All Things Being Made New
the faith, imagination, and science to say, "no, really ... all things are being made new."
Okay, this week’s post packs a lot in a small amount. It’s inspired by process-influenced open and relational theology and by how I wrote about it in indigo: the color of grief. (And I’m trying to get at it on TikTok, too!)
Love is with us moment by moment, which helps us interpret the past and weave it into the present as creatively as possible.
The past has a say, but not the final say, because how we interpret what's gone on before influences our life and the future. Therefore, one's death isn't necessarily the end. Rather, it might be a transition, for if that death is felt deep within the heart of love such that love is compelled to create something new, then that "something new" is forever linked to what went before.
“The many, “As Al Whitehead says, “become one and are increased by one."
When experienced through the lens of love, death could be seen as a form of “getting out of the way” of the present, allowing the future to unfold in a novel way.
Your loved one's death might be more of a transition than an ending. Yes, of course, some things end forever, but other things live on, embedded, and embodied within you (and the entire cosmos).
Your conviction a bit of theirs (ex: have you ever thought about what your loved one would do at a particular moment? And then felt inspired to do something based on who they were?)
Your laughter of bit of theirs (ex: I was recently with a small group of people who knew our daughter very well ... I looked around the table as people smiled and talked. I had the real sense that our daughter had very much influenced our individual and collective personality and humor, and though she's been gone for years, her joy was living on within us in that present moment.)
Your physical growth of bit of theirs (ex: we literally share physiological information with our loved ones. I mean, think about a mom and baby in the womb, each forever encoded with the other's biology and neurology. Those cells and neurons fire, live, perish, and catalyze the growth of more cells and neurons. Everything builds upon everything that went before, which presents the possibility that some new line of thinking can inspire some new habit that can inform some new future.)
All of this (and much, much more) enlivens you forward into the lives of others… with whom you are embedded and embodied, and then they do the same for others. Multiply this by …
billions of people,
and billions of trillions of creatures in the world,
and countless interactive entities in the cosmos,
and what you have is an impossible-to-imagine overlap of living things, propelling other living things forward—nested systems within nested systems, perishing, entangling, and enlivening the constituents of even more nested systems.
I name all this entanglement as love. Furthermore, the novelty that has emerged and is emerging out of all this love opens the door for me to think that some endlessly creative energy is inviting the whole thing forward. What might this endlessly creative energy be???
You can call it whatever you want, but I'm inclined to name all of this as God, and if (S)He exists, nothing really ever completely dies. If (S)He exists, death is passing into the whole and co-creating with the whole to birth something new.
Who could ever say where all of this possibility might lead?!
So, by faith (informed by my imagination and science), I say … I will yet see the goodness of love in the land of the living. And by faith (informed by my imagination and science), I say … all things are being made new.
▻ Great to be on the (a)theist podcast recently with Erin and Kelley.
▻ I talked about relational love at one of my favorite faith communities last Sunday.
Thank you so much, I found this very powerful. Writing a dissertation interpreting the Gospel of Mark in poetry, I especially found this resonant for biblical interpretation: 'The past has a say, but not the final say, because how we interpret what's gone on before influences our life and the future.' And so it does, as, with many translations of the canonical text, each speaks to us in a different way. Further as we see with gender/sexuality based hermeneutics, that death of how we interpret the text can be a great thing, as we move away of stigmatizing women and queer people, and others. Time, and we, move on. That being said, death can be incredibly painful, especially if one loses a child. I'm so sorry.