Dance of the Seasons @ Mary Southard. Ministry of the Arts. Used with permission. https://www.ministryofthearts.org/

​The Mutual Transcendence
of God and the World

Process Meditations
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It is as true to say that God transcends the World,
as that the World transcends God.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality 
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​​In process theology there are many ways to understand and experience divine transcendence. One is to sense that there is an ultimate compassion that embraces the whole world, sharing in its joys and sufferings: an eternal Companion. Another, often occurring in nature or in the enjoyment of music, is to be awakened by a sense of Beauty beyond words. Still another is to sense that, when you pray, there is someone or something, a friendly presence, that is listening, within you but beyond you. And still another is to sense that, even in times of great despair, there is a spirit of creative transformation at work in the world, a source of hope. God as Friend; God as Beauty; God as Deep Listening, God as Creative Transformation: these are some faces of divine transcendence in process theology. There are more. This page consists of meditations on divine transcendence in process theology.
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​- Jay McDaniel, 3/12/2022

Compassion @ Mary Southard. Ministry of the Arts. Used with permission. [email protected]

Mutuality 

Any parent knows this: our children transcend us. They have wills and lives of their own, and they are valuable apart from their relations with us. They are not "the same" as us. Our task is to nurture them as best we can, so that they can survive and flourish.

Yes, our children are also immanent within us. They are inside us even as they are more than us. Our very existence includes our felt relations with them: our shared joys and fears, hopes and dreams, struggles and pleasures. We are family.

But the beauty of our relationship is that they are beyond us even as they are within us. They have their own lives, their freedom, their unique individuality. And we have our unique individuality, too. We transcend our children just as our children transcend us. Without mutual transcendence there cannot be love.

And so it is with God and the world. Consider the woman in the image above as she embraces the earth. Imagine her as God. I suggest that God embraces the world as she embraces the earth. God embraces it with, in Whitehead's words, a "tender care that nothing be lost." Like the woman, the divine Mother transcends the earth and embraces it at the same time. And the earth transcends her, too. God and the world are mutually transcendent even as they are mutually immanent. It is only because they transcend one another that they can love one another.

Who offers the first embrace? We are told by trusted authorities that God's embrace precedes our own. Open and relational theologies say that God embraces without conditions. Love is part of God's very nature. In the language of Thomas Oord, God is essentially kenotic, essentially embracing, essentially loving.

Our calling as creatures of the earth is to reciprocate with our own human kind of kenosis. We do that by loving one another, other animals, and the earth. We do so by creating communities that are just and sustainable, compassionate and joyful, good for people, animals, and the earth. We in the process world call them "compassionate communities" and see them as instantiations of what we call "ecological civilization."

In compassionate communities there is mutual transcendence even as there is mutual belonging. They mirror and partake of the divine-world relationship. Let no entities be smothered by immanence alone. Let all be transcendent in their immanence. Only then is there love.

Deep Listening
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Consider the daughter whispering in the ear of her father. Her thoughts and feelings are her own, and in this sense she transcends him. And yet, in her very act of whispering in his hear, she is immanent within him. Her voice is in his ear, and with that, her heart.

Her father transcends her, too. His thoughts and feeling are his own. And yet, in being a listening presence, he is immanent with his daughter even as he is more than her. The daughter and father are mutually immanent and mutually transcendent. 

And so it is with God and the universe. Every act that we undertake, kindly or unkindly, happily or sadly, is felt by God, who is the Deep Listening of the universe. Every act is a whisper in God's ear.  If you don't want to think of God in human-like terms or with help from parental imagery, just think of God as the Deep Listening.

Earth Alive @ Mary Southard. Ministry of the Arts. Used with permission. https://www.ministryofthearts.org/

​Six plus One
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In the six approaches to God below, four obviously involve a sense of divine transcendence: The Great Companion, the Song of the Universe, the Spirit of Creative Transformation, and the Deep Mind. 

Two can seem to be immanent alone: The Universe and the Animating Energy of the universe.  But even these two are "more" than human life and "more" than the earth.  In this sense, all six involve a sense of transcendence.  

The transcendence of God is not an idea in the mind. It is not a picture we carry in our imaginations of a something, somewhere, that is located in a particular region of space like a king on a throne or even a loving father or mother. God is love, yes. But God is also more than love.

In order to awaken to divine transcendence in these various forms, it is important to realize that God is always more than our concepts and images. This involves a sense of Mystery. Not "mystery" as an unsolved puzzle; but "mystery" as the palpable presence, intuitively felt, of something beyond our verbal grids and mental frameworks. Any parent knows this. She knows that her children transcend her understanding of them; that in having lives of their own they also have more than she can understand.

And so it is with God. To the list of six approaches below, a seventh needs to be added. Its name is Mystery. Its name is "I don't know." Its name is Beautiful. Often it is felt in nature, in music, and in the sheer poignancy of life. Here as always, transcendence is immanent and the immanent is transcendent. No dichotomies needed. The Beyond is within and around yet Beyond. We live in it.
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