242Epperly

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                   PROCESS SPIRITUALITY AND ORIGINAL WHOLENESS1

                                            Dr. Bruce G. Epperly


        In the spirit of process theology, I would like to begin my remarks with a word of thanks. The

German mystic Meister Eckhardt noted that “if the only prayer you can make is thank you, that will

suffice.” Gratitude grounds us in the dynamic connectedness of life. Appreciation awakens us to the

divine beauty and goodness embodied in the ambient realities of family, friends, mentors, and

creation partners from which our lives emerge and evolve. Process theology reminds us to appreciate

and give thanks for the grand holographic universe and the omnipresent Holy Adventure that

sustains, inspires, and embraces us.

        Whenever I return to Claremont, it always feels like “coming home.” Claremont remains a

constant in my intellectual journey, a home for my mind and spirit. My litany of thanksgiving for the

goodness of life incarnate at Claremont begins with Professor John Cobb, who embodies the spirit

of creative transformation and who has been a mentor to his students across the decades. I am

grateful for John’s emphasis on holistic theology – I recall one afternoon in 1975, during my first

semester at Claremont, John inquired not only about my academic interests but also my social life.

Christ in a Pluralistic Age was released the year I came to Claremont. For twenty five years, it has

been my standard for judging theological excellence. Cobb awakened me to the insight that it is

impossible to be a Christian theologian or minister apart from a global and interfaith perspective –

my own dialogue with the new age movement, complementary medicine, and global spirituality was

initially inspired by the breadth of Cobb’s vision.


1
  A public lecture given on July 10, 2001 at thee Claremont School of Theology, sponsored by the Center for Process
Studies,
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       I am grateful for David Griffin’s commitment to join speculative and analytic thought and his

willingness to venture forth in the frontiers of post-modernism, the new physics, and parapsychology.

As my dissertation advisor, David challenged me to excellence and constantly warned me about the

peril of the split infinitive! I remember Bernard Loomer’s commitment to personal and theological

stature – his essays on “size” and “divine power” still inspire me. As a result of Catherine Keller’s

“match making,” I met my wife of nearly 23 years, Kate Epperly, at a happy hour at the “Imagination

Station” following the Advanced Seminar on Process Studies and for that I am still thankful. As

process theologians, it seemed appropriate that Kate and I meet at the “Imagination Station,” for the

name implies that balance between constancy and adventure that is at the heart of process thought,

the grounding in the “station” of concrete reality and the liveliness of unbridled imaginative

possibility. (We also went there for the $1 drinks and ribs!) Will Beardslee introduced me to a

favorite text, A Ring of Endless Light, which has become a standby in my undergraduate classes for

nearly a decade. Will’s commitment to integrity as a person and scholar has been a model for me.

          I am thankful for the insights on spirituality, suffering, and healing of fellow Claremonters

– Marjorie Suchocki and Susan Nelson – as well as my graduate school roommate Jay McDaniel for

his thoughtful and inspiring work on process spirituality, world religions, ecology, and economics. I

am grateful to newer friends Patricia and Ron Farmer – for Patricia’s unconditional affirmation and

practical application of my work and Ron’s creative contributions in process hermeneutics. For

nearly twenty six years, Claremont has been my spiritual and theological home – a place where I

received both roots and wings as a theologian, spiritual guide, and pastor. I came here twenty six

years ago as a long-haired hippie in love with process thought and Plato’s dialogues and like the
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swallows returning to Capistrano, I am back again this year in midlife, grateful for the theological,

pastoral, relational, and spiritual adventures that were inspired here in Claremont.



         Today, I would like to reflect on the image of original wholeness as it relates to process

spirituality. Although I have been working in the integration process theology and spirituality for

many years, I was inspired to write my own process spirituality, The Power of Affirmative Faith, in

this very room when in the context of a question and answer period following a lecture by Ann

Lorenzen, John Cobb turned to me and asked about the components of a practical process

spirituality.

         I hope to address the issue of process spiritual formation in light of the essential goodness of

the universe. Marjorie Suchocki and Susan Nelson have been peerless in their reflections on

original sin and inherited guilt and shame. I assume their insights in my own remarks, but, today, I

want to reflect on our experience of goodness, beauty, and love in the context of the connectedness

of life. Spiritual formation is grounded in the essential goodness of life, flowing from the constant

and challenging presence of the Holy Adventure, whose creativity and beauty is revealed in all things.

While it is true that our essential relatedness is a source of pain, suffering, and brokenness, our

essential connectedness with God and the ambient world is equally the ground of wholeness,

transformation, beauty, and healing. Spiritual formation is the process of experiencing this

wholeness in everyday life through the disciplines of awareness and transformation.. Spiritual

formation inspires us to be instruments of wholeness, beauty, and love in our marriages and

partnerships, families, friendships, workplace, and political and social involvements.
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        Since reviewing the basic principles of process theology at the Center for Process Studies is

a bit like preaching to the choir, I will briefly reflect on the foundations for a process spirituality.

Process metaphysics and theology presents a vision of the universe in which, despite their finitude

and imperfection, “all things are words of God” and each encounter bears the intimate imprint of the

Holy Adventure. With another spiritual leader of the church, process-relational theology affirms that

“God is the circle whose center is everywhere, but whose circumference is nowhere.” We live,

move, and have our being in companionship with a dynamic and personal God, “to whom all hearts

are open and all desires known.” We always dwell in the presence of this Holy Adventure whose

presence is revealed in every thought, emotion, dream, memory, touch, and insight.

        While process theology affirms that the universe reflects the presence and inspiration of God

at every level and in every moment, process theology presents a vision of the universe that inspires

a unique approach to spiritual formation. At the heart of the process-relational vision of the universe

are the following insights into the nature of reality:

        1) The universe is holographic and relational. Every moment of experience arises from the

            universe that conditions, limits, and inspires its adventure of self-creation. Existence is

            profoundly relational. The parts mirror the whole uniquely and the whole reflects the

            dynamic artistry and creativity of each part. God is profoundly relational as the womb

            of possibility, inspiration, and adventure. The divine intimacy, integrating listening with

            responding, is the model for all human intimacy and artistry.

        2) Dynamic adventure embraces unchanging constancy. Life is adventurous. Within the

            evolving flow of chronos time, moments of kairos push the universe forward to novel

            incarnations of divine possibility and creaturely connectedness. With Plato, process
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   thought affirms that ever-flowing time is “the moving image of eternity.” That is, the

   world of change reflects God’s vision of infinite possibility and finds its home in God’s

   “tender care that nothing be lost.”

3) Causation is nonlocal as well as immediate. Our hopes, prayers, dreams, and actions

   radiate across the universe. Prayer, energy work, distant intentionality, healing imagery

   make a difference that transcends linear and contiguous experiences of time and space.

   Our deepest care for others creates a gentle matrix of wholeness and beauty from which

   their moment by moment experience arises.

4) Experience, including our experience of God, is initially unconscious in nature. Spiritual

   formation is the attempt to bring to conscious experience the ambient and deep

   experience of creative connectedness and divine inspiration. Our experience of the Holy

   Adventure, mediated through God’s aims at beauty and wholeness as well as God’s

   presence in each experience of the universe, comes to us first in “sighs too deep for

   words.” Inspiration comes to us through dreams, intuitions, paranormal experiences,

   and synchronous encounters as well as through the wisdom acquired through reflection

   on scripture, theology, and mystical experience.

5) Creativity and freedom characterize each moment of experience. We are neither

   impotent nor omnipotent in our self-creation. As children of our environment, our

   creativity and freedom is limited. The universe from which we arise both limits and

   inspires. Yet, every moment is pregnant with the possibility of new birth. Each moment

   uniquely incarnates the divine and embraces the fullness of the universe. With Viktor

   Frankl, process thought affirms that while we cannot change the universe from which
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   each moment arises, we are free in each moment of self-creation to interpret even the

   most limiting conditions in ways that promote beauty, wholeness, love, and future

   self-determination. We are the artists of our own experience, constantly bringing forth,

   something of unique beauty from the pigments that life gives us.

6) The butterfly effect – small changes give birth to major transformations. In each

   moment, our choice for love or hate, life or death, creativity or passivity, may be

   infinitesimal, but each moment’s finite choices can transform our lives and the planet.

   Our finite moments of self-creation radiate across the universe as well as shape our own

   futures. The most infinitesimal change in a relationship or self-understanding may

   eventually bring wholeness and reconciliation.

7) The aim of the universe involves the quest for beauty of experience. The universe is a

   place of beauty and wonder. Creation in its fullness is “good” and the light of God

   permeates everything that exists. “The heavens declare the glory of God” and so does the

   smile of a child. From fractals to faces, all things bear God’s aim at beauty. While we

   may mar this beauty by our thoughts and actions, we cannot obliterate the essential beauty

   of life. Chaos cannot defeat divine order; darkness cannot vanquish light; death cannot

   overcome life; hate cannot defeat love. The divine aim at abundant life flows through all

   things, joining the wholeness and beauty of the part with the well-being of the totality.

8) God is the circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Each

   moment lives by its incarnation of God. The Holy Adventure flows through all things,

   grounding them in a web of relatedness and inviting them to join the great pilgrimage of

   cosmic adventure. We are always on holy ground. Each moment and encounter is an
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           “icon,” a window through which we glimpse the Soul of the Universe in its countless

           prismatic incarnations.

           Pain, suffering, sin, and brokenness are real; but they are not final. The ever-present and

           constantly creating Center brings forth novel alternatives that redeem and transform what

           appears to be mere wreckage and refuse.

       9) We can experience God consciously as well as unconsciously. Process

           theology affirms that God enters into every experience and, through

           the disciplines of spiritual formation, we can discover the “will of God.”

           Process theology affirms the insights of both mystical and charismatic Christians that God

           communicates to humankind through response to prayer,

           the actualization of spiritual gifts, intuitions, dreams, speaking in tongues,

           and visions.



       According to Whitehead, the adventure of speculative philosophy resembles the flight of an

airplane, beginning on the ground of concrete experience, soaring to the far horizons of metaphysical

generalization, and then returning to earth for an integration of metaphysical generalization with

concrete experience. The spiritual journey takes the same form: religious traditions emerge from

the intensity of mystical, intuitive, and ethical encounters with the Holy Adventure; soar to the

heavens in theological imagination and reflection, inspired by the confidence that these unique

experiences illuminate the nature of reality; and then revise and interpret this metaphysical vision in

light of the ordinary world of experience. Since religion and spiritual formation are profoundly

concrete and practical in orientation, that is, they are about changing ourselves and the world, not
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merely observing the world, the disciplines of spiritual formation provide both evidence and

grounding for our theological speculations. They shape and are shaped by our vision of reality and

image of God..

       Spiritual formation is inspired by the quest to see, choose, and affirm wholeness and beauty

in every situation. This wholeness is not a static deposit but a dynamic and ever-flowing stream of

experience and inheritance that conditions and is reflected in each moment of experience. Process

spiritual formation affirms the long tradition of spirituality from Abraham and Sarah to Jesus and

Mary as well as two thousand years of Christian spiritual formation, but it frames the process of

spiritual formation in light of affirmation of embodiment, relationship, wholeness, creativity,

freedom, social responsibility, and universal revelation. As I learned in my first days at Claremont,

the Logos/Sophia theology that undergirds process thought proclaims globally that “wherever truth,

healing, beauty, and wholeness are present, God is its source.”



                                   A Process Spiritual Pilgrimage



       There are many paths to the conscious and intentional embodiment of God’s aim at

wholeness. The surprising grace of God, weaving itself in every encounter and experience, may

transform our lives when we least expect and when we feel farthest from God. While following

spiritual disciplines does not insure the conscious experience of wholeness, it does awaken us to the

possibility of aligning ourselves with God’s aim each moment of our lives and opens us to the gifts of

a relational universe in every encounter and experience. Graceful in spirit and open to change,

process spiritual formation embodies traditional practices in adventurous ways. The practice of
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spiritual formation I suggest is both intimately personal and infinitely open to transformation and

adaptation to the needs of each person’s spiritual journey.



        1) Process spiritual formation is grounded in the commitment simply to listen to our lives,

to the universe of relationships, and to the ambient and subtle sighs too deep for words of God’s

Adventurous Spirit. All moments in life are theophanies when the “doors of perception” open to

divine revelation. Though God’s voice speaks through every voice and moves through every

experience, in the welter of experience listening for the divine – for the “still small voice” that weaves

all voices together in a symphony of grace – is fundamental in our spiritual adventure. With the

Quakers, process spirituality assumes that the “inner light” of God is the deepest reality of ourselves

and everything we experience. God is always speaking to us, revealing wisdom and guidance for

every situation. In the midst of turbulent times, the Psalmist counsels us to “be still and know that I

am God.” In the stillness, we bring to consciousness the “sighs too deep for words” that speak

through the created order and ourselves. In listening intently, we intuit the divine aims for our lives

one moment at a time as well as glimpse the broader aims for ourselves and our community. (Here

the term “listening” is a metaphor for our intentional receptivity to the totality of experience and the

divine presence in each experience. God’s wisdom is mediated through all of our senses – we may

“see” the light, experience “God’s touch,” “listen” to God’s word, “taste and see” goodness of God,

and “smell” the aroma of divine abudance.)

        2 )While we awaken to God’s presence in creative listening and waiting, we also encounter

God in the active focus of meditative prayer. Process spirituality involves intentional centering. The

revival of “centering prayer,” the focus on a particular prayer word as a means of stilling the mind,
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cleansing the unconscious, and awakening to the divine voice, reflects a process-relational vision of

reality. In centering prayer, we go beyond the dichotomies of true and false self to experience our

whole self in all its stature. When distracting thoughts emerge, we neither deny nor judge them, but

let go of them as we return to our prayerful center. The prayerful center enables us to claim the

whole of our experience and place it in the divine perspective. As we embrace the totality of our

experience around the center we share with God, we grow in wisdom and stature and bring the quiet

moments of centeredness to the lively drama of everyday experience. Both listening and centering

prayer remind us that we are ultimately centered in the Holy Adventure. We experience our

wholeness in the dynamic and constant presence of creative connectedness with our past, our

environment, and God. Centering and listening prayers join the experience of constancy with the

surprising adventures of life. We journey into uncharted frontiers of relationships, social

involvement, and spiritual growth precisely because nothing can separate us from the intimately

present and infinitely resourceful love of God.

        3) Imagination and wholeness. At the heart of process thought is the power of

Divine imagination. With Walter Brueggemann, process spirituality asserts that the prophetic

imagination, the ability to envisage an alternative to the current personal and social situation is at the

heart of religious experience. As the source of novelty as well as order, God invites us to envisage

new possibilities for health, wholeness, and self-realization. Moment by moment the divine

imagination calls us to see differently. Imaginative spirituality can be embodied in healing imagery,

such as envisaging light surrounding a particular challenging situation; experiencing divine light as

part of the process of receiving a chemotherapy treatment; imaging alternatives to the present

moment; or visualizing Christ as your companion in a past or future event. The “healing of
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memories,” in which Christ becomes a person’s healing companion in a painful past event, is

grounded in the vision that the past is never static or closed, but can be transformed and

reinterpreted, that is, healed in the present moment. In like fashion, the words of scripture leap off

the page to become the living word of God when we read the bible imaginatively. This form of bible

study, championed by the Jesuit use of The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola and the

Benedictine use of lectio divina, inspires the reader to become a lively participant in the scripture

study. By becoming the woman with the flow of blood, the parents of a girl in a coma, the disciples

during the storm at sea, or the women at the empty tomb, we experience the scripture as a

contemporary word that calls us to be faithful partners with God in responding to the concrete

realities of our lives. Kairos time permeates the chronology of the everyday through holy

imagination.

        Imagination invites us to experience the divine presence in others. Looking beyond the

obvious and superficial, holy imagination awakens us to the deeper presence of God in each person

and enables us to see (and then incarnate) unexpected possibilities for wholeness and reconciliation

in difficult situations. Awakening to the divine imagination creates “a way when there is no way.”

        A process reading of scripture sees the reading, the sermon preparation, the listening in the

pew, the quiet meditation at home, as part of a hermeneutic of imagination in which the “whispered

word” of God ceaselessly confronts us with new possibilities for becoming God’s word in the world.

        4) Process Affirmations. The apostle Paul counseled his readers, “Be not conformed to the

world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The use of affirmations, positive

statements about the deeper realities of life, enables us to bring the aims of God into conscious

experience. While some persons suggest that affirmations are unrealistic denials of life’s negativities,
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process affirmations place the negativities of life within a larger, life-supportive, perspective.

Concrete in nature, the use of affirmations reveals the original wholeness that transcends any

inherited sin.

        Biblical affirmations include statements such as: “I can do all things with Christ who

strengthens me,” “nothing can separate me from the love of God,” “I am the light of the world,” “I

am created in God’s image,” “God will supply all my needs,” “God is speaking to me in sighs too

deep for words.” Affirmations, grounded in a process-relational vision of reality, include:

        God constantly speaks to me.

        God constantly presents me with new possibilities.

        I am a partner in the divine adventure.

        I am connected with the universe.

        I am open to divine possibility in each moment.

        My body reflects divine wisdom.

        I am aligned with divine beauty.

        Living by our affirmations opens our eyes to a new experience of God’s presence and our

wholeness. Affirmations help us glimpse the broad strokes of God’s aim for our lives and enhance

our ability to intuit God’s will for our lives.

        5) Relational prayerfulness. Process-relational theology is grounded in a metaphysics of love.

We are part of the body of Christ in which our joys and sorrows are embraced by our spiritual

partners. Prayer is the conscious act of connecting with God and with our neighbor. Our prayers

radiate across the universe, contributing to the wholeness of those for whom we pray. In creating an
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environment of wholeness, we enable those for whom we pray to be in greater alignment with God

and open the door for intensifications of divine activity.

        Relational prayerfulness challenges us to embrace a dynamic partnership with God and those

for whom we pray. Joined spiritually with others, we hear God’s voice speaking through them and

may discover that we are the answer to their prayers.

        Relational prayerfulness inspires us to participate in dynamic communities of faith. Worship

connects us with God and others. God is the vine and we are the branches. Connected to God, we

bear much fruit as we nurture one another in prayer, support, song, and hopefulness. When we

claim the vision of the body of Christ, we incarnate the wholeness of God and the goodness of life’s

connectedness. Vial faith communities are spiritual antidotes not only to alienation and loneliness

but to the impact of inherited sin. In solitude or community, relational prayerfulness awakens the gift

of gratitude that makes each encounter an epiphany.

        6) Body prayer. Process theology invites us to “love God in the world the flesh.” We pray

with and for our bodies. Our prayers transfigure body, mind, spirit, and relationships. With Paul,

process spirituality sees the body as the temple of God and challenges us to glorify God with our

bodies. Process body prayer has many dimensions. On the one hand, process spiritual formation

involves “moving the spirit,’ through liturgical gestures, dance, yoga asanas, meditative walking, and

aerobic prayer walking.

        Process spirituality affirms the healing power of touch. Today, many persons suffer from

touch deprivation and the impact of abusive and manipulative touch. Studies indicate that babies

who are not touched have a higher mortality rate than babies who are touched regularly. A holistic

vision of spirituality promotes holy touch, the touch that transforms and awakens us to the wonder
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of embodiment. Holy touch can be mediated in many ways – massage, the gentle balancing of

energy through reiki, therapeutic touch, and healing touch, the passing of the peace, and laying on

of hands. In its holism, process thought affirms that ordinary human activities such as eating,

drinking, sexual intimacy, and hugging can be channels of healing and grace.

        As members of a vast web of relationships, body prayer calls us to care for the bodies of

others by affirming the politics of embodiment. Indeed, the well-being of others is intimately

connected with our well-being. As members of the “beloved community,” our care for others’ bodies

is reflected in a lifestyle of justice and solidarity.

        7) The ecology of the spirit. The wholeness of life is most evident in the circles of healing

within which we live, move, and have our being. Our own center of experience emerges both at the

center and at periphery of countless clusters of relationships. In the spirit of the Hebraic notion of

Shalom, reality is a seamless web of protean and dynamic relationships in which the well-being of the

individual and social environment constantly shape one another. While spiritual formation emerges

from a persons “solitariness,” solitude and society constantly flow into one another. As the individual

experiences wholeness, the marriage, family, community, country, and planet are transformed.

Conversely, as our relational, community, and planetary contexts are transformed individuals find

healing and wholeness. As Plato noted nearly 2500 years ago, societies are the primary purveyors of

“soul food.” The process of spiritual formation goes on ceaselessly, but the shape of this formation

is largely influenced by the values of our families, schools, workplace, and society. Sadly, religious

institutions are at the edges of most persons’ spiritual lives. The edge can be the place of

marginalization and irrelevance, but it can also be the starting point for a great adventure. While the
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explicit impact of the church and other spiritual factors has been diminished in recent years, today

the church can become a leader in the creation of healing circles for persons and communities.

        The church needs to reclaim its place as a matrix for creative theological and spiritual

transformation. The church is called to be a healing circle, nurturing original wholeness and

challenging inherited brokenness. The task of the church is, first, preventative, that is, initiating

opportunities for wholeness and transformation at every stage of life, beginning with childhood and

parenting and extending to aging and death. While we are called to combat injustice, we need to

move from a sin-oriented to a health-oriented understanding of the church. Three areas are of

particular significance in weaving together persons and their environment for wholeness: parenting,

stress and spirituality, and economics. The church is called to nurture of healthy persons and

families, since the family is the most significant positive influence on well-being, as well as the site of

the most destructive behaviors. Courses on marital spirituality, communication, and wholeness

should be woven together with opportunities to learn positive parenting skills which enable parents

to see each stage of life of their child’s as an adventure and not a task. The spirituality of parents is

essential in this process. As the airlines say,“put on your oxygen mask first” before putting on your

child’s mask. Second, medical evidence suggests that nearly 80% of illnesses are in some way

stress-related. Churches can connect spirituality with wholeness of mind, body, and relationships

through courses that weave together spiritual techniques with practical applications for the home and

workplace. Finally, the church can take the lead in economic transformation. Since the primary

indicator of a child’s health is the economic status of her or his parents, the economic ecology of

wholeness must be addressed both preventatively and responsively. Nowhere is the impact of

original sin more evident than in our economic affairs: the consumption of fast foods contributes to
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razing the Amazon rain forests, unemployment leads to greater incidents of spouse abuse and

alcoholism, poverty bring about a greater likelihood of unplanned pregnancies, violence, and drug

addiction, toxic work environments cause physical and emotional distress.

       The church is challenged to become the leader in promoting an ecology of wholeness that

joins spiritual growth, economic justice, universal health care, and family well-being. We need a

transformed mind that will give birth to transformed values and actions. We need worship that

inspires adventure, mediates grace, and challenges us to partnership with God in caring for the world.

Our consciousness of own original wholeness, our essential relatedness to God and universe inspires

a sense of the holiness and beauty of each moment and our calling to do “something beautiful for

God” through nurturing this same experience of beauty in others. In that simple commitment, we

will unleash the “butterfly effect,” our small and unnoticed acts of grace and kindness will moment

by moment give birth to experiences of beauty and wholeness that will gently and yet dramatically

bring healing to the world.

Dr. Bruce G. Epperly is Director of the Washington Institute of Spirituality and Health and Adjunct

Professor of Theology and Spirituality at Georgetown University School of Medicine and Wesley

Theological Seminary in Washington D.C. He may be contacted at DrBruceEpperly@aol.com