The Whiteheadian Street Mystic
metaphysics with calluses on your hands
see also Mysticism in it Many Forms
As George explained to me, "I am a Whiteheadian Street Mystic. I believe metaphysics should have calluses on its hands."
He didn’t mean that metaphysics was irrelevant. He meant that it comes alive only when lived in existential and practical ways. George liked philosophy and was a mathematician by training. He was drawn to Whitehead’s philosophy in part because Whitehead, too, was a mathematician. But what George especially appreciated was the aesthetic side of Whitehead’s thought—Whitehead’s emphasis on lived experience, in community with others and the earth, as the place where value is found, and where big ideas come down to earth.
Are you a Whiteheadian street mystic? Here's a way to figure it out:
You are a Wordsworthian (as in William Wordsworth) if you find the feelings people have as they interact with one another and with the natural (more-than-human) world more interesting than equations.
You are a Newtonian (as in Isaac Newton) if you find the equations more interesting.
You are a Whiteheadian (as in Alfred North Whitehead) if you find the feelings and the equations to be two aspects of a deeper process of becoming.
You are a Dayist (as in Dorothy Day) if you wonder why we’re having this conversation at all when the poor are still cold, the lonely still abandoned, and there are tables to be set for strangers, soup to be shared, and love to be made real.
You are a Dickinsonian (as in Emily Dickinson) if you would rather stay home with a window, a pen, and the bees—trusting that the slant of light in a quiet room reveals more of eternity than all the sermons in town.
You are a Heschelian (as in Abraham Joshua Heschel) if you walk through the world with awe in your step and fire in your bones—convinced that wonder is a form of wisdom, and that to pray with your feet is the holiest protest of all.
You are a Goodalist (as in Jane Goodall) if you listen more than you speak, trust the wisdom in the eyes of animals, and believe that hope is a practice born of attention, patience, and small acts of love toward the Earth.
You are a Whiteheadian Street Mystic (as in Alfred North Whitehead, again) if you find God in the soup kitchen, the compost pile, the poetry slam, and the eyes of animals, and believe metaphysics should have calluses on its hands.
Whitehead’s Philosophy
and Street Mysticism
Whiteheadian street mysticism is a form of spirituality grounded in the living world—rooted in everyday acts of compassion, creativity, community, and embodied presence—and inspired by the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.
It is a mysticism of integration, bringing together:
- The Horizontal Sacred: This very world, this very earth, this very universe, is a locus of the sacred. The sacred is not elsewhere—it is here, in bodies and bread, in struggle and tenderness, in laughter, labor, and love. The horizontal sacred is relational, ecological, and immanent.
- The Vertical Sacred: There is also a divine reality, found in the depths of life and, in some ways, beyond it. This sacred depth is what Whitehead calls "God"—not all-powerful, but all-loving; not distant, but inwardly present in each moment as a lure toward wholeness, beauty, and peace. The vertical sacred is mystical, contemplative, and transcendent without leaving the world behind.
Whiteheadian street mysticism sees God in the soup line as much as in silence, in creative action as much as in contemplative prayer. It honors the sacred in both solitude and solidarity, and it welcomes the more-than-human world into its field of reverence.
You can be a Whiteheadian street mystic while belonging to any religious tradition—or none at all. What matters is your openness to the sacred in all its forms: in thinking and feeling, in serving and reflecting, in becoming and belonging.
It is a spirituality for people who walk the streets with open hearts, who seek justice with tenderness, who pause to feel the ache and the beauty of life, and who trust that even in the broken places, something holy is moving.
Several key aspects of Whitehead’s thought lend themselves to this vision:
- Relationality at the Heart of Reality: For Whitehead, nothing exists in isolation. Every event is a synthesis of relationships. The act of serving soup is not just a kind gesture—it is a metaphysical event in which people co-create each other through their encounter.
- Community at Every Level: Whitehead sees the universe as a community of subjects, not a collection of objects. Every entity—from atoms to people to ecosystems—has some degree of interiority and participates in relationship. Local communities—like a soup kitchen, a neighborhood, or a bioregion—are microcosms of this cosmic interconnectedness. Street mysticism honors this layered community and calls us into deeper connection with both human and more-than-human neighbors.
- A Place for Solitude: “Religion is what the individual does with his solitariness,” says Whitehead. Street mysticism includes not just outward action but inward depth. It makes room for quiet reflection, prayer, stillness, and solitude—even in the noise of the street. In the silence of one’s heart, amid community life, the sacred can be heard, guiding the soul toward meaning and peace
- God as the Companion in Suffering: Whitehead’s God is not all-controlling but all-feeling—a fellow sufferer who understands. The divine is present not above the soup kitchen, but within it: in the eye contact, the shared silence, the hunger, the care.
- The Primacy of Feeling: In process thought, all experience begins with feeling. This includes physical feelings, emotional responses, and even abstract contemplation. To reflect on justice, to calculate a budget, to ponder a poem—all are forms of feeling. Street mysticism honors the full spectrum of feeling, from bodily ache to intellectual insight, as ways of touching the real.
- The Withness of the Body: Whitehead emphasizes that our experience is always bodily. We do not think from nowhere—we feel from within. The mysticism of the street is not a flight from the flesh but a deep entry into it. The warmth of soup in the hand, the ache of tired feet, the scent of bread—these are not distractions from spiritual life; they are its medium.
- The Ontological Principle: “The reasons for things are to be found in the composite nature of actual occasions,” says Whitehead. In street mysticism, this means that meaning is not somewhere else—it is here, in the actual lives of people, in the gritty particulars. If God is active anywhere, it is in these moments of real decision and relationship.
- Each Moment as a Creative Act: Every event is an act of self-creation in response to the past and the lure of new possibilities. A bowl of soup handed to a stranger can be a moment of profound creativity, shaping not only the server and the one served, but the wider web of life.
- Lived Beauty as the Locus of Value: For Whitehead, the ultimate value is not truth or power, but Beauty—the harmony and intensity of experience. Lived beauty is found not only in art or nature, but in moments of connection, courage, and care. Street mysticism seeks and creates beauty in the streets—in gestures of justice, in shared meals, in lives lived with courage and love. These are not merely ethical moments; they are aesthetic events in which the sacred takes shape.
- Ecological Civilization as an Aspirational Ideal: Many Whiteheadian thinkers point toward Ecological Civilization as a guiding vision for society—civilizations in which people live with respect and care for the larger community of life, humans included, with special attention to the vulnerable. Street mysticism embodies this aspiration in miniature: each act of kindness, each shared meal, each gesture of solidarity becomes a seed of that civilization.