Theology Mapped and Glimpsed:
Big Ideas and Sideways Glances
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​“I get my theology from sideways glances rather than big ideas. A hand held in grief, the hush before dawn, the way my granddaughter says my name—that’s where God speaks to me. Not in definitions, but in presence.

I’ve never needed to understand the doctrine of incarnation to know that love puts on flesh—I see it every day in small, ordinary acts.

My husband is a theologian at a local seminary. He likes the big ideas. I sometimes tease him, saying he’s lost in his head. But I know that, for him, the big ideas have power, too. They reveal things to him and, he hopes, to others.

Still, I want him to understand Sideways Glance Theology—not as something less serious, but as something equally true. That theology can come through a concept—but also through a cracked voice reading a bedtime story. That sometimes God doesn’t arrive as an answer, but as a presence in the room.
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My friend Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet. I think of her poetry as Sideways Glance Theology. Take her poem “Kindness,” for instance. It doesn’t start with a definition or a thesis. It begins with the taste of grief, the loss of something unnamed, the silent ache of being human. Here are the opening lines. She writes:

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.

This isn’t theology by assertion—it’s theology by evocation. She doesn’t say “God is compassionate” or “suffering awakens grace.” She shows us the terrain where those truths emerge—not in the abstract, but in a lived moment.

Only then does her poem gently unfold what kindness means—not as a concept, but as a presence born through pain and humility. This is theology that doesn’t argue. It attends. It notices. It offers no map, but somehow you feel more found after reading it. I want my husband to understand this kind of theology."


— Miriam Ortega, imaginary hospice nurse and kitchen-table theologian.

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Objective Correlatives

I’ve been wondering: Could you have theology without definitions—using objective correlatives instead?

Not theology that explains what God is, but theology that points toward what God feels like.

T.S. Eliot once said that the only way to express an emotion in art is by finding a set of objects, a situation, or a chain of events that will serve as its objective correlative—a concrete image that evokes, rather than defines. What if theology worked the same way?
Instead of defining grace, you tell the story of a woman sitting quietly at the edge of her dying friend’s bed, holding her hand, saying nothing. Instead of defining incarnation, you describe a grandmother teaching her granddaughter to bake bread, flour on their hands, laughter in the room, love moving between generations like breath. In this way, theology moves sideways. It trades definitions for encounters. It lets the image do the lifting.

Objective correlatives don’t argue. They reveal. They don’t say, “Here is the doctrine,” but rather, “Here is the moment—and something holy passed through it.”

This doesn’t mean theology loses depth. It means the depth is carried in texture, in story, in sound and scent and gesture. Theology becomes a kind of spiritual poetics—not soft or sentimental, but vivid and true. It honors the truth that much of what matters most in life cannot be defined, only lived. Maybe the deepest truths don’t want to be pinned down. Maybe they want to be glimpsed.
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Maybe that’s what makes them sacred.

Are Big Ideas and objective correlatives really so different? Not necessarily—if we remember that Big Ideas are themselves metaphors, just more general and less particular than the images and moments we call objective correlatives. “God is the ground of being” is a metaphor—it gestures toward mystery through the language of metaphysics. So is “God is love,” though it feels more visceral. By contrast, an objective correlative might be the sight of a father cradling a sleeping child, or the silence that settles after a shared grief—moments that embody, rather than explain, what “God is love” might mean. Big Ideas sketch the horizon; objective correlatives place our feet on the ground. One offers conceptual reach, the other emotional immediacy. But both are metaphoric gestures toward the real. The difference is one of emphasis. The ground beneath our feet includes the sky above our heads.

Both/And​

Big Ideas & Sideways Glances
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Big Idea Theology and Sideways Glance Theology both seek to awaken a sense of the sacred, but they begin in different places and speak with different voices.

Big Idea Theology starts with abstract questions—questions about the nature of God, the meaning of suffering, the structure of reality. It builds systems. It defines terms. It maps the spiritual landscape with conceptual clarity and logical structure. Its discursive style is often linear, analytical, and explanatory, drawing from philosophy, doctrine, and metaphysics. The tone tends to be structured and confident, seeking to articulate timeless truths with coherence and consistency. When it works well, Big Idea Theology offers vision. It helps us connect the dots, deepen our understanding, and engage with the world intellectually and ethically.

But Big Idea Theology has its risks. It can become too detached, too abstract—missing the textures and ambiguities of daily life. Sometimes it speaks in a language that feels distant from the heart. And its definitions easily become cliches.

Sideways Glance Theology, by contrast, begins not with answers but with attention. It leans into lived experience, memory, image, and intuition. It doesn't seek to define the sacred as much as to notice it—in a glance, a silence, a gesture, a moment of shared laughter or unexpected beauty. Its discursive style is poetic, fragmentary, evocative. It prefers metaphor over argument, resonance over resolution. Its tone is gentle and spacious, allowing room for ambiguity and wonder. When it works well, Sideways Glance Theology invites us to feel our way into truth. It reminds us that theology can rise from within life itself, not apart from it.

This way of doing theology doesn't reject ideas—but it lets them arise organically, like plants growing from rich soil. It offers presence instead of propositions. A candle in the dusk rather than a blueprint of the stars.

Each approach has its strengths. Big Idea Theology offers intellectual depth and structure. Sideways Glance Theology offers emotional depth and embodied meaning. Each has its limitations. Big Idea Theology can become disembodied; Sideways Glance Theology can become vague or elusive. But together, they form a conversation—head and heart, clarity and mystery, concept and image.

One aims to articulate what is true. The other seeks to notice what is real. And many of us live somewhere in between.

Both kinds of theology are valuable in different contexts, but the tendency among many process theologians is to think that Big Idea Theology is superior to Sideways Glance Theology, and that being clear—particularly about definitions—is the heart of authentic theology. For someone with this prejudice, it can be hard to understand or appreciate Sideways Glance Theology, because it is not preoccupied with offering definitions but rather in evoking modes of experience and insight through the use of stories, images, and intuitions—like a grandmother lighting a candle at dusk, a line of poetry that won’t let you go, a dream that lingers in the body, or the quiet ache of beauty in an ordinary afternoon.

Moreover, when Big Idea Theologians encounter Sideways Glance Theology, they often take the stories, images, and intuitions as mere illustrations of general principles—clearly defined and logically structured—as if apprehending the principles is what matters most. Sideways Glance Theology disagrees. It believes that having the experience, and enjoying a felt insight in the process, is more important than rendering that experience into abstract generalities. The moment itself—the texture, the resonance, the subtle shift of perception—is not something to be translated into a system. It is already doing the work theology is meant to do.
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The future of open and relational (process) theology may well depend on whether it can offer “theology” through both Big Ideas and Sideways Glances—without privileging one over the other. Not as competing camps, but as complementary forms of expression. We need the rigor of philosophical reflection and the tenderness of lived experience. We need the language of clarity and the language of poetry. We need definitions when they serve, and we need objective correlatives when they speak more truly. This is not about choosing one over the other. It’s about remembering that the sacred can be mapped—and also glimpsed. That theology can be reasoned—and also breathed.

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Poles on a Continuum

Category	Big Idea Theology	Sideways Glance Theology
Starting Point	Abstract concepts, questions of ultimate reality	Lived experience, attention to moments
Primary Mode	Definition, argument, system	Image, gesture, atmosphere
Discursive Style	Linear, analytical, systematic	Poetic, fragmentary, evocative
Tone	Clarifying, explanatory, structured	Suggestive, intuitive, spacious
Purpose	To understand the sacred in universal terms	To encounter the sacred in particularity
Strengths	Offers coherence, vision, intellectual depth	Offers resonance, presence, emotional depth
Risks	Can become abstracted from life	Can resist clarity or coherence
Examples	Doctrines, treatises, metaphysical systems	Stories, rituals, metaphors, fleeting insights
Image	A map of the cosmos	A candle in the dusk
Aim	To articulate what is true	To notice what is real

Sideways Glance Meditations

1. The Hand on the Forehead

A hospice nurse wipes the forehead of a dying patient. No words, just the warmth of skin on skin. Her hand moves slowly, tenderly, with the kind of attention that says: you are not alone.

Reflection

She does not recite a creed. She does not speak the name of God. But something holy passes between them. In that moment, compassion is incarnate.

Invitation

Can you remember a time when presence spoke louder than words? What gesture—given or received—became your theology?

2. The Porch Swing After the Argument

Two friends sit on a porch swing after a painful conversation. Neither speaks. The swing creaks softly in the evening air. The silence is not empty; it is waiting.

Reflection

Reconciliation does not always arrive with fireworks. Sometimes it comes in the form of stillness shared. Sometimes forgiveness begins in the decision not to leave.

Invitation

Who are you sitting beside in silence—physically or in your heart? What might healing look like if it started with staying?

3. The Dancing Elders in the Grocery Aisle

Two elders dance in the grocery store aisle to an old Marvin Gaye tune crackling through the speakers. Their cart sits forgotten as they twirl between the cereal and canned beans.

Reflection

There is no doctrine of joy, but joy is doctrine. The sacred sometimes laughs. Sometimes it moves to rhythm. Sometimes theology hums through hips and hands and grins.

Invitation

When was the last time you danced? What if that, too, was a form of prayer?

4. The Candle for the Long-Gone

A woman lights a candle for someone she lost twenty years ago. She isn’t sure she believes in an afterlife, but the lighting feels necessary, like breathing.

Reflection

Grief doesn’t end. It changes shape. And the sacred often glows not in certainty, but in rituals of remembering. This flame is a theology of longing.

Invitation

Whom do you remember with flame or fragrance or silence? What acts of remembrance become your liturgy?

5. The Child Watching Ants

A child lies belly-down in the grass, watching ants carry crumbs bigger than their bodies. “How do they know where to go?” she whispers, eyes wide.

Reflection

The world is always offering wonder to those willing to slow down. Wonder is its own kind of wisdom. It asks no proof, only presence.

Invitation

Where have you overlooked wonder today? What might happen if you stopped—just for a moment—to marvel?

6. The Bread Passed First

At a simple supper, no theology is discussed. But someone, quietly, passes the bread first.

Reflection

In that gesture: a whole sacrament. No sermon. No institution. Just an impulse toward kindness that echoes communion. The sacred often comes unannounced.

​Invitation
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What moment of quiet generosity have you witnessed—or offered—lately? How might such moments be your Eucharist?