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

-----

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

Sunday, February 21, 2021

Toward Ecological Civilization, Introduction to Incompleteness

 


Eco/Civ Models & Objectives

AN OPEN MODEL FOR INCOMPLETENESS

Ecological civilization is a term that describes the final goal of social and environmental reform within a given society. It implies that the changes required in response to global climate disruption and social injustices are so extensive as to require another form of human civilization, one based on ecological principles. Broadly construed, ecological civilization involves a synthesis of economic, educational, political, agricultural, and other societal reforms toward sustainability.

A Set Theory Model

As introduction, it should be immediately noted that the concepts of “ecological civilizations” and “constructive postmodernism” have been associated with the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. As we have spoken at length on each subject, that of ecological civilizations and societies (ECS), constructive postmodernism and complimentary eras (CP/CE), and Whiteheadian process philosophy and theology (WPPT), it is the intention here to focus why all three go together as common subjects rather than viewing each area as separate from one another.

We might add a fourth area, that of all derivatives of green sciences and technologies (GST). And for good measure let's include All natural Sciences and CryptoEconomics (AS/CE). This must necessarily include all social models expressing the common good such as social equality and justice (SE/SJ) including environmental justice (EJ) models expressing balance and harmony of biophyllic communities. These communities must necessarily include mankind in them - and not apart for them - in order to be complete and workable biophyllic communities (BC). Combined, lets designate this latter as SE/SJ + BC as Communities of Completeness (CoC).

Process thought then takes all these elements in together as a complex web of non-interchangeable component parts, each part as infinite as the other, and just as incomplete by nature of its unfolding process. As such, one could understand these together as integral theorems (IT) expressing the fullness and variety of process philosophy. Each positing a fully insufficient world alone while striving to be wholly contiguous and wholly self-affirming together bearing elements of agency, chaos, randomness, and novelty, building upon past novelty towards present and future novelities.

In terms of set theory, the greatest power set (PS) of all would be the set of all five areas working together as one in their infinitely, incomplete forms:


(WPPT) ⊃ {∅, {EC}, {CE}, {S/E}, {GT}, {CoC}, {{EC}, {CE}, {S/E}, {GT}, {CoC}}}


IT = WPPT - Whiteheadian Process Philosophy & Theology
EC = ECS = Ecological Civilizations & Societies
CE = CP/CE - Constructive Postmodernism & Complimentary Eras
S/E = AS/CE - All Sciences & CryptoEconomics
GT = GST - Green Sciences & Technologies
SJ/EJ + BC = CoC - Communities of Completeness

*if a mathematician could write this up for me using Godel's
Incompleteness Theorems it would be deeply appreciated. BUT
keep it simple using theorem 1, then 2, then both together.


Godel's first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of natural numbers. For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency. - Wikipedia 

 

If a system only creates true statements and allows the construction of the sentence: "A: This statement cannot be proved" in the system. Then by definition it is a true statement, so that A is true and cannot be proved." - Kurt Godel. [As corollary, neither can that system demonstrate its own consistency.]

 

 


Kurt Gödel & the Limits of Mathematics





 



Objectives of Process Cultures

Contemporary culture is still enthralled with the 17th century view of nature articulated by philosophers Rene Descartes and reinforced by Immanuel Kant who each objectified the world about us reducing its cosmic-natural understanding to mechanistic structure alone to be used, consumed, destroyed, and controlled.(1) In the aftermath of modernity's long industrialization of the planet there was, and still is, no healthy ecological civilization plans for living equitably with one another nor sustainably with the earth which gives us life and breath.

To break this binary system of mind over matter, or nonsymbiotic "I-Thou "relationship between man and nature we must propose to enter into a new kind of civilization. Promoting an attitude which leaves an ecosystem's biophyllia better than it was when we came to it when deeply disrupted it "organic QI," if you will, through misappreciation of its being, misunderstanding of its becoming, and misuse of its "organic soul". To supplant mankind's brutish efforts with a process attitude willing to relearn nature's rhythms and balances so that its biotic communities may increase in complexity and richness as both it, and we ourselves, learn to flourish together in nurturing harmony. A biotic harmony which creates polycultures of biophyllia rather than human monocultures of invasive plants and weeds, not unlike our green lawns of death to bugs and insects found throughout America residential zoning laws.

Further, process cultures learn to build architectural ecologies which Paolo Soleri speaks of as "arcologies." These are the urban(e) communities willing to reduce their carbon footprints to incorporate multiplexes of sustainability infrastructures from buildings to roads, from environmental/human research to consumerism, agricultural production to distribution, focused on healthy social contracts with nature and back again. Each serving the other and all serving the whole.

A rich and diverse ecological society fully dedicated to the enrichment of biophyllically designed communities through ecological charters created to enrich deeply complex ecosystems between man and nature. And in every way: from education to economics; and, from technology to science. By rethinking every part of humanity's impact on the earth until it walks in harmony learning to leave no disturbance on the earth but every possibility of regeneration back to a process filled, and thriving, biota of the "circles of life" heathily moving along in evolutionary character.

A Short History of Eco/Civ

One last in closing. Ecological Civilization originated in Russia in the 70s but was fully developed by China in the 90s. It is not a new idea but is one that has been around for 35-50 years. And, as can be historically demonstrated, should work in the communist and maoist economies of "being and event," as philosopher Alain Badiou has come to describe them.

In promoting what China has come to think of as "it's second enlightenment," it seems to be working well its culturally agrarian past and historical religious traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism marking the essence of Chinese culture. Lately, it has become connected with Alfred North Whitehead's process thought. In recent years (2005? 2007? onwards) Process Philosophy has become even more pronounced through conferences between Whiteheadian think tanks in America and China. And as process philosophy is taking flight, it is now being adopted more fully across the world in amazing progressive conclaves rethinking the 21st century's postmodern future with the industrial collapse of the past 500 years of modernism.

However, let us be mindful that the transition to organic, systemic, and ecological thinking is not dependent on a single philosopher, leader, or country. Many are reaching these basic ideas of earthcare independently within their own localities dedicated to clean water, green spaces, breathable air, in movement's akin to Aldo Leopold's "Green Fire" endeavors. Other notables which come my American mind is the environmentalist Bill McKibben, the Terrapin Bright Green organization, the Green Infrastructure Center, and many, many more.

There are many reasons to hope as cities and rural communities begin asserting within their own localities and regions what is necessary to a global world of reform. It is to these efforts of individuals and grassroots organizations which are purposely designing in their own fashion ecological civilization thinking for a globally committed, and locally effected, effort of green industrial and community sustainability, regeneration, and success.

R.E. Slater
February 21, 2021
edited February 22, 2021

*The second part of this Introduction reviews Philip Clayton's Preface and
  John Cobb Jr's Forward in the book What Is Ecological Civilization?

(1)What Is Ecological Civilization, by Philip Clayton, Preface


* * * * * * * * * *




Ecological civilization

Ecological civilization is a term that describes the final goal of social and environmental reform within a given society. It implies that the changes required in response to global climate disruption and social injustices are so extensive as to require another form of human civilization, one based on ecological principles. Broadly construed, ecological civilization involves a synthesis of economic, educational, political, agricultural, and other societal reforms toward sustainability.

Although the term was first coined in the 1980s, it did not see widespread use until 2007, when “ecological civilization” became an explicit goal of the Communist Party of China (CPC). In April 2014, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and the International Ecological Safety Collaborative Organization founded a sub-committee on ecological civilization. Proponents of ecological civilization agree with Pope Francis who writes,
"We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature."
As such, ecological civilization emphasizes the need for major environmental and social reforms that are both long-term and systemic in orientation.

History

In 1984, former Soviet Union environment experts proposed the term “Ecological Civilization” in an article entitled “Ways of Training Individual Ecological Civilization under Mature Socialist Conditions,” which was published in the Scientific Communism, Moscow, vol. 2.

Three years later, the concept of ecological civilization was picked up in China, and was first used by Qianji Ye (1909―2017), an agricultural economist, in 1987. Professor Ye defined ecological civilization by drawing from the ecological sciences and environmental philosophy.

The first time the phrase “ecological civilization” was used as a technical term in an English-language book was in 1995.

The term is found more extensively in Chinese discussions beginning in 2007. In 2012, the Communist Party of China (CPC) included the goal of achieving an ecological civilization in its constitution, and it also featured in its five-year plan. In the Chinese context, the term generally presupposes the framework of a “constructive postmodernism,” as opposed to an extension of (i) modernist practices or a (ii) “deconstructive postmodernism,” which stems from the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida.

Both “ecological civilization” and “constructive postmodernism” have been associated with the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. David Ray Griffin, a process philosopher and professor at Claremont School of Theology, first used the term “constructive postmodernism” in his 1989 book, Varieties of Postmodern Theology. A more secular theme that flowed out of Whitehead's process philosophy has been from the Australian environmental philosopher Arran Gare in his book called The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization: A Manifesto for the Future.

The largest international conference held on the theme “ecological civilization” (Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization) took place at Pomona College in June 2015, bringing together roughly 2,000 participants from around the world and featuring such leaders in the environmental movement as Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva, John B. Cobb, Jr., Wes Jackson, and Sheri Liao. This was held in conjunction with the 9th International Forum on Ecological Civilization--an annual conference series in Claremont, CA established in 2006.

Out of the Seizing an Alternative conference, Philip Clayton and Wm. Andrew Schwartz co-founded the Institute for Ecological Civilization (EcoCiv), and co-authored the book What is Ecological Civilization: Crisis, Hope, and the Future of the Planet, which was published in 2019.

Since 2015, the Chinese discussion of ecological civilization is increasingly associated with an “organic” form of Marxism. “Organic Marxism” was first used by Philip Clayton and Justin Heinzekehr in their 2014 book, Organic Marxism: An Alternative to Capitalism and Ecological Catastrophe. The book, which was translated into Chinese and published by the People’s Press in 2015, describes ecological civilization as an orienting goal for the global ecological movement.

See also
  • Deep ecology
  • Ecological crisis
  • Ecological economics
  • Ecological modernization
  • Ecomodernism
  • Environmentalism
  • Environmental movement
  • Sustainability
External links
  • United Nations Environment Programme Report: Green is Gold - the Strategy and Actions of China's Ecological Civilization
  • Institute for Ecological Civilization
  • Institute for Postmodern Development of China
  • Pando Populus

* * * * * * * * * *

ADDENDUM 1

Consistency Systems always hold within them Inconsistent

The LIAR PARADOX: "This sentence is false".

Bertrand Russell's Set: {x: x∉x},  a set x, such that x is not a member of itself. But logically x is a member of itself. Thus the paradox making the statement inconsistent. (Later proofs have shown x to both be a member of itself and not a member of itself.)

The power set of A is the set of all subsets of A: P(A) = {x:x⊆A}
Example: P({0,1}) = {Ø, {0}, {1}, {0,1}} = the set expression of the power set A
In Cardinality terms of "size": | P({0,1}) | = | {Ø, {0}, {1}, {0,1}}| = 4 = 2^2 = 2² > |{0,1}| = 2

Observations
  • The size of the power set will always be bigger than any elements of that set
  • Closed System logic games are exercises in absurdum
  • Finite Systems cannot be used to prove Open Systems; this would be illogical

ADDENDUM 2

Godel's Incompleteness Theorems

Incompleteness Theorem 1 - Take all sets G (for Godel) such that if a formal system is consistent, then G is not a Theorem (T), nor is it not a Theorem. G says "I am not provable. If I am true then I am false. And if I am false, then I am true. This then says to all  formal, closed systems that they are inconsistent. Now if that formal system is open, then it is a moot question and doesn't matter.

Incompleteness Theorem 2 - There is no consistent Theorem (T) which can prove its own consistency:

Example 1: If T is consistent then G is not derivable in T.
Example 2: If T is consistent the G is derivable in T.
Summation: Consistency Theorems are inconsistent in-and-of themselves since G cannot both be derivable and not derivable in Theorem T.

This then presents a crisis in set theory but like quantum sciences, math and physics move on, living in tension with their logic and systems to be solved or left unsolved for another day. The fact is, like science, mathematics has blind spots within its system. And it are these blind spots which may be placed into the upper level of mathematical philosophies we might call "Metamathematics." Mathematics which are left to another time to be solved from another direction as has lately been done since Godel's propositions by work arounds, assumptions, limit mathematics, probability and statistics, and so on.


ADDENDUM 3

"If a truth theorem is complete, it's closed.
If a truth theorem is incomplete, then it's open."
- re slater

I asserted in Integral Hermeneutics ala Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorems that there can never be a final hermeneutic to help interpret God or His Word fully (sic, the bible, nature, event, experience, or enlightened insight). Nor can there be a final hermeneutic for one's life. There are many systems out there. Some closed, some open. Some are preferred over others such as we are using now with Process Philosophy and Process Theology. They seem to address both the divine and the creational in expressive, uplifting terms of hope. These systems can inform us how God operates in the world and how we must live in symmetry with the world. Such helpful systems can help break other systematic modes of self-imposed, or religiously-imposed, constrictions we chain or bind ourselves and others to.

And like Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, no one system is ever enough in the infinite, open-ended streams of life. Or, processes of life. Some come and go while others stay and expand. But they can never be complete because the (cosmopanpsychic) process of evolving life is ever evolving towards a process future of becoming. All events and experiences are incomplete and it is best to learn how to flow with them while learning to unlearn our set boundaries in order to relearn and expand them if we are to be testimonies to the God of grace and mercy.

As such, all of life is a never-ending process and there will never be a time on this earth, or in the life to come, where process isn't bubbling forth newness, novelty, creativity, or redemption. It is who God is. It is how God's creation works. It is what God's Love means when enacted through the process creational system expressed from His ontic being and essence.

In conclusion, let me propose a new axiom:
"If a truth theorem in complete, it's closed. If a truth theorem is incomplete, then it's open." - re slater
Any formal dogmatic systems of religion, regardless of that religion, be it Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or Christian, must always be rightly expanding and growing from all previous instances of itself. Thus, it would be wise to affirm that all religionists should be careful of what they plant in this world - be it good or be it bad.

As seems all too familiar with too many historical examples of good religion gone bad in this world. (I think of American evangelical faiths moving towards neofacism having lost its center in God's Love and Jesus' examples of service of ministry through grace and mercy, forgiveness and hope.

From this we can see that the former statement re closed dogmas have sealed themselves off from outside criticism becoming insular within itself alone shunning all other voices. Whereas the latter statement has attracted more open religions to examine themselves in healthy ways of reflection, revision, and enlightenment, much like the many disciplines of science attempting by their own assertions, explorations, and continual revisions of its set theorems, objectives, and momentary conclusions.

Open systems live in tension with themselves and are the better for it. Closed systems do not and are the worse for it. Learn to live in tension. And in the tension exploit your inner creativity towards goodness, love, and peace.


* * * * * * * * * *




RESOURCES












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



Friday, February 19, 2021

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

 

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.


* * * * * * *



A Silent Lent
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.








Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Relational Theology. What Is It?


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