“God is not what we think It is. God is not a thing, a being, a noun… all the names we have for God and all the ways in which we relate to God are a few degrees removed from the source of creation that precedes even nothingness…The closest we can come to thinking about God is as a process rather than a being. We can think of it as ‘be-ing,’ as verb rather than noun… Perhaps it would help us understand this better if we renamed God. We might call it God-ing, as a process, rather than God, which suggests a noun…This idea was developed by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, who goes further and explains that the kind of verb that represents God-ing is different from the ones we have in our ordinary language. Most of our verbs are considered transitive, which require a direct object, or intransitive, those that do not. He suggests that God-ing is a mutually interactive verb, one which entails an interdependency between two subjects, each being the object for the other. For example, ‘communicating’ could be such a verb. If I were speaking to an audience, I might not be communicating. I would be engaged in the act of communication, but if the audience were not attentive and were thinking about other things, I would not be communicating no matter how much I talked. My verbal communication is dependent upon a listener; it cannot be a one-way street. Other obvious verbs that fit into this category are loving, sharing, dancing, kissing, hugging, and so forth…We can relate to God as an interactive verb. It is God-ing. Moreover, from this perspective, creation should not be treated as a noun. It too is an interactive verb; it is constantly creation-ing. And, dear reader, you should not treat yourself as a noun–as Joan, or Bill, or Barbara, or John. With regard to God as an interactive verb, you are also verbs; you are Joan-ing, Bill-ing, Barbara-ing, or John-ing in relation to God-ing, just as I am David-ing. Each part in the universe is in dynamic relationship with every other part.…We normally experience relationships in terms of their component parts; we are mistaken, however, when we assume the parts are separate….However, we do not have to be prophets to experience God-ing. It is everywhere around us and an aspect of everything we do. It arises when we repeatedly encounter the magical quality of life, the incredible blend and variety of experience, the exquisite unfolding of nature, the intricacies of our minds, and more than anything, the awe, the profound awe we experience when we sense the enormity of this universe. Somehow the awe itself, ineffably, draws us into the center of creation. At some point we merge with it…. Consider this from your inner awareness. Not you the noun, the person you may think you are, but you the verb, the process of being in full relationship, continuously, with its creator. When a question arises within you, who is asking the question and to whom is the question addressed? Assume that there is no “me” to ask the question and there is no God out there to answer it. The question is part of the process of David-ing and God-ing in a mutual unfolding. Try to do this in a way that melts all barriers of separation. No subject and no object. Simply an ever opening process. No past, no future; only now. Each moment is a fresh opening. Each breath we draw, each move we make is only Now. This is my dance with God-ing. It is an awesome experience. “ Rabbi David Cooper, God Is A Verb, 1997
“God…is not a force who acts on the world through coercion, violence or the suspension of physics and free will. Instead, God is something that we participate in. God is a verb, an action we bring to the world to make love, justice, mercy, joy and goodness known. But then again, the early Christian community called themselves “The Way.” A way indicates a path we walk, narratives we ponder and questions we ask. It is telling that they did not call themselves “The Answer.” Following a way is an action. It is a verb. It is making God known because God is not far away and all-powerful but is instead something we make real in the world.” Jason Derr (Contemporary Theologian, Writer)
“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.” Lao Tzu (Ancient Chinese Philosopher)
“In the broad sense, the term “process philosophy” refers to all worldviews holding that process or becoming is more fundamental than unchanging being.” (David Griffin, Contemporary Professor of Philosophy)
“The subtlety of the concept of space was enhanced by the discovery that there exist no completely rigid bodies. All bodies are elastically deformable and alter in volume with change in temperature.” (Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist, 1920)
“Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general.” (Leibniz, German logician, mathematician, and natural philosopher, 1670)
“Thomas Aquinas described God as ‘pure act.’…The great medieval woman mystic Mechtilde of Magdeburg spoke about the ‘restless Godhead,’ an ‘overflow . . . which never stands still and always flows effortlessly and without ceasing . ‘…The first letter of John says that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). Not a person who loves, but love itself.” Steve Bevans (Professor of Mission and Culture at Catholic Theological Union)
“Alfred North Whitehead intuited that natural science was struggling to overcome a traditional ontology of timeless material substances, because it does not suit natural phenomena. They are more properly understood as ‘process’. This resulted in the most famous work of process philosophy, Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality.” (Wikipedia)
“Although both Buddhism and Whitehead associate evil and suffering with impermanence, they differ in that Whitehead roots evil in the impermanence itself, while Buddhist doctrine roots suffering not so much in impermanence but in our failure to come to terms with it.” Thomas J. McFarlaine (Contemporary writer concerning science, philosophy, and religion)
“…Although we often think of God as a noun, as Someone from Somewhere, in reality God is a verb. God happens. That is what I see in that sanctuary. Not that Someone from Somewhere is coming into the room and into the people from on high, but that what is occurring in the room is God; what is happening between these people constitutes God; what is emerging, what is unfolding, what is surfacing, materializing, springing, sometimes even gushing, is God…God is an action verb. God happens wherever there is compassion, wherever there is a struggle for justice, wherever those who are most often untouched are touched. For it to be God, I should be able to point at it and say, “Look at that. See what’s happening? That’s God.” David B. Seaburn (Writer and Professor of psychiatry and family medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center)
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