​God as the Poet of the World

Ten Ways to Think about God Poetically
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Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

​He does not create the world, he saves it: or, more accurately,
he is the poet of the world, with tender patience leading it
​ by his vision of truth, beauty, and goodness.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality

God the Poet 

ten ways to think about God poetically
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There are many ways to think of God poetically.
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One way is to imagine God as a Spirit, distinct in some way from the universe, whose character is more poetic and loving than rule-based or authoritarian.

Another approach is to conceive of the universe itself as poetic—that is, as having syntaxes and melodies that are poignant and not reducible to algorithms or logic. Here, we find the Poet in the poetry.

A third way is to combine these perspectives, seeing God in the poetry of the universe and the poetry of the universe in God, while recognizing that both have their own creativity and integrity. When we speak of one we are also speaking of the other indirectly.

Process theology prefers this latter view. When we talk about the poetry of the universe we are talking about God indirectly; and when we talk about God we are talking about the poetry of the universe indirectly. The indirection is itself important, Some things are best understood when unsaid.

Process theology also cautions us to avoid turning God into an object among objects within our mental horizons, implying that we have mastered the Poet. It also reminds us that each entity in the universe, whether small or large, is also a poem, deserving of some level of respect. Here are ten ways to think of God poetically that make sense from a process perspective. Please add your own to the list.
 

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1. The Cosmic Lure Toward Truth, Goodness, and Beauty
   • The Magnetic Pull of Our Highest Ideals
   • The North Star of Human Ethics
   • The Beckoning of Truth
   • The Lure of Beauty
   • The Call of Kindness
   • The Homing Instinct of the Soul
2. The Deep Listening
   • A Fellow Sufferer who Understands
   • The Sacred Space of Emotional Resonance
   • The Quiet Harbor of Shared Pain
   • The Invisible Hand of Compassion
   • Divine Companionship
   • The Echo of Kindred Spirits
3. The Weaving of Moments
   • The Universe as a Tapestry in the Making
   • The Loom of Time and Memory as Woven in Divine Love
   • The Living Whole into which our actions feed
   • The Threads of Destiny (the past) and Free Will (the future)
   • The Patterns of the Eternal Now
4. White Space of the Universe
   • Openness to Novelty
   • The Fertile Ground for Imagination's Bloom
   • The Sanctuary for New Ideas
   • The Quiet Before Creative Storms
   • The Breath Between Life's Beats
   • The primordial nature of God
5. Negative Capability
   • Openness to Uncertainty
   • The Courage to Dwell in Doubt
   • The Acceptance of Life's Unknowables
   • The Liberation of Not Needing to Know
   • The Peace in Ambiguity
   • The realm of Intuition not Mastery
   • What even God does not know
6. The Spirit of Creative Transformation
   • The Flame that Fuels Rebirth
   • Resurrection after Death
   • The Catalyst for New Beginnings
   • The Breath of Innovation in Worlds
   • The Dance of Endings and Beginnings
   • Healing and being healed
7. Rhythm of the Universe
   • (Dancing with) the Melodies of Life
   • The Freedom in Each Step
   • The Waltz of Joy and Sorrow
   • The Footsteps of Celestial Choreography
   • The rhythms of the Seasons
   • Call and response
8. Syntax of the Universe
   • Patterns that Connect
   • The Grammars of Interconnectedness
   • The Logics in Nature's Designs
   • The Laws of Nature (as Poems)
   • The Matrix of Cosmic Syntax
   • Mathematics as the Holy
9. Tragic Beauty
   • The Poignancy of Suffering
   • The Elegance of the Fleeting
   • The Haunting Allure of Imperfection
   • The Grace in Struggle
   • The Beauty in Life's Contradictions
   • The Unspeakable Sadness that is never Forgotten
     
10. Love
    • The Unseen Glue of the Cosmos
    • The Eternal Fire in Life's Frigid Abyss
    • The Symphony Where Each Note Matters
    • The Alchemy of Heart and Soul
    • The Depth of Infinite Intimacy
    • ​The Deep Tenderness

Theo-Reciprocity
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​Does the universe have an imagination? Is there something in it that seeks color, charm, diversity, and difference? Whitehead believes so. He calls it the primordial nature of God. It is not outside the universe; it is the mind of the universe.

For Whitehead this mind is more like that of a poet who loves life, creativity, playfulness, and adventure, than like an engineer obsessed with efficiency, or a moralist concerned with rules and regulations, or a judge preoccupied with reward and punishment. God seeks to save the world through tenderness not force. The poet is more like a lover and a friend than a dictator or authoritarian. The poet is "a fellow sufferer who understands."


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In order to understand the creative and playful side of this poet. consider the diversity of the universe: its novel forms of order and the ordered form of novelty. Who but such a poet would ever think of:

1. Quarks in a proton
2. Atoms in a water molecule
3. Cells in an oak leaf
4. An oak tree in a forest
5. Microorganisms everywhere (bacteria, mitochondria, etc.)
6. Corals in the Great Barrier Reef
7. Oceans and Rivers 
8. Forests 
9. Individual Plants, each unique 
10. Individual animals (including human beings), each unique
11. Planet Earth
12. The Moon
13. The Sun
14. Asteroids in the Asteroid Belt
15. Comets in the Kuiper Belt
16. Stars in the Milky Way galaxy
17. The Andromeda galaxy
18. Galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster
19. Forms of life that exist on other planets in other galaxies
20. Black holes
21. The laws of electromagnetism and gravity
22. Numbers (including Pi) and Shapes

Consider also the many forms of emotion that are in living beings on our planet and perhaps also other planets: joy, anger, sadness, fear, trust, disgust, surprise, and hope. The diversity of the universe is subjective as well as objective, inner as well as outer. In Whitehead’s philosophy, the universe as a whole is the outcome of the divine imagination, as it as lured the creative energies of a pre-existing chaos with which it has co-existed from a past without beginning.  

The "wholeness" of the universe is more than togetherness. It is an inter-weaving, a tapestry-in-the-making, where each entity is a thread that enriches, and is part of, all the others. We could call it a system, but the word "system" is too mechanical. For Whitehead the word "organism" is better. The universe is a living organism, with all things present in all others, and with the whole itself being in process. This living whole, then, has an imagination. It seeks beauty and contrasts. This imagination is God.

In calling this imagination God, Whitehead's point is not that there is something called God which happens to have an imagination. It is that God is the imagination of the universe, plus more. God is the poet of the universe, imagining it into existence, in cooperation with other creatures, and as guided by a vision of truth, beauty, and goodness. The color, charm, mystery, and diversity are part of the beauty - as is the way all are woven into a single, evolving whole. The whole is a poem-in-the-making, and so is each creature within the whole. 

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This imagination is not, for Whitehead, all there is to God. God has another nature, the consequent nature, which receives all that happens in the universe in an understanding way and is affected by all that happens. This side of God, says Whitehead, is a “fellow sufferer who understands.” It feels the feelings of each and every entity in the universe and weaves what is felt into a living whole, as much as possible. This is God as love. Whereas the divine imagination is curious, the companionable side of God is tender. It loves each being with, as Whitehead puts it, "a tender care that nothing be lost."

And even this is not the whole story, for what is received in this loving side of God is then given back to the world in terms of fresh possibilities relevant to the situation at hand. This is God as a guiding spirit in the universe, an inwardly felt lure, present in each and every entity, for what is best in the situation at hand, given what is possible. You might think of is divine recycling or, least, divine reciprocity, Whitehead puts it this way:

"The love of God for the world. It is the particular providence for particular occasions. What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love in the world passes into the love in heaven and floods back again into the world. In this sense, God is the great companion—the fellow-sufferer who understands." (Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality)

Thus, for Whitehead, God is the imagination of the universe, a companion to the universe, and a guiding spirit in the universe. The guidance of God is not all-powerful. The other entities in the universe also have their creativity, their power, and God can only work with them. God does not create the world but is instead the Poet of the world, the great companion, the fellow sufferer who understands.

- Jay McDaniel