Process Theology: Creative Interchange

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, February 5, 2006

Reading

by Rev. Arthur Graham

Each of us is an artist whose task it is to shape life
Into some semblance of the pattern we dream about.
The molding is not of self alone, but of shared tomorrows
And times we shall never see. So let us be about our task.
The materials are very precious and perishable.

Each Sunday service we share, each Celebration of Life that happens here …is intended to awaken you to life. Again and again Life calls us to Life….to deeper perception and awareness, to expanded feeling and sensing.

Our Celebration of Life is a shared experience of power, and passion and meaning.

There are many paths to meaning, many experiences of power, many expressions of passion. We awaken to life in unique and multi-faceted ways. But coming awake is what religious living is all about.

This morning I am speaking about Process theology, which offers a way of connecting theism and humanism. Process thought focuses on creativity as the foundational human activity.

Both theism and humanism are concerned with the creation of good. Religious and ethical living are both directed toward creating as much good as possible.

So reflect with me this morning on creativity…on artistry and dreams.

As in much of philosophy and theology, process thought begins by asking “What is real?” What is the world and what is humanity’s place in the world?

Process theology is the name given to the ideas of mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, his student Charles Hartshorne and their colleague, Henry Nelson Weiman.

Whitehead and Hartshorne were both sons of Episcopal clergymen and both were philosophers and historians of religion. Whitehead influenced students at Harvard Divinity School in the 1930s and 40s, and Hartshorne and Wieman had long tenure at the Chicago Divinity School in the 1950s and 60s. Process Theology came to be associated with the Chicago School.

Weiman, who died in 1975 at age 90 was first ordained to the Presbyterian ministry, but was Fellowshipped with the Unitarians in 1949. His thought has greatly influenced Unitarian Universalist theology over the last 50 years.

The work of these scholars is difficult to read and digest…so let me offer a summary of Process Thought: “We are All Artists!”

There was a wonderful article about process theology in the UU World last year written by Reverend Gary Kowlaski . The title of the article, “The Ultimate Canvass” offers a beautiful symbol for the core of process thought, that we are all participants in the big picture, that is the universe.

This morning our ultimate canvass is this worship hall, this building, all the buildings that make up our church. This is our universe…this is where we participate and create. This empty vase is part of our ultimate canvass.

Process theology calls the big picture, the universe- the Living Whole. We are part of and we help to create the Living Whole.

Our 7th principle captures this basic idea of process philosophy, that we are part of the interdependent web of all existence.

Process thought stresses interdependence over dependence. Orthodox Chrisitanity stressed our dependence on God…process theology posits our interdependent co-creation with God, with the Divine Principle…and with each other.

With this focus on interdependence, process theology moves us away from thinking of ourselves as small isolated beings, and toward experiencing our interdependence more fully.

When we imagine we are separate rather than connected, we become alienated, lonely, and unhappy. When we realize our connectedness, we move to participate with others in creative endeavor. Being in community is a way of maximizing your interdependence as well as your creativity.

Perhaps some of us came to church this morning from a place of loneliness or isolation, perhaps we’re frustrated or depressed about the state of the world, or problems in our family…once we walk in the door of the church, we are no longer alone…people greet us…new thoughts take hold, new possibilities emerge, we greet others, we help to make the coffee, we help with the children’s worship…we sing,

We feel a part of something larger, and our creative, intellectual, compassionate juices begin to flow.

When we sit alone, we worry…We sense reality as a sad and difficult place…When we sit together in community, our feelings, or experience changes. Process theology honors our felt-reality, our horizon of experience.

Philosopher Charles Hartshorne tells of sitting alone among the chalk cliffs that face the English Channel- it was afternoon, he was reading, William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience and he was thinking about the nature of ultimate reality…asking the question “What is real?”

Hartshorne remembers; “I had been thinking of certain aspects of my life that seemed discouraging …when my gloomy reflections were interrupted by a multitude of shrill sounds. Looking down to the bottom of the cliff, I saw a school playground filled with shouting, laughing children, the contrast was enlightening. “Suppose my own life is unsatisfactory, he thought, so what? I am a tiny fragment of human life.

The rest of life is not all unfortunate or wretched. Nothing compels me to think of my life as miserable and those children as happy, for I see there is some minimal good and beauty in all life, including my own and that is what finally matters, even to me, - the life of the Whole..the something that includes me, outlasts me and contains more good than I can distinctly imagine.” In this moment, Hartshorne, felt his interdependence within the web of life.

Hartshorne was influenced by the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was in turn influenced by Buddhist thought. Hartshorne’s realization that there is some good and beauty in all life, and that the whole of life matters more than his particular experience carries seeds of both transcendentalism and Taoism.

Philosophy and theology are concerned with Time and History. Classical philosophy and Newtonian physics posited a static, all powerful God in the sky…a profound separateness which mirrored, they believed the physical world…each atom, each moment, each material reality existing within distinct boundaries, absolute and eternal…particles of matter operating like clockwork according to a set of laws. Thus God was a God of order, a law giver.

Postmodern physics shows that reality is not just particles, but also waves, not predictable, but chaotic and fresh, not entirely separate, but interdependent, everything relying and responding to something else…the butterfly effect. A post-modern God might need to be more creative than controlling.

In process thought we imagine time not as a flowing stream, in which we are caught, but as distinct drops, but drops full of other drops…each drop of time carrying stuff from the past into the present and then taking events of the present and carrying them along with available empty space for new events into the future.

We are now in a moment of time. A drop of time unlike any other. We have memories, incarnations of past experience and being…as part of this moment and we contribute from the present to the becoming of the next moment.

Time is not circular, it does not return us to a former beginning, and it is not a linear stream…always moving swiftly forward, process theology suggests that time is unfolding , perhaps in a spiral…each new moment ripe with possibilities for good and beauty. Each new moment carrying former moments and offering an opportunity for creativity.

Alfred North Whitehead spoke of reality as events or occasions of experience. The ultimate canvass of our worship hall this morning invites us into the event of this moment in time…invites us to bring our memories, gifts, the fabric of past moments of our lives…and to use all of our felt-experience, all of our horizon of experience to find the good and the beautiful in this moment…Here we hold the precious opportunity to create something in the empty spaces of this drop of time.

The unfolding present is not yet concrete, it is changeable, and we can affect it. No God has designed this moment…we have a hand in creating the event of this moment…in creating reality.

Let’s pause to share an experience of creativity.

In process theology, divine energy or life spirit or God participates in time. God is not a separate, eternal, transcendent being, but is an energy, a mystery which lures us toward the good, inviting us to be present and participate.

The God energy of process theology is Creative Interchange…it is in the universe, in the world, in our lives…It is Creative energy luring us to life.

Process theology goes a step further to suggest that we live in a participatory universe. We do not leave things up to God or spirit….we act with the divine energy…we too create out of mystery….we share in the opportunity and responsibility of creating reality.

We are all artists…creators of what is, and what is becoming.

Process theologian Henry Nelson Wieman called this process; creative interchange…This interchange can happen in many different ways.

We’ve all had the experience of deep connection with another person or with a sunset, or the color and expanse of the ocean…at those moments, our felt-experience is of a connection to the whole…sometimes we get goosebumps in those moments, sometimes tears well up…sometimes we laugh out loud…that something we feel in those moments is Creative Interchange…something exists in those moments that is a new reality.

Once a young woman came to talk to me. She was struggling to find a shape, a name for God that made sense to her. She loved to paint, felt best abut herself when she painted, knew her best potential, felt most in harmony with the universe, touched a place of love and light,…when she painted. One day she had the wisdom, the insight to give her God the name of what she loved…the name Artist. For her, God was an artist, that source of harmony, love, goodness, beauty, that creative source.

I had an epiphany years ago…when I realized that the work I do is art…creative work. Parenting, counseling, writing, speaking, leading small groups, guiding people to deeper spirituality…working for justice in the world….all art.

We are all artists, engaged with the divine source in Creative Interchange.

It is hopeful to consider creation in process.

It is hopeful to believe that we are artists participating in what is becoming real.

It is hopeful to think of ourselves as participants in a divine process.

Let us celebrate this creative aspect of the universe. Let us savor the sheer exuberance of living…let us sing for joy, paint for joy, run for joy, write, cook, garden, tend the children for joy…all for the joy of creation.

Whitehead said “although our time here is a perpetual perishing, nothing we have ever said or done is entirely wasted or discarded, but serves to feed and nourish the world in its endless process of becoming.

Perpetual perishing, endless becoming.
May you be lured toward life.
May you free the artist in you…and live the dynamic events of your life fully and in celebration of the whole.

Enter the drop of time that is this moment…imagine what you might offer to enhance, enliven with good and beauty the moment to come.

Enter this moment and the next and the next, feel the good, hear the beauty, know that you too are an artist.

So May It Be/Amen