Partnering with Soil:
Relational Power in Action
Open and relational (process) theologies emphasize relational power. They say that the power of God is relational not unilateral, and that we humans can and should be “relational” in our approach to other people, animals, and the natural world. Instead of controlling others in unilateral ways, we should partner with others in respectful and loving ways, thereby embodying in our own lives the quality of relationality that is embodied in the very heart of the universe.
What does relational power look like? C. Robert (Bob) Mesle emphasizes three aspects of this partnership:
1. ACTIVE, INTENTIONAL, OPENNESS: Children are wonderful examples of this aspect of relational power. They constantly explore the world with all five senses, literally stuffing the world into their mouths to learn more about it. Even we adults must engage in such openness just to survive and enjoy. And we value those with greater strength in openness. Stronger students are precisely those most gifted at, and actively committed to, openness to new information, ideas, and visions. Artists are more open to the colors and shapes of the world, while poets are alert to the nuances of language. Musicians hear music all around us. Rather than “picky eaters,” we admire people who can sit at any table and learn to enjoy the amazing array of flavors the world has to offer—in food, ideas, beauty, nature, language, people, and more. The best parents are those most sensitive and responsive to the changing feelings, hopes, fears, and dreams of their children. This fits the old saying that we should walk a mile in another person’s moccasins to learn who they are.
2. SELF-CREATIVITY: Relational power involves taking all that active openness and responding to it self-creatively. We are not just putty in the hands of the world. Relationally powerful people don’t just believe what we are told or think as we are directed. Rather, we take in the new and thoughtfully integrate it with what we already have and value. We use our existing values and knowledge to sort out what we consider truer and better. But creative transformation demands that we sometimes recognize new truths and values as better than our old ones, requiring us to rethink, reconceive, revalue, and even reconstruct ourselves, our visions, and our actions in response to creativity. Walking a mile in the other person’s moccasins gives us a chance to integrate their wisdom with our own and see the world through their eyes—but without giving up our own wisdom or eyes. Active openness and self-creativity make it possible to see something creatively new.
3. THE STRENGTH TO SUSTAIN MUTUAL RELATIONSHIPS: Relational power involves the willingness and insight to take in the new and then return to the world and our relationships with more openness, better questions, more sensitivity, and new understanding. It means being willing and able to go back and learn more, to sustain engagement with ideas, experiences, and people, especially when those relations are challenging in some way. It is so easy to avoid growth and change, to dodge conflict, to resist the new. This step leads right back to the start in a spiral. We try to become more actively and intentionally open, and more self-creative. Having walked a mile in another person’s moccasins, we are in a better position to enter creative dialogue with them and walk further with them. [1]
What Mesle says of relational power in relation to humans, we can likewise say of relational power in relation to the soil. It involves active intentional openness, self-creativity, and the strength to sustain mutual relationships, including mutual relationships with soil.
In our time this kind of partnership, partnership with soil, has been vividly presented in the documentary Kiss the Ground. The rest of this page offers videos related to the movement, a further word about process theology as an organic worldview conducive to living in partnership with soil, and excerpts from an essay on regenerative agriculture showing how it is a way of farming, to be sure, but also a way of living an attitude toward life that can be adopted by all.
- Jay McDaniel, 12/16/2021
What does relational power look like? C. Robert (Bob) Mesle emphasizes three aspects of this partnership:
1. ACTIVE, INTENTIONAL, OPENNESS: Children are wonderful examples of this aspect of relational power. They constantly explore the world with all five senses, literally stuffing the world into their mouths to learn more about it. Even we adults must engage in such openness just to survive and enjoy. And we value those with greater strength in openness. Stronger students are precisely those most gifted at, and actively committed to, openness to new information, ideas, and visions. Artists are more open to the colors and shapes of the world, while poets are alert to the nuances of language. Musicians hear music all around us. Rather than “picky eaters,” we admire people who can sit at any table and learn to enjoy the amazing array of flavors the world has to offer—in food, ideas, beauty, nature, language, people, and more. The best parents are those most sensitive and responsive to the changing feelings, hopes, fears, and dreams of their children. This fits the old saying that we should walk a mile in another person’s moccasins to learn who they are.
2. SELF-CREATIVITY: Relational power involves taking all that active openness and responding to it self-creatively. We are not just putty in the hands of the world. Relationally powerful people don’t just believe what we are told or think as we are directed. Rather, we take in the new and thoughtfully integrate it with what we already have and value. We use our existing values and knowledge to sort out what we consider truer and better. But creative transformation demands that we sometimes recognize new truths and values as better than our old ones, requiring us to rethink, reconceive, revalue, and even reconstruct ourselves, our visions, and our actions in response to creativity. Walking a mile in the other person’s moccasins gives us a chance to integrate their wisdom with our own and see the world through their eyes—but without giving up our own wisdom or eyes. Active openness and self-creativity make it possible to see something creatively new.
3. THE STRENGTH TO SUSTAIN MUTUAL RELATIONSHIPS: Relational power involves the willingness and insight to take in the new and then return to the world and our relationships with more openness, better questions, more sensitivity, and new understanding. It means being willing and able to go back and learn more, to sustain engagement with ideas, experiences, and people, especially when those relations are challenging in some way. It is so easy to avoid growth and change, to dodge conflict, to resist the new. This step leads right back to the start in a spiral. We try to become more actively and intentionally open, and more self-creative. Having walked a mile in another person’s moccasins, we are in a better position to enter creative dialogue with them and walk further with them. [1]
What Mesle says of relational power in relation to humans, we can likewise say of relational power in relation to the soil. It involves active intentional openness, self-creativity, and the strength to sustain mutual relationships, including mutual relationships with soil.
In our time this kind of partnership, partnership with soil, has been vividly presented in the documentary Kiss the Ground. The rest of this page offers videos related to the movement, a further word about process theology as an organic worldview conducive to living in partnership with soil, and excerpts from an essay on regenerative agriculture showing how it is a way of farming, to be sure, but also a way of living an attitude toward life that can be adopted by all.
- Jay McDaniel, 12/16/2021