The Red Wheelbarrow
The Place of Particulars in Metamodern Religion
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
- William Carlos Williams (1923)
I am curious about the role of the red wheelbarrow in metamodern religion. Metamodern religion builds upon the best of pre-modern, modern, and postmodern thinking, while moving beyond the worst. Open and relational theology in some its forms, perhaps especially process theology, is metamodern in this sense. Building upon science as well as spirituality, but rejecting moral relativism and naive realism, it offers a grand narrative of how the universe is unfolding within a cosmic context and situates human life within this broader context. To this it adds a way of thinking about God as the living whole: a universal Spirit of non-controlling love. I want to know where the red wheelbarrow fits in.
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William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) is famous for insisting that there are “no ideas but in things.” He believed that poetry should be rooted in concrete, tangible images and everyday objects, rather than abstract concepts. Some articulations of metamodern religion suggest that particularities of this world (this frog, this face, this leaf, this person) have their meaning only in relation to what is “large” and more inclusive. Is there room, in addition, for attention to the as-it-isness of things? To the red wheelbarrow on its own terms and for its own sake, beside the white chickens.
If so, then some of the literature of metamodernism needs to be poetic and episodic, more like haiku than cosmology. Its aim will not be to take us into something bigger and wider, but to bring us to our senses in the here-and-now.
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This coming to our senses is not necessarily an abandonment of the whole, but rather a recognition of its immanence within particulars. Another poet, William Blake (1757-1827), is famous for encouraging us to find heaven in a wildflower, and the universe in a grain of sand. The idea is not that the wildflower and the grain of sand are parts of larger wholes; it is that wholes are present in each part. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead says something similar. He says each “actual entity” is a “concrescence” of the universe. Where are these particulars? They are everywhere.
An interest in particulars might inspire us to look up to into the night sky, seeing each star as a place where the universe comes together. But it might also inspire us to look at the person standing next to us as such a concrescence, too. Or the person thousands of miles away dying from an explosion. Two Kinds of Thinking If thinking of how parts are included within larger wholes is “big picture” thinking then recognizing that wholes are in each part is “this particular” thinking. In the language of David Bohm, each particular contains the “implicate order” of the universe. Holistic thinking includes both kinds.
The problem arises when big-picture thinking—often called metaphysics, cosmology, or theology—is overemphasized, deemed more important or fundamental than 'this-particular' thinking. The assumption that it is more fundamental misses something very important about particulars. They transcend principles by which they are understood, narratives in terms of which they are placed, and wholes of which they are parts. Indeed, they transcend ideas. This transcendence is the activity of an individual entity being itself, for itself, in the immediacy of a moment, presenting itself, declaring itself, as something to be taken account of. In relation to other people, it is what the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas called “the face of the other.” The other person’s face, the other person’s presence, transcends ideas in terms of which the person is understood, and makes a claim, indeed a moral claim, on others. There is what the theologian Mayra Rivera calls a “touch of transcendence” in the very presence of that person, and we cannot see that touch, or be touched by it, if we are lost in big-picture thinking: lost in the cosmos,
The touch is also in the red wheelbarrow, albeit not making a moral claim. It makes an ontic claim. Red wheelbarrows alongside white chickens have what Buddhists call suchness or tathata. Or what process philosophers like Andrew Davis call “aesthetic achievements.” Here aesthetic is much more than prettiness or even beauty, shallowly understood. It is as-it-is-ness.
But, of course, “aesthetic achievement” is itself an abstraction, and when we grow too attached to it, we lose the red wheelbarrow. We get lost in the cosmos and forget the face of the other.
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The same thing can happen in relation to God, however understood. If we talk too much about God, turning God into an object of belief, we may miss the particularity of God in the immediacies of everyday life. The particularity of God is different from that of a red wheelbarrow. It is more like the wind or like breathing. We might think of it as the glaze of the rainwater on the red wheelbarrow. Jonathan Foster refers to it as the 'deep withness.'
When we think too much about the glaze, it becomes an idea and we lose its shining. Better to see it in the world as the glaze of rain on the wheelbarrow, or an act of kindness or delight. Divine particularity also transcends the world even as the world is immanent it it. It is a deep Listening in which the universe unfolds, most known in prayer. God is a kind of companionship without a localized body, and also an inwardly felt lure toward wholeness.
One process theologian, Sheri Kling, calls it the wholemaking nearness of God. This nearness cannot be known if we restrict ourselves to big-picture thinking. Yes, such thinking has a place. We need stories by which to live. Whitehead speaks of his entire cosmology as a likely story, but not a certainty. But complementary to such stories, we need to know that the particularities of the world transcend them. We are then awestruck, not by the bigness of the universe, but by the presence of what is, as it is. We see how so much depends on the red wheelbarrow.
Even God. Whitehead is well known for saying that God is many as well as one. This means that God, understood as the living whole of the universe, is composed of the universe even as God is also a 'concrescing' subject, gathering that universe into manifold unity in divine consciousness. Moreover, God, too, is unfolding. As new things happen in the universe, they become part of God. This means that as white chickens approach the red wheelbarrow, something new is added to God. Yes, so much depends on it.
- Jay McDaniel