences), and of practical life illustrations in general. Hopefully gone are the days of necessary critical dissection of my past faith. I may call this “Phase V” of my writings having traversed phases I-IV.

Cya, 

Uncle Russ 

February 17, 2021 

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PART OF A 7-PART SERIES

1 - A Process Relational World in Pictures

2 - Is There Any Difference Between Process Philosophy & Process Theology?

3 - Examining Process Philosophy & Process Theology, Part 1

4 - Examining Process Philosophy & Process Theology, Part 2

5 - Relational Theology. What Is It?

6 - Whitehead's "Philosophy of Organism" Explained

7 - Integral Hermeneutics ala Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorems

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MORE RESOURCES

Relevancy22 – Home Page - https://relevancy22.blogspot.com/

Index - Open & Relational Process Theology –

https://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2020/04/index-open-relational-theology.html

Index- Calvinism v. Arminianism –

https://relevancy22.blogspot.com/search/label/Index%20-%20Calvinism%20v.%20Arminianism

Index - Process Philosophy & Theology –

https://relevancy22.blogspot.com/search/label/Index%20-%20Process%20Philosophy%20%26%20Theology

Index to Process-Based Integral Philosophy –

https://relevancy22.blogspot.com/search/label/Index%20-%20Process-Based%20Integral%20Philosophy

Toward Ecological Civilization, Preface

We begin with the public recognition that the Process Philosophy/Theology of mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead may provide the tone and tenor for any discussions relating to ecological civilizations. That Process Thought is inclusive of all previous environmental and sustainability efforts, movements, projects, and organizations, providing a shared vision of a fairer and more equal system of justice both socially and ecologically. A pervasive justice which is dearly needed in a global world collapsing as equally away from social and environmental justice.

At the 10th Whitehead international conference on June 2015 in Claremont, California, the topic was called "Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization." it claimed an organic, relational, integrated, nondual, and processive conceptuality is needed, and that the philosopher, mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead provides this direction in a remarkably comprehensive and rigorous way.  (note 1)

The process-based philosophy of an ecological civilization may also be considered an Integral subtheory of the greater Integral Theory of Process Philosophy and Theology. These latter come together in Whitehead as he searched for metaphysical and ontological expression of the cosmos around us. When indicating that the cosmos "feels," Whitehead is speaking to the metaphysical what-ness of the universe and its Maker even as he does to the ontologial who-ness of the universe and its Maker.

From these observations two things immediately emerge. One, both creation and the Creator are in relationship one to the another. And secondly, in process thought it matters not which came first as both the metaphysics and the ontology of the what and the who are equally combined in the Creator Himself. That is, God is the What of the universe as well as the Who of the universe. Each element is equally subsumed in the Creator God Himself as both Initial Process as well as Initial Relationship.

Hence, God as the What and the Who is also the How. That is, God is the First Process of all proceeding processes which are informed and infilled with His Essence and Being. And as a God of Love we must expect all creative processes - that is, all cosmic and earth-bound processes - to flow with God's Love and Light. Here then is found the organic relationality of all things to all things. Moreover, Whitehead initial titled this system A "Philosophy of Organism" by which he intended to not simply state the relationality of the cosmos to its Creator but to its panpsychic nature of feeling, of being, in unlimited open novelty and uncontained creativity that is indetermined by agency, fully free, and fully non-directed.

One might thus think of this latter idea as responding cosmic processes bearing indeterminate freewill. And with this freewill it has the power to become and not simply be. And in its being flow through the streams of space-time with the essence and being of God's relational Self. And where it deviates to becoming less than it was created to be, it is due to the failings of freewill - even as it may also become more than it was created to be as due to the reciprocity of responding to the relational energy, presence, urging, and non-coercive partnership with its Creator-Redeemer God.

Thus Whiteheadian Process Philosophy/Theology becomes a panacea for all past, present, and future expressions of a process-based cosmos where technically speaking we may speak of cosmoecological civilizations in the greatest, most expansive terms pertaining to its being and becoming.

One last, Whiteheadian Process Thought may be seen exampled in Darwin's evolutionary character of the universe. Or in the quantum cosmological display of the Big Bang. Each portrayal emphasizes a process which starts from something  (creatio continua NOT creatio ex nihilo) becoming something greater, more expansive, more distributive, more enhanced, novel, and with continuing energetic expression borne from the past into the present and from the present into the future.

The God of Creation

Two things here:

FIRSTLY, God and Creation were always present. One might capture this idea from the Genesis "void" which is poetically expressed in ancient metaphor. Here, in this passage, it is  admitted that there was something in the beginning of Creation. The ancient's called it a void, most probably meaning "nothing." But if you will forgive me, I'd like to twist it's definition a bit.... In quantum terms of a void being a void let's take free scientific license and simply state that apart from its ancient meaning of apparent nothingness there was actually a somethingness there. A one-dimension spatial infinity filled with a hot, dense plasmic void without irregularity, wrinkle, or asymmetry.

Contemporary, scientifically-informed theologians differ from their classical counterparts in describing this observation as "creatio continua" as versus the older idea of "creatio ex nihilo." Creation from something as versus Creation from nothing. As this latter cannot be possible it is rejected in quantum physics and evolutionary biology. Which bumps up into the more "recent" Christian idea from the 1940s expressed creedly contra Darwin as "immediate" or "spontaneous" creational genesis by God from nothing into something. Later to become tamped down to perhaps admit a "Young Earth Creationism" or several other non-process, or semi-process based models.

However, since the God of Creation is involved in Process as very Process Himself, so we might expect God's "Calling forth" the worlds and man to bespeak process through-and-through. Thus and thus one might speak of "Theistic Evolution" by its old timey name or currently, as "Evolutionary Creationism" by its newer name, admitting Darwin and process together as one. Even as the Big Bang may be spoken of in process terms.

God With Creation

SECONDLY, if creation isn't with God in the beginning than there can be no God as we know God today in all of His Relational-Self and Self-Expression. Nor would it matter. God would be beyond our kin and simply not exist to His creation. God would be considered non-factual and most probably unconceivable much like a dog would never think of God, living in a god-absent world of chaos, chance, and random event. (PS, the current Process models of evolution and Big Bang cosmology would also includes these elements but with an expanding theistic base model of a God-filled teleology as versus an atheistic teleology full of process but devoid of God-filled meaning. Agnosticism would be of no matter here in these matters except for the fact of debating with a process-epistemology which would inform one of a process-based metaphysic and ontology).

So logically, for argument's sake, let's say God may be independent of the cosmos theoretically. For some this will be meaningful. But for the panentheistic theologian, it makes no sense. As God explains the cosmos/world (let's use these terms synonymously now) so too does the world explain God. In a process universe each requires the other metaphysically and ontically. It is a moot question then of which came first as it can never be resolved, only argued over from a Hellenistic point of view. Thus it is illogical and of no meaning. Allowable, fine, if one wishes. But unnecessary.

Within this panentheistic world is a world of relationships between God and the world and the world with God. Panentheism speaks expressively of relationality, of giving, of becoming, of dynamism, of movement. Wherein comes identity, expression, purpose, novelty, and - when agency is used aright - of valuative relational presence. Thus, we may speak of ecological civilizations as expressing social justice, humanitarianism, being human, as much as we may speak of environmental justice focusing on reducing humanity's carbon footprint to one by restoring earth's biophyllic communities to relational balance and harmony with itself and with the anthropocene era which now overcomes the earth perhaps to oxygen-breathing organism's doom.

Side Note: Both charts I find helpful in showing the comparison between older to new theistically-modeled systems. Where problems crop up will be in imperfectly understanding this newer panentheistic model because process theology is poorly understood. You will note too that God is no longer required to be in the "top spot" on the lower chart below, thus "relationally equalizing" God and Creation in mutual affection together, one to the other. The rallying cry, or universal theme, now becomes that of process philosophy/theology described as "creativity" but meaning so much more than this simply word might express. Again, this will come with a better understanding of Process Thought. I have spent some time in explaining this and will leave several index links for those of you interested in learning more about process thought.

Conclusion

At this point I think we should stop. Take a little time to think through these large thoughts which have tilted all the windmills upside down in the classic world of creedal Christianity. I began this exploration some years back and it has take quite a few years to get my head around it. I grew up in fundamentalist churches, and later their more "liberal" counterparts, the conservative evangelical churches. All were megachurches which I attended and all fully devoted to God and family, community and missions. To break from my Baptist background, and later, newer Covenant Reformed roots, required reprising Christianity from a contemporary, postmodern, post-structuralist viewpoint. This website here, Relevancy22, is testimony it can be done and that God, the Gospel of Jesus, and Christian faith is even cooler than it was - if that could even be possible. Which, apparently it is, by my own and other's testimony here on this website.

One finally story. Having been taught in a one-room schoolhouse where we had 19 kids from grades K-8, was the highest and best education I could imagine. It was safe. It allowed me to think and follow my own educational paths. And I had ample opportunity to teach the older kids. But we were closed down after six generations (starting way back with my homesteading relatives in the 1800s) when our township became a city and we were moved into the public school system. Here I felt alone in a very strange world. It was a place I really never considered as good or beautiful as my own country school. Perhaps because I had grown up in an agrarian-based, pre-industrial mindset, making modernism quite foreign to me with its wars and civil unrest. Which is probably why I feel so comfortable in today's postmodernism and in its rejection of industrialism, its rejection of the pursuit of money for relationships, and its disjointedness from the natural world I grew up on, loved, and never every ant hill on the thousand acres I roamed since a young boy, along with the generations of my relatives before me.

And so, I was transferred, and learned in hindsight how much more I would gain in education and socialization though I didn't realize it at the time. I learned, and did things in public school which I would never have in my wonderful country school. But I did struggle. I remember Algebra I as being completely beyond me. I couldn't make sense of variables like "x" and "y". They were ungrounded for me. Just mathematical expressions joined by axiomatic symbols. They were meaningless and confounding. Then one day deep into October, maybe early November, as I kept getting D's and E's the light dawn and I suddenly understood. From there I didn't stop learning mathematics until the end of my junior year in University as I was studying graduate applied maths by then. It's a love affair I sadly miss and wish I had stayed with as a career and theoretician. But somethings are not meant to be in life and this was one. The Lord had me bound for somewhere else.

So, I think, its probably where many faithful, wandering souls are today wondering how Christianity became so foreign to itself. A faith of love, mercy, forgiveness, and service, now become a politicized, partisan faith exhibiting the worst of humanity's sins and fully unlike the Christ it professes. If anything I write to those who have lost their way that there may be hope again. The themes and subjects here are many. And it's all meant to be explored and considered using many pens and writers rather than my own alone. Many of these theologians speak to their own heartaches and frustrations in ministries. Which is well and good as Christianity would be the poorer without their influence, failures, and losses.

In the days ahead I will try to move forward through process thought into ecological societies of the future. For now, rest and be at peace. God has not forsaken this world. There are processes in place which will extinguish the awful, perhaps permanently, with an ecological collapse. But before this happens let's try to put people and trees, land, water, and air, back together again in balance and harmony with one another like it "was" in the fictional Garden of Eden. A utopia fallen into the noise of mankind's dystopia. Let us join together and build a City of God, and therein learn to dwell. Peace.

R.E. Slater

February 16, 2021

1What Is Ecological Civilization, by Philip Clayton, CC x, pp x-x

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RESOURCES

Is There Any Difference Between

Process Philosophy & Process Theology?

Examining Process Philosophy

& Process Theology, Part 1

Examining Process Philosophy

& Process Theology, Part 2

Relational Theology. What Is It?

Whitehead's "Philosophy of Organism" Explained

INDEXES

Index to Process Philosophy & Theology

Index to Process-Based Integral Philosophy

Index - EarthCare and Ecology

Index - Post-Capitalist, Post-Socialist CosmoEcological Societies

Ecological Civilizations - Bill Gates 2021 60 Minutes Interview

Toward Ecological Civilization, Preface

Toward Ecological Civilization, Introduction to Incompleteness

Toward Ecological Civilization, Chapter 1

Toward Ecological Civilization, Chapter 2

Toward Ecological Civilization, Chapter 3

Toward Ecological Civilization, Chapter 4

Toward Ecological Civilization, Chapter 5

Toward Ecological Civilization, Chapter 6

Toward Ecological Civilization, Chapter 7

Toward Ecological Civilization, Chapter 8

Toward Ecological Civilization, Conclusions