Divine Eccentricity
Healthy Religion as Openness to Surprise
For some people, it is religiously important to think of God as unusual—as odd and eccentric in God's own way. They do not mean this disrespectfully. Rather, they mean that God is radically different from anything else; that God is uniquely and beautifully God's own, and in a slightly unpredictable way.
They take the universe itself as a sign of divine eccentricity. Who could have imagined such a cosmos with its trillions upon trillions of galaxies, each with its many forms of existence. There seems to be something playful and experimental at the heart of the universe. And they take the uniqueness of each person, each octopus, each paramacium, as still another sign of it. The heart of the universe likes patterns: yes. Butvit likes uniqueness, too. And differences. No two things are exactly the same. God seems to like multiplicity as much as unity.
God is odd in many ways. One, rather obvious way, is that God has no localized body. God has no feet, hands, or tail. Something of God may shine through solid objects, but God is not a single solid object that we hold God in our hands and say "Gotcha." If God has a body, it is the universe itself. As Charles Hartshorne puts it, "For God there is no external enviroment." All things are inside God's experience, even if not controlled by God.
Another thing odd about God is that God is love. We can easily imagine a different kind of God—a God who is hateful, indifferent, or absent altogether. Especially in light of the suffering in the world, it is striking, even odd, to imagine that the ultimate reality is Love itself. If we think of God as a universal Spirit or Consciousness in whose life the universe unfolds, who feels the feelings of each and all with sympathetic care and seeks the well-being of every creature, then God is indeed eccentric. Infinitely eccentric.
Of course, every actual entity is eccentric in its own way. Every living being—and indeed every actuality, from the smallest pulsation of energy to the largest galaxy—is a novel togetherness unlike any other. No two moments of experience are identical. Every actuality receives the world from its own perspective and creates its own distinctive harmony from what it inherits. Divine eccentricity is therefore not an exception to the nature of reality but its supreme expression. The difference is that God's perspective embraces the whole universe at once.
In some ways, this infinite eccentricity is analogous to human eccentricity. It's hard to know which comes first: the eccentricity of God or the eccentricity of the human. It is said that we humans are made in the image of God. Perhaps part of this image within each of us is our own capacity to be unique, to be eccentric, to create novel contrasts of our own.
When we describe another person as eccentric, we usually mean that the person lives off-center from social expectations. Such a person thinks and acts in unexpected ways, expresses a distinctive individuality, values authenticity over conformity, creates unusual combinations of ideas or ways of living, and often possesses an imaginative vision that others overlook. The eccentric is someone with a uniquely individual way of being in the world.
And so it is, I suggest, with God. Divine individuality is not that of a skin-encased ego cut off from the world by the boundaries of the skin. God has no skin. The individuality of divine eccentricity lies in its freedom from every social expectation, in its capacity to surprise, its delight in novelty over conformity, and in its inexhaustible ability to create unexpected harmonies from what the world provides. "God is the poet of the world," says Whitehead.
Or, perhaps better, the John Coltrane of the universe. Divine Consciousness is like a jazz musician who is everywhere at once, taking the countless melodies of the universe—including its tragic dissonances as well as its moments of joy—and weaving them into an ever-unfolding symphony. That symphony has no final cadence, for the universe itself is unfinished. That, too, is wonderfully eccentric. Who would have thought it?
One form of healthy religious living is to be open to divine Eccentricity. This is to expect that God will not always confirm our assumptions or reinforce our familiar ways of seeing the world. It is to remain receptive to surprises—to fresh possibilities for love, beauty, justice, compassion, and truth that we might never have imagined on our own. To be open to divine eccentricity is to trust that the deepest reality of the universe is more creative, more generous, and more adventurous than our habits of thought allow.
Such openness also invites humility. If God is infinitely eccentric, then no religion, theology, philosophy, or ideology can fully contain the divine life. Every tradition catches genuine glimpses of God, but none exhausts the divine mystery. To live religiously is therefore to combine conviction with wonder, devotion with curiosity, and faithfulness with an enduring willingness to be surprised.
Perhaps this is why spiritual growth so often begins when our expectations are gently overturned. We discover that God is not merely the fulfillment of our wishes but the source of possibilities we never knew existed. The divine lure is often unexpected, inviting us beyond conformity toward a richer, more compassionate, and more imaginative way of living. To become more open to divine eccentricity is, in this sense, to become more fully eccentric ourselves.
They take the universe itself as a sign of divine eccentricity. Who could have imagined such a cosmos with its trillions upon trillions of galaxies, each with its many forms of existence. There seems to be something playful and experimental at the heart of the universe. And they take the uniqueness of each person, each octopus, each paramacium, as still another sign of it. The heart of the universe likes patterns: yes. Butvit likes uniqueness, too. And differences. No two things are exactly the same. God seems to like multiplicity as much as unity.
God is odd in many ways. One, rather obvious way, is that God has no localized body. God has no feet, hands, or tail. Something of God may shine through solid objects, but God is not a single solid object that we hold God in our hands and say "Gotcha." If God has a body, it is the universe itself. As Charles Hartshorne puts it, "For God there is no external enviroment." All things are inside God's experience, even if not controlled by God.
Another thing odd about God is that God is love. We can easily imagine a different kind of God—a God who is hateful, indifferent, or absent altogether. Especially in light of the suffering in the world, it is striking, even odd, to imagine that the ultimate reality is Love itself. If we think of God as a universal Spirit or Consciousness in whose life the universe unfolds, who feels the feelings of each and all with sympathetic care and seeks the well-being of every creature, then God is indeed eccentric. Infinitely eccentric.
Of course, every actual entity is eccentric in its own way. Every living being—and indeed every actuality, from the smallest pulsation of energy to the largest galaxy—is a novel togetherness unlike any other. No two moments of experience are identical. Every actuality receives the world from its own perspective and creates its own distinctive harmony from what it inherits. Divine eccentricity is therefore not an exception to the nature of reality but its supreme expression. The difference is that God's perspective embraces the whole universe at once.
In some ways, this infinite eccentricity is analogous to human eccentricity. It's hard to know which comes first: the eccentricity of God or the eccentricity of the human. It is said that we humans are made in the image of God. Perhaps part of this image within each of us is our own capacity to be unique, to be eccentric, to create novel contrasts of our own.
When we describe another person as eccentric, we usually mean that the person lives off-center from social expectations. Such a person thinks and acts in unexpected ways, expresses a distinctive individuality, values authenticity over conformity, creates unusual combinations of ideas or ways of living, and often possesses an imaginative vision that others overlook. The eccentric is someone with a uniquely individual way of being in the world.
And so it is, I suggest, with God. Divine individuality is not that of a skin-encased ego cut off from the world by the boundaries of the skin. God has no skin. The individuality of divine eccentricity lies in its freedom from every social expectation, in its capacity to surprise, its delight in novelty over conformity, and in its inexhaustible ability to create unexpected harmonies from what the world provides. "God is the poet of the world," says Whitehead.
Or, perhaps better, the John Coltrane of the universe. Divine Consciousness is like a jazz musician who is everywhere at once, taking the countless melodies of the universe—including its tragic dissonances as well as its moments of joy—and weaving them into an ever-unfolding symphony. That symphony has no final cadence, for the universe itself is unfinished. That, too, is wonderfully eccentric. Who would have thought it?
One form of healthy religious living is to be open to divine Eccentricity. This is to expect that God will not always confirm our assumptions or reinforce our familiar ways of seeing the world. It is to remain receptive to surprises—to fresh possibilities for love, beauty, justice, compassion, and truth that we might never have imagined on our own. To be open to divine eccentricity is to trust that the deepest reality of the universe is more creative, more generous, and more adventurous than our habits of thought allow.
Such openness also invites humility. If God is infinitely eccentric, then no religion, theology, philosophy, or ideology can fully contain the divine life. Every tradition catches genuine glimpses of God, but none exhausts the divine mystery. To live religiously is therefore to combine conviction with wonder, devotion with curiosity, and faithfulness with an enduring willingness to be surprised.
Perhaps this is why spiritual growth so often begins when our expectations are gently overturned. We discover that God is not merely the fulfillment of our wishes but the source of possibilities we never knew existed. The divine lure is often unexpected, inviting us beyond conformity toward a richer, more compassionate, and more imaginative way of living. To become more open to divine eccentricity is, in this sense, to become more fully eccentric ourselves.
Quietly Eccentric
The Uniqueness of Each Person
It is true that everthing is related to everything else and that no one is an island. It is true that we are relational beings, emerging out of our felt connections. But it is also true that every person is unique. Every person is, in this sense, slightly eccentric.
By eccentric I do not mean bizarre, erratic, or socially unconventional—although such people certainly have their place in life. I mean that every person has a center—an experiential standpoint—that is different from every other person. Each is a unique and evolving center of experience, a novel togetherness of relations, who inherits the world and re-creates it in his or her own way.
Most eccentricity is quiet. It appears in the countless ways living beings become themselves rather than mere repetitions of what came before. It is present in every fresh perception, every new feeling, every unexpected thought, every act of kindness, and every creative response to the circumstances of life.
Occasionally, however, eccentricity becomes impossible to overlook. Then we give it a name. We call the person eccentric. Sometimes we add odd or unconventional or strange. We may laugh, admire, criticize, or imitate. But beneath our reactions lies a deeper truth: what we are witnessing is creativity made visible. The person's originality has become outwardly apparent. What is obvious in that person is, in quieter ways, true of us all.
None of us is entirely normal. Being "normal" is largely a matter of social convention and our conformity to it. We dress like other people, speak their language, observe familiar customs, adopt accepted manners, and often think within the assumptions of our culture. Yet beneath this outward conformity lies an irreducible originality. No one has inherited precisely the same past actual world that we have, and no one can respond to it in precisely the way we do. No one has the same experience. Every person is a novel togetherness of relations. Every person is a unique perspective on the universe. This unique perspective is our existential eccentricity.
Existential eccentricity is not unique to human beings. From a Whiteheadian perspective, every living being is eccentric in this deeper sense. Every bird, tree, octopus, wolf, and whale experiences the world from its own center and responds to it in its own way. Indeed, Whitehead suggests that this inwardness extends beyond life itself. Even the smallest events in nature, even molecules and atoms, possess their own perspective, however faint, inheriting the world from their own standpoint and contributing something of their own to the ongoing creative advance of the universe.
Human beings differ from these other organisms not because we alone are eccentric, but because we can be eccentric in uniquely human ways. We can reflect upon our eccentrity,, celebrate it, suppress it, cultivate it, and express it through language, art, science, friendship, morality, and religion. Our originality is one expression of a much deeper creativity at work throughout the cosmos. The universe itself is a community of unique centers of experience, each transending the center of every other, each participating in the continual becoming of the world.
For Whitehead, this cosmic creativity is not without direction. It is accompanied by a divine lure—a gentle call toward richer forms of existence, toward creative, compassionate, and life-giving ways of becoming. Because every center of experience is unique, this lure is never the same for everyone. It is infinitely adaptive, inviting each person, each living being, and indeed each center of experience toward the best possibility available in that moment. We can speak of this divine lure as God or Heaven or the Universe.
The Universe does not erase our eccentricity but affirms it, calling each of us to become ourselves more fully, more compassionately, and more creatively in relationship with others. In this sense, the aim of life is not conformity but the flourishing of unique lives whose originality contributes to the beauty of the whole.
If healthy eccentricity is part of our calling, why do we so often fail to claim it? At least three obstacles stand in the way.
The Pressure to Conform. From childhood onward, we learn the values, habits, and expectations of our families, schools, workplaces, religious communities, and cultures. Much of this learning is indispensable. It enables us to live together. Yet the very forces that nurture us can also discourage originality, inviting us to become copies of what others expect rather than unique expressions of who we might become.
The Fear of Standing Apart. Even when we sense a different possibility for our lives, we often hesitate to embrace it. We fear misunderstanding, rejection, ridicule, or failure. Rather than trusting our own deepest possibilities, we hide them behind the safety of convention.
A Misunderstanding of Creativity. Many people imagine that creativity belongs only to artists, inventors, entrepreneurs, or other unusually gifted individuals. Whitehead offers a different vision. Creativity is at work in every moment of experience. Every person—and indeed every center of experience—participates in the creative advance of the universe by responding to what is inherited in a new way. Healthy eccentricity is not the privilege of a gifted few. It is the human expression of a creativity that belongs to the very nature of reality.
To claim our healthy eccentricity, then, is not to reject community, nor to seek attention for its own sake. It is to participate more consciously in the creative adventure of life, trusting that our own distinctive way of becoming can contribute, together with the originality of others, to a more compassionate and beautiful world.
The Dignity of Each Person
To recognize the creative eccentricity of every person is to recognize the dignity of every person. If each of us is a unique center of experience—a novel togetherness of relations—then no one is merely an instance of a type, a replaceable part of a social machine, or a means to someone else's end. Every person is an unrepeatable expression of the creative advance of the universe.
This dignity does not depend upon intelligence, productivity, wealth, popularity, race, nationality, gender, religion, age, health, or social status. Nor does it disappear when people become frail, disabled, confused, or dependent upon others. It belongs to each person simply because each person is a unique center of experience whose life can never be duplicated.
To recognize this dignity is also to recognize our responsibility toward one another. We are called not merely to tolerate one another's eccentricities, but to make room for them, to encourage them, and to help them flourish in ways that contribute to the well-being of the larger community. Healthy communities are not communities of uniformity. They are communities in which diverse forms of creativity are welcomed, nurtured, and woven together in mutual respect.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, this respect extends beyond the human world. Other living beings possess their own forms of inwardness, their own ways of experiencing and responding to life. They, too, deserve our care. Indeed, the entire universe can be understood as a communion of unique centers of experience, each contributing in its own way to the ongoing adventure of existence.
Perhaps this is one way of understanding love. Love is the willingness to recognize and cherish the unique dignity of another, while also encouraging that person—or that living being—to become more fully who he, she, or it can become. In Whitehead's philosophy, this is also the way of God: the ever-present lure toward richer forms of beauty, compassion, and creative fulfillment. To honor the dignity of each person, then, is to participate in the divine adventure itself.
This dignity does not depend upon intelligence, productivity, wealth, popularity, race, nationality, gender, religion, age, health, or social status. Nor does it disappear when people become frail, disabled, confused, or dependent upon others. It belongs to each person simply because each person is a unique center of experience whose life can never be duplicated.
To recognize this dignity is also to recognize our responsibility toward one another. We are called not merely to tolerate one another's eccentricities, but to make room for them, to encourage them, and to help them flourish in ways that contribute to the well-being of the larger community. Healthy communities are not communities of uniformity. They are communities in which diverse forms of creativity are welcomed, nurtured, and woven together in mutual respect.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, this respect extends beyond the human world. Other living beings possess their own forms of inwardness, their own ways of experiencing and responding to life. They, too, deserve our care. Indeed, the entire universe can be understood as a communion of unique centers of experience, each contributing in its own way to the ongoing adventure of existence.
Perhaps this is one way of understanding love. Love is the willingness to recognize and cherish the unique dignity of another, while also encouraging that person—or that living being—to become more fully who he, she, or it can become. In Whitehead's philosophy, this is also the way of God: the ever-present lure toward richer forms of beauty, compassion, and creative fulfillment. To honor the dignity of each person, then, is to participate in the divine adventure itself.
The Metaphysics of Eccentricity
In Whitehead's philosophy, each living person is understood as an ongoing succession of occasions of experience, otherwise called concrescing subjects. The concrescing subject is who the person is in that moment. It is not simply an object in the world; it is an act of self-enjoyment and self-creativity as lived from within. Each subject in the life history of a person has its own unique standpoint in the extensive continuum and its own subjective aim toward satisfying intensity. This subjective aim is the person's own deepest desire in the moment at hand: to become as fully alive as possible, relative to the situation inherited from the past, the circumstances of the present, and the possibilities for the immediate future.
In the subjective immediacy of its occurrence, an occasion of experience, or concrescing subject, builds upon its inherited personal past through physical feelings and hybrid physical feelings, while also responding creatively to other people, the surrounding world, and new possibilities presented in the present moment. The result is a continuous yet ever-changing personal life in which no two moments—and no two persons—are ever exactly alike. In each moment, the subjective aim toward satisfying intensity seeks its fulfillment through contrasts that are felt and integrated with what is received from the world and from the personal past.
We live in a universe of eccentrics. Human eccentricity, whether quiet or flamboyant, is not an exception to the very nature of reality. It is one of its clearest expressions. Every person, every living being, and, in Whitehead's metaphysical vision, every actual entity has its own standpoint, integrates the world in its own way, and contributes something irreducibly new to the creative advance of the universe.
In the subjective immediacy of its occurrence, an occasion of experience, or concrescing subject, builds upon its inherited personal past through physical feelings and hybrid physical feelings, while also responding creatively to other people, the surrounding world, and new possibilities presented in the present moment. The result is a continuous yet ever-changing personal life in which no two moments—and no two persons—are ever exactly alike. In each moment, the subjective aim toward satisfying intensity seeks its fulfillment through contrasts that are felt and integrated with what is received from the world and from the personal past.
We live in a universe of eccentrics. Human eccentricity, whether quiet or flamboyant, is not an exception to the very nature of reality. It is one of its clearest expressions. Every person, every living being, and, in Whitehead's metaphysical vision, every actual entity has its own standpoint, integrates the world in its own way, and contributes something irreducibly new to the creative advance of the universe.
A Universe of Eccentrics
In the Whiteheadian sense developed in this essay, an eccentric is a unique center of experience who seeks satisfying intensity from its own irreducible standpoint through the enjoyment of contrasts woven into its experience. This distinctive enjoyment of contrasts is, metaphorically speaking, its eccentricity.
On this view, human beings live and move and have their being within a vast community of eccentrics, extending far beyond any possibility of counting them. Every actual occasion is an eccentric in this metaphysical sense. The pulsations of energy within an atom are eccentric. Atoms, molecules, living cells, plants, animals, and human beings are likewise eccentric, either as unique centers of experience or as societies of such centers. Planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe itself are likewise eccentric: unique and unusual in how they create contrasts others.
The entire cosmos is thus marked by metaphysical eccentricity: the impulse of each center of experience to receive the world from its own standpoint, to weave inherited realities into fresh contrasts, and to enjoy the satisfying intensity of its own becoming.
On this view, human beings live and move and have their being within a vast community of eccentrics, extending far beyond any possibility of counting them. Every actual occasion is an eccentric in this metaphysical sense. The pulsations of energy within an atom are eccentric. Atoms, molecules, living cells, plants, animals, and human beings are likewise eccentric, either as unique centers of experience or as societies of such centers. Planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe itself are likewise eccentric: unique and unusual in how they create contrasts others.
The entire cosmos is thus marked by metaphysical eccentricity: the impulse of each center of experience to receive the world from its own standpoint, to weave inherited realities into fresh contrasts, and to enjoy the satisfying intensity of its own becoming.