The Long Road of Love
Process Theology in a Time of
Political and Cultural Disillusionment
“You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.”
— Maya Angelou
“It is an especially sad time for the millions of us, a.k.a. the elderly, who will not live to see the recovery of the United States that will follow Donald Trump’s era of destruction. We have trusted in, worked for and fought for the values that are currently undergoing wholesale slaughter by the Republican Party. Daily, we witness the effects of corrosive arrogance, greed and ignorance that undermine much of what we believe in. Knowing that the country we cherish is being destroyed by Mr. Trump and his sycophants is an especially painful burden to those who will not see its rebirth. We can’t wait four more years; we mourn now.”
— Stephen Kauffman, The New York Times, Urbana, Ill. (letter to the editor)
We live in a time of deep mourning and widespread anger. Stephen Kauffman’s words capture the grief of those who have spent their lives upholding values of kindness, care, and generosity—only to see them overshadowed by arrogance, greed, and ignorance. I am in his situation.
It is easy to succumb to bitterness. I succumb to the bitterness every day. Yet Maya Angelou’s words serve as both a warning and a call to action: Yes to anger, she says, but no to bitterness. Bitterness festers, harming only the one who holds it. Anger, on the other hand, can be transformative. It can be written, painted, danced, marched, and voted into existence. It can be spoken—unceasingly. In this moment of disillusionment, the challenge is not to let mourning turn into paralysis, but to channel anger into something that builds, that resists, that refuses to be silent.
How do we do this? How do we channel anger into constructive action while avoiding the trap of bitterness? Here, open and relational (process) theology offers a word of counsel that might help.
Trusting in a Spirit of Love that is More than Us
However we may mourn in the face of current affairs, process theology invites us to trust in a spirit of love at work in the world—not merely a projection of human hope, but a real and active presence offering comfort and fresh possibilities, even when they cannot yet be seen. This spirit is God.
For Christians, this amipotent spirit was revealed in—but not exhausted by—the healing ministry of Jesus. As Christian process theologian Monica Coleman explains, this spirit can empower us to “make a way out of no way” even in the most difficult circumstances, and to trust that new possibilities exist even when none appear visible. This spirit does not erase suffering, but it enables people to respond creatively, shaping new futures as fresh possibilities emerge.
Recognizing that our Being is Becoming
In addition, process thought invites us to recognize that we ourselves are evolving. We are not permanently trapped by our feelings—not even by our bitterness. Change is possible not only in public policies and social structures, but also in the depths of our emotional lives. Emotions are not fixed; they, too, are in process. Anger, grief, and despair can evolve. Even in the most painful moments, emotional life remains dynamic—capable of growth, release, and renewal.
In this sense, process theology offers more than a vision of collective transformation; it offers a path toward inner healing. It invites us to trust in our own capacity to move beyond bitterness and into creative, life-affirming action—in partnership with a love that never gives up on the world.
Learning to Hold Contrasting Emotions
There is still a third insight from open and relational (process) theology that can help. It is the recognition that we can—and often do—inhabit different, and sometimes seemingly contradictory, emotions simultaneously. In process thought, the holding together of such emotions can be empowering in its own right. Their coexistence creates what Alfred North Whitehead calls “meaningful contrasts,” where the tension between differences gives rise to depth and vitality.
In this spirit, I suggest that two particular emotions can be held alongside and within our anger, forming a triad that becomes a powerful force for healing: kindness and forgiveness. These do not cancel out anger; they deepen it. They keep anger from curdling into bitterness and help transform it into something that resists harm while refusing to replicate it.
Kindness, in this context, includes kindness toward our enemies. It does not require us to like them, to approve of their actions, or to want to be around them. But it does invite us to recognize that their actions—no less than our own—often arise from deep inner insecurity, fear, or unhealed wounds. In process thought, each person is shaped by their past, by the world around them, and by their own struggles. When we begin to understand the pain that shapes “their” behavior, we find it harder to hate them, even as we remain angry at what they have done. This kind of kindness is not weakness; it is strength grounded in empathy. It is a refusal to let our anger harden into dehumanization.
Forgiveness, likewise, does not mean forgetting or excusing harm. It does not require affection, agreement, or reconciliation. But it does mean willing the well-being of others—including those we might call enemies. It means wanting them, too, to find healing and happiness. Forgiveness, in this sense, is not sentimental; it is a moral and spiritual choice to break the cycle of hatred. It is the hope that even those who have caused harm can change—that their lives, too, might be redeemed by love.
Together, anger, kindness, and forgiveness form a dynamic and redemptive contrast. Anger provides energy for resistance. Kindness offers a bridge to understanding. Forgiveness opens the door to transformation. Held together, they create a moral and spiritual force strong enough to confront injustice without being consumed by it—a path toward healing for both self and society.
From Insight to Practice
All that I have said above is, perhaps, easy enough to understand in theory—but much more difficult to feel, especially in the midst of real anger, deep mourning, and perhaps also bitterness. The ideas themselves are not sufficient. If we are to grow in these directions—toward constructive anger, toward kindness and forgiveness—we need practices. We need things we can actually do, again and again, to help form the habits of heart that sustain us. For my part, I suggest three simple but powerful practices:
1. A daily spiritual practice of prayer or meditation—something that centers the heart and quiets the mind. This is not about escapism, but about opening space for the spirit of love to be at work within us, softening what has hardened, and guiding us toward wisdom. This practice can he somewhat intellectual: e.g. reading inspiring literature, journaling, etc. But my own experience is that it needs to have a bodily aspect, as in yoga or Buddhist meditation, so that the mind can quiet down with help from a quiet body.
2. Volunteering in your local community—doing something practical and good for others, whether young or old or in between. This might be serving meals, mentoring children, helping neighbors, or offering your time to a cause you believe in. Acts of service can break us out of the bubble of despair and connect us again to the pulse of human goodness. And if those with whom we volunteer happen to be from the "other side" of the political spectrum, all the better. We will better understand our shared humanity.
3. Making contact with the more-than-human world in active and reverent ways. Take daily walks in nature. Tend a garden. Spend time in the presence of animals. Let the wind, the trees, the birds, and the soil remind you that life is more vast, and more beautiful, than any single news cycle. The natural world offers a rhythm deeper than politics and a peace that does not come from winning arguments.
These are not solutions, but they are forms of participation—ways of living into the hope that process theology points toward. They are practices of becoming: not perfect, but present; not bitter, but alive; not hardened, but still open to love.
Covenant Communities
It can also help to engage in these practices within covenant communities—communities of shared commitment to this threefold path. These may be composed of like-minded souls: fellow mourners, fellow resisters, people who are also seeking to transform anger without succumbing to bitterness. But it is also imaginable—and deeply hopeful—that such covenant communities could cross political and cultural divides. Why? Because each of the practices named above—spiritual centering, service to others, and communion with the natural world—is trans-political. They speak to human needs and yearnings that run deeper than ideology. In this sense, they may offer not only healing for individuals, but also glimmers of healing for our fractured society.
It’s important to say, too, that none of this will—or should—eliminate the anger. Nor, for that matter, the sadness. These emotions are natural and necessary responses to real injustice and real loss. The point is not to erase them but to conjoin them with actions that are good for yourself and your community. In doing so, you may discover a different kind of hope—not naïve optimism, but a lived hope. A hope that helps you break out of bitterness. A hope that sustains you for the long road ahead.
The Long Road of Love
And yes, it is a long road—a road whose end you may never see in your lifetime, especially if you are of a certain age. But that road, process theologians believe, exists nonetheless. It is not merely a dream or an ideal. It is real. That long road is what they call the consequent nature of God—the ongoing, evolving, all-embracing memory and feeling of the universe itself, as a living Whole. It is a harmony of harmonies that gathers every moment of joy and sorrow, every act of kindness and every struggle for justice, into a larger wholeness that overlaps with, and ultimately includes, the entire universe. It is in its own way a destination as well as a journey. The long road is the Omega of creation, as it exists alongside each and every here-and-now.
To walk that road is an act of faith—not faith in certainty, but faith in process, in love, and in the possibility that nothing good is ever lost.
The Practical Side of the Walk
What, then, is the objective of the walk? Certainly it is to enjoy the journey and the beauty of everyday life along the way. And it is also toward a certain way of being in the world with others and with the natural world. Readers may wonder whether process theology offers a practical vision for this aspect of the walk. The answer is yes.
All over the world, process theologians and philosophers are working to help build communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, inclusive, diverse, humane to animals, and good for the Earth—with no one left behind. These communities can be small or large: households, neighborhoods, towns, cities, regions, or nations. Their citizens live within the Earth’s limits, share in one another’s well-being, and orient their economies and governments toward the common good. These are the building blocks of what process thinkers call Ecological Civilizations.
They are working with economists, politicians, businesspeople, educators, artists, parents, and grandparents toward these ends—co-creating a future where all can thrive.
These communities are prosperous in the deepest sense. Their participants love one another, enjoy a sense of belonging, and embrace life with gratitude and joy.
Ultimately, the anger we feel, is anger at how shortsighted we are not to work toward these kinds of communities. They are our best hope—and, process thinkers believe, the very communities the living spirit of God calls us toward and into. Importantly, they are not bound to one side of the political spectrum. They are neither left nor right, but forward-looking in spirit, combining the best of both conservative and liberal traditions: honoring what is worth preserving and reaching courageously toward what is yet possible.
- Jay McDaniel