Fascinating post. It makes me think of process theology's and open and relational theology's notion of panexperientialism, where even the smallest units of the natural world, down to the quantum level, possess a capability of experiencing. Not necessarily conscious experience, at the lowest levels, but in more complex forms, like animals and humans, it coalesces to become conscious experience.
This vision makes its best sense when it comes with a confession of Y*******, the Lord, the One who Creates. In this, the fields and waters bear witness to God, but are not really representations of divine realities. This would be the separation between Israel and the nations with their multiple divinities each with its own creational province.
Of further note, this One who Creates also redeems, acts in and through history. If Creation sings it does so because there is a bigger story going on; an anti-Creation or perhaps outside-creation going on, an empty tomb.
And this is how I am both a pagan and a Christian. All of nature sings the song of the Divine, all of the myriad deities of the world are emanations of the Divine, mere ways for the Divine to be in a specific context so that the creations can best live in loving—and yes, sometimes wild and a bit mad—relationship with each other and with the Divine.
It’s like light going through a lens that focuses or refracts the light in a particular way or changes the color…the light is still the light. It always remains the light. The colors and refractions are just a way for the light to be for a while. But all the colors, all the ways light can be focused and refracted, reveal the nature of the light. They do the work of the light, by illuminating and warming the world in different ways. White light is the true light, the full spectrum containing all possibilities…but the blue light and red light and green light are all still *light*, doing the work of light and by their nature pointing back to the white light.
In the Light Seekers the author writes about the latest research into plants. They may well be sentient.
Fascinating post. It makes me think of process theology's and open and relational theology's notion of panexperientialism, where even the smallest units of the natural world, down to the quantum level, possess a capability of experiencing. Not necessarily conscious experience, at the lowest levels, but in more complex forms, like animals and humans, it coalesces to become conscious experience.
This vision makes its best sense when it comes with a confession of Y*******, the Lord, the One who Creates. In this, the fields and waters bear witness to God, but are not really representations of divine realities. This would be the separation between Israel and the nations with their multiple divinities each with its own creational province.
Of further note, this One who Creates also redeems, acts in and through history. If Creation sings it does so because there is a bigger story going on; an anti-Creation or perhaps outside-creation going on, an empty tomb.
And this is how I am both a pagan and a Christian. All of nature sings the song of the Divine, all of the myriad deities of the world are emanations of the Divine, mere ways for the Divine to be in a specific context so that the creations can best live in loving—and yes, sometimes wild and a bit mad—relationship with each other and with the Divine.
It’s like light going through a lens that focuses or refracts the light in a particular way or changes the color…the light is still the light. It always remains the light. The colors and refractions are just a way for the light to be for a while. But all the colors, all the ways light can be focused and refracted, reveal the nature of the light. They do the work of the light, by illuminating and warming the world in different ways. White light is the true light, the full spectrum containing all possibilities…but the blue light and red light and green light are all still *light*, doing the work of light and by their nature pointing back to the white light.
Or at least that is how I see things.