Listening to Detained Migrant Children
Hearing the words of detained migrant children,
and responding with compassion, as a way
of participating in the life of God.
In open and relational (process) theology, God is a Deep Listening who hears and cares about not only the words, but also the feelings of all human beings, and, for that matter, all living beings. The hearing is called prehending: "feeling" the feeliings of others. These feelings affect God deeply; God feels them with tender care, says Whitehead. God also feels the feeling of those who are charged with protecting them and those who are charged with keeping them out of the United States and separating them from their families. God feels all these feeling tenderly and also wisely, which means that God 'judges' which feeling are consistent with God's overall aims for the world.
And what are these aims? From the perspective of open and relational (process) theology they are for people to love one another and take care of each other. And for taking care of animals and the earth, too. They are for the building of communities that are generous, creative, compassionate, participatory, good for animals and good for the earth, with no one left behind. In open and relational theology, we speak of these communities as the building blocks of what we call ecological civilizations.
We humans participate in God's life by doing our best to hear the feelings of others, too. For us humans, sometimes all we have are words, which are carriers of the feelings. We cannot feel as deeply and richly as God, but we can do our best. We can listen to words and try to feel the feelings behind them; and we can try to live wisely in light of what we hear. We must never demonize those who perceive in ways that we deem inconsistent with God's aims. But we must always seek the best for the most vulnerable, who might otherwise be left behind. Our listening is itself a spiritual practice. Philip Berryman describes it this way:
Hospitable people are also good listeners, which explains why listening has long been considered one of the most important habits to cultivate if we wish to get closer to God. In my own life I've found that when I am able to listen carefully enough to anyone, listen to them with my full heart, then the walls of separation come crumbling down. Martin Buber believed that such "active listening" is not only the secret to fulfilling relationships between people, but a vital passageway to faith -- Phillip L. Berman in The Journey Home
And what are these aims? From the perspective of open and relational (process) theology they are for people to love one another and take care of each other. And for taking care of animals and the earth, too. They are for the building of communities that are generous, creative, compassionate, participatory, good for animals and good for the earth, with no one left behind. In open and relational theology, we speak of these communities as the building blocks of what we call ecological civilizations.
We humans participate in God's life by doing our best to hear the feelings of others, too. For us humans, sometimes all we have are words, which are carriers of the feelings. We cannot feel as deeply and richly as God, but we can do our best. We can listen to words and try to feel the feelings behind them; and we can try to live wisely in light of what we hear. We must never demonize those who perceive in ways that we deem inconsistent with God's aims. But we must always seek the best for the most vulnerable, who might otherwise be left behind. Our listening is itself a spiritual practice. Philip Berryman describes it this way:
Hospitable people are also good listeners, which explains why listening has long been considered one of the most important habits to cultivate if we wish to get closer to God. In my own life I've found that when I am able to listen carefully enough to anyone, listen to them with my full heart, then the walls of separation come crumbling down. Martin Buber believed that such "active listening" is not only the secret to fulfilling relationships between people, but a vital passageway to faith -- Phillip L. Berman in The Journey Home
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