Holy the Weird
A Process Theology of the Unusual
The Value of Being Out of Place
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one meaning of weird is “out of the ordinary course, strange, unusual; hence, odd, fantastic.” Synonyms include bizarre, remote, antic, freaky, flaky, woo-woo, and zonky.
The word itself comes from the Old English wyrd, meaning “fate” or “destiny,” a sense preserved in Shakespeare’s “Weird Sisters” of Macbeth. But when I speak of weirdness here, I have in mind the more recent meaning—the strangeness, oddity, and out-of-placeness that unsettles expectations and disrupts the ordinary.
I think Jesus was weird when he taught us that we should love our enemies and when he washed the feet of his disciples. And God is a little weird, too, especially in deciding to share so fully in the human experience when, after all, God could have simply loved the world from a distance. I like this kind of weirdness. I think we need a lot more weirdness in society.
Some people use the word pejoratively, but I hear it as a compliment—a word of affirmation. Is that weird? I feel a little suffocated when there isn’t enough of it—when everything feels too ordered, too familiar, too comfortable, too predictable, too explainable. Not odd enough. There’s something deceptive about such orderliness. It makes the world too small, leaving no space for wonder, novelty, or surprise. Worse still, it can quietly suppress difference and diversity, all in the name of a stifling uniformity. When everything fits too neatly, something vital is usually being edited out—something unruly, alive, and essential to the richness of existence.
That’s why I think it’s worth developing a process theology of weirdness—a perspective that makes space for the strange, the unpredictable, the off-kilter. Or more precisely: a theology of life-enhancing weirdness—the kind that nourishes the soul, opens us to surprise, and invites fresh ways of being. I say "life-enhancing" because I know that some kinds of weirdness, in some circumstances, can be destructive. Especially violent weirdness. But so much weirdness is to the good. This doesn't mean it is comforting. It can be unsettling, destabilizing and shocking. Still it helps us break free of rigidities
Degrees and Kinds of Weirdness
I realize that there are degrees and kinds of weirdness. People, things, and circumstances can be more or less weird, relative to what we’ve come to expect. Weirdness is never absolute—it’s always relational. Something is weird to someone, in light of something else that feels “normal.” And when the familiar is provincial, narrow, or artificially confined, the appearance of difference can seem stranger than it actually is. Weirdness, then, can be a mirror—not just of the world, but of our assumptions about it.
And there are kinds of weirdness. There’s ecological weirdness—like the behavior of slime molds or the bioluminescent glow of deep-sea creatures. There’s circumstantial weirdness—like the strange silence that falls in a crowded room just as you say something personal, or a coincidence too eerie to ignore. There’s aesthetic weirdness—art that disturbs, puzzles, or entrances. There’s personal weirdness—the quirks, compulsions, and ways of seeing that don’t conform. There’s spiritual weirdness, too—visions, dreams, intuitions, visitations from the unconscious, or encounters with mystery that resist tidy interpretation. Each kind can be life-giving, depending on its context, its trajectory, and the way it’s held.
For my part, I’m especially drawn to weirdness that humbles us, weirdness that breaks open our assumptions, weirdness that calls us toward curiosity and compassion. The kind that doesn’t merely confuse, but awakens.
Weird People
Weirdness is not only a quality of art, nature, or circumstance; it can also be embodied in people. Some individuals carry a strangeness that unsettles and fascinates those around them. The clown, the mystic, the visionary, the outsider, the eccentric—these are figures whose lives resist convention. They do not fit easily into the categories of propriety, and for that reason they are often dismissed or marginalized. Yet weird people frequently reveal truths that more “normal” ways of being overlook.
History and tradition give us many examples. Socrates was considered profoundly weird by his fellow Athenians, wandering the city barefoot, questioning everyone, and turning conventional wisdom inside out. St. Francis of Assisi embodied holy weirdness, stripping naked in the marketplace to renounce wealth, talking with animals, and living a life of radical poverty and joy. In the Christian mystical tradition, Hildegard of Bingen was weird in her ecstatic visions of cosmic harmony, music, and healing plants, producing writings and compositions that remain singular in their strangeness. Julian of Norwich, another mystic, proclaimed the paradoxical revelation that “all shall be well,” even in the face of plague and suffering, embodying a theological weirdness that both unsettled and comforted.
In a different way, Shakespeare’s Fools—from the clown in King Lear to Feste in Twelfth Night—perform weirdness through humor, exposing folly with wit and paradox. Modern artists and performers continue this lineage: Salvador Dalí, with his dreamlike mustache and surreal canvases; Sun Ra, who declared he was from Saturn and played cosmic jazz; and Yoko Ono, whose avant-garde performances disrupted cultural expectations of music, art, and femininity. Each, in their own way, made the world strange in order to open it to new possibilities.
An Ontology of Weirdness
There’s an ontology here. In process philosophy, the universe is not an already-completed fact but rather a creative advance into novelty, and this novelty is never completely determined by the past. Weirdness is one of the ways that this novelty unfolds - irrupting in ways and unthought and untried. The future arrives with difference.
In Process and Reality Whitehead proposes that there are eight kinds of existing things. He calls them the categories of existence: actual entities, eternal objects, nexuses, propositions, contrasts, multiplicities, subjective forms, and prehensions. All are weird. Actual entities are weird because they happen all at once and concresce the entire universe into their subjective becoming, Eternal objects are weird because they stand outside time and yet 'participate' in our every existence. Nexuses are weird because all they have to do is share one common characteristic and they become a society. Contrasts are weird because they bring together different things, sometimes thought clashing, and make them beautiful. Multiplicities are weird because they are "many" without yet being one. Subjective forms are weird because they are the very spice of life - emotions - and add flesh to dry bones. And prehensions are weird because they hold the universe together and because they are both energy and feelings. All of this is unexpected, Whitehead's entire philosophy is kind of weird.
Divine Weirdness
There is a theology to this as well. In Whitehead’s vision, God is not a remote architect or controlling force, but the poet of the world—the inwardly felt lure toward creativity and intensity of experience. God calls each creature toward its next becoming, offering not a script but a possibility. That divine lure is not always sensible or safe. Sometimes, it’s wild. Sometimes, it’s weird.
And, like I said above, I think it's a little weird that God decided to share in the human experience and, so I believe, all experience everywhere, including the suffering of animals, microbes, aliens, and any other creature who experiences pain. I can understand a poet who lures from a distance, but this is a poet who becomes the poem. Surely there's something a bit surprising about this, a little off-kilter from what is expected of high authorities. Not all of them choose to become the least of these.
Weirdness may give us new eyes for more traditional ways of thinking about God. Yes, God is goodness, truth, and beauty. But not the kind that fits into neat formulas or polite categories. Divine goodness contains surprise. Divine beauty includes dissonance. Divine truth disrupts false clarity. In this way, God is not only the ground of order, but also the pulse of divine disorder—holy improvisation, strange harmony, generative chaos.
To say that God is weird is not to mock the sacred, but to honor it. It is to remember that the divine is not reducible to our projections. God may show up in a burning bush or a talking donkey. Weirdness, in this sacred sense, is a form of invitation. It’s how the universe—and God—keeps us from sleepwalking through existence.
We need a theology that can hold this. A theology that doesn’t domesticate the divine, but lets God be strange. A theology that makes peace with the unsettling, and even welcomes it. Because sometimes, it’s the weirdness that saves us.
- Jay McDaniel
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one meaning of weird is “out of the ordinary course, strange, unusual; hence, odd, fantastic.” Synonyms include bizarre, remote, antic, freaky, flaky, woo-woo, and zonky.
The word itself comes from the Old English wyrd, meaning “fate” or “destiny,” a sense preserved in Shakespeare’s “Weird Sisters” of Macbeth. But when I speak of weirdness here, I have in mind the more recent meaning—the strangeness, oddity, and out-of-placeness that unsettles expectations and disrupts the ordinary.
I think Jesus was weird when he taught us that we should love our enemies and when he washed the feet of his disciples. And God is a little weird, too, especially in deciding to share so fully in the human experience when, after all, God could have simply loved the world from a distance. I like this kind of weirdness. I think we need a lot more weirdness in society.
Some people use the word pejoratively, but I hear it as a compliment—a word of affirmation. Is that weird? I feel a little suffocated when there isn’t enough of it—when everything feels too ordered, too familiar, too comfortable, too predictable, too explainable. Not odd enough. There’s something deceptive about such orderliness. It makes the world too small, leaving no space for wonder, novelty, or surprise. Worse still, it can quietly suppress difference and diversity, all in the name of a stifling uniformity. When everything fits too neatly, something vital is usually being edited out—something unruly, alive, and essential to the richness of existence.
That’s why I think it’s worth developing a process theology of weirdness—a perspective that makes space for the strange, the unpredictable, the off-kilter. Or more precisely: a theology of life-enhancing weirdness—the kind that nourishes the soul, opens us to surprise, and invites fresh ways of being. I say "life-enhancing" because I know that some kinds of weirdness, in some circumstances, can be destructive. Especially violent weirdness. But so much weirdness is to the good. This doesn't mean it is comforting. It can be unsettling, destabilizing and shocking. Still it helps us break free of rigidities
Degrees and Kinds of Weirdness
I realize that there are degrees and kinds of weirdness. People, things, and circumstances can be more or less weird, relative to what we’ve come to expect. Weirdness is never absolute—it’s always relational. Something is weird to someone, in light of something else that feels “normal.” And when the familiar is provincial, narrow, or artificially confined, the appearance of difference can seem stranger than it actually is. Weirdness, then, can be a mirror—not just of the world, but of our assumptions about it.
And there are kinds of weirdness. There’s ecological weirdness—like the behavior of slime molds or the bioluminescent glow of deep-sea creatures. There’s circumstantial weirdness—like the strange silence that falls in a crowded room just as you say something personal, or a coincidence too eerie to ignore. There’s aesthetic weirdness—art that disturbs, puzzles, or entrances. There’s personal weirdness—the quirks, compulsions, and ways of seeing that don’t conform. There’s spiritual weirdness, too—visions, dreams, intuitions, visitations from the unconscious, or encounters with mystery that resist tidy interpretation. Each kind can be life-giving, depending on its context, its trajectory, and the way it’s held.
For my part, I’m especially drawn to weirdness that humbles us, weirdness that breaks open our assumptions, weirdness that calls us toward curiosity and compassion. The kind that doesn’t merely confuse, but awakens.
Weird People
Weirdness is not only a quality of art, nature, or circumstance; it can also be embodied in people. Some individuals carry a strangeness that unsettles and fascinates those around them. The clown, the mystic, the visionary, the outsider, the eccentric—these are figures whose lives resist convention. They do not fit easily into the categories of propriety, and for that reason they are often dismissed or marginalized. Yet weird people frequently reveal truths that more “normal” ways of being overlook.
History and tradition give us many examples. Socrates was considered profoundly weird by his fellow Athenians, wandering the city barefoot, questioning everyone, and turning conventional wisdom inside out. St. Francis of Assisi embodied holy weirdness, stripping naked in the marketplace to renounce wealth, talking with animals, and living a life of radical poverty and joy. In the Christian mystical tradition, Hildegard of Bingen was weird in her ecstatic visions of cosmic harmony, music, and healing plants, producing writings and compositions that remain singular in their strangeness. Julian of Norwich, another mystic, proclaimed the paradoxical revelation that “all shall be well,” even in the face of plague and suffering, embodying a theological weirdness that both unsettled and comforted.
In a different way, Shakespeare’s Fools—from the clown in King Lear to Feste in Twelfth Night—perform weirdness through humor, exposing folly with wit and paradox. Modern artists and performers continue this lineage: Salvador Dalí, with his dreamlike mustache and surreal canvases; Sun Ra, who declared he was from Saturn and played cosmic jazz; and Yoko Ono, whose avant-garde performances disrupted cultural expectations of music, art, and femininity. Each, in their own way, made the world strange in order to open it to new possibilities.
An Ontology of Weirdness
There’s an ontology here. In process philosophy, the universe is not an already-completed fact but rather a creative advance into novelty, and this novelty is never completely determined by the past. Weirdness is one of the ways that this novelty unfolds - irrupting in ways and unthought and untried. The future arrives with difference.
In Process and Reality Whitehead proposes that there are eight kinds of existing things. He calls them the categories of existence: actual entities, eternal objects, nexuses, propositions, contrasts, multiplicities, subjective forms, and prehensions. All are weird. Actual entities are weird because they happen all at once and concresce the entire universe into their subjective becoming, Eternal objects are weird because they stand outside time and yet 'participate' in our every existence. Nexuses are weird because all they have to do is share one common characteristic and they become a society. Contrasts are weird because they bring together different things, sometimes thought clashing, and make them beautiful. Multiplicities are weird because they are "many" without yet being one. Subjective forms are weird because they are the very spice of life - emotions - and add flesh to dry bones. And prehensions are weird because they hold the universe together and because they are both energy and feelings. All of this is unexpected, Whitehead's entire philosophy is kind of weird.
Divine Weirdness
There is a theology to this as well. In Whitehead’s vision, God is not a remote architect or controlling force, but the poet of the world—the inwardly felt lure toward creativity and intensity of experience. God calls each creature toward its next becoming, offering not a script but a possibility. That divine lure is not always sensible or safe. Sometimes, it’s wild. Sometimes, it’s weird.
And, like I said above, I think it's a little weird that God decided to share in the human experience and, so I believe, all experience everywhere, including the suffering of animals, microbes, aliens, and any other creature who experiences pain. I can understand a poet who lures from a distance, but this is a poet who becomes the poem. Surely there's something a bit surprising about this, a little off-kilter from what is expected of high authorities. Not all of them choose to become the least of these.
Weirdness may give us new eyes for more traditional ways of thinking about God. Yes, God is goodness, truth, and beauty. But not the kind that fits into neat formulas or polite categories. Divine goodness contains surprise. Divine beauty includes dissonance. Divine truth disrupts false clarity. In this way, God is not only the ground of order, but also the pulse of divine disorder—holy improvisation, strange harmony, generative chaos.
To say that God is weird is not to mock the sacred, but to honor it. It is to remember that the divine is not reducible to our projections. God may show up in a burning bush or a talking donkey. Weirdness, in this sacred sense, is a form of invitation. It’s how the universe—and God—keeps us from sleepwalking through existence.
We need a theology that can hold this. A theology that doesn’t domesticate the divine, but lets God be strange. A theology that makes peace with the unsettling, and even welcomes it. Because sometimes, it’s the weirdness that saves us.
- Jay McDaniel
Why Does the Weird Matter?
excerpts from "Philosophy of the Weird" by N. Brent Mattingly
click here the entire book
Why does the weird matter? Because it disrupts. It unsettles. It reminds us that the world is not as neatly ordered as we like to believe. In an age of profound crisis and transformation, when the boundaries of what we know and what we think we know are being tested daily, the weird offers a vital counterpoint to the familiar and the predictable. It asks us to think differently, to embrace the strange and the alien as essential aspects of existence.
In this sense, the weird is not an aberration or a disruption of the real — it is an integral part of it. To think ontologically about the weird is to recognize that the universe is not a neatly ordered system but a complex, messy, and often incomprehensible web of beings and forces. The weird reminds us that existence is far more dynamic and multifaceted than our categories allow, urging us to reconsider what it means to be, to perceive, and to know.
Through this lens, the weird is not merely a challenge to thought but an invitation to expand it. It offers a glimpse into a reality that is richer and more layered than we often assume, a reality where the boundaries between the known and the unknown, the human and the non-human, the ordinary and the extraordinary, blur and dissolve. To engage with the ontology of the weird is to step into this liminal space, where the fabric of reality reveals its most enigmatic and wondrous threads.