Currents of Faith: Open and Unfolding Reflections

This is a story of a theology and a life and how they came together. The theology is process relational theology. It is a personal story told as clearly as I can remember.

I do not intend my narrative as a model for others. Rather, I have a mix of feelings as I recall the events of my life: shame, pride, awe, sadness, wonder, regret, satisfaction, and pleasure. Some events are painful to remember and I know that my mind has graciously wiped the worst of them from my memory, the gift of repression. I do, however, wish to offer myself as a model in one quality: authenticity. I report my story as fully and honestly as I can remember.

I am aware that others would tell quite different stories of their lives and their theologies. In fact, it is my hope that those who read these words will be encouraged to reflect on their own lives and the part that theology has played in forming them.

I was surprised in my writing when the words began to talk back to me and the final text was not that which I had first intended. I found that an interplay emerges between actual historical events and my unique experiences in living through them, a dance between event and experience.

Consequently, I have named places and people and dates to keep the story grounded, not allowing it to simply be an internal flight of imagination. In some instances I have used only a first name to protect a person’s privacy. Where it is necessary to identify the person, I have worked hard to report my own feelings and thoughts, to stay within my own skin. I can neither know the depth of another, nor have I a desire to harm any person. My experiences were open to interpretation at the time and modifications as time passed. Indeed, the same event might have been experienced quite differently by others present and reported in significantly different words.

I am grateful to Dr. John B. Cobb, Jr. whom I chose many years ago to be my spiritual mentor and who suggested that I write this story. When I asked him later why he asked me to do so, he replied simply, “I thought you could do it.” I do hope that the forty-two years I spent counseling with others entered into that confidence. In those years I learned to speak in simple language and to value each person’s unique story however different it was from my own. I have also explored my own life with a professional counselor, looking deeply within myself. I am a counseling psychologist and ordained United Methodist minister, aged 74 and now retired.

My plan is to speak of three areas in which process theology has had great influence on me: making sense of me, informing my faith and transforming my actions. Nine chapters will be devoted to each area. The first three chapters share the significant happenings in my life.

I have written in an informal, conversational style. I do know how to write formally, having written a doctoral dissertation, two master’s theses and four books. I do know that a subject and predicate are necessary to make a complete sentence. However, many of my most profound experiences have not happened in sentences. I simply do not think that such formality fits with expressing myself authentically. I prefer an exclamation! I delight in a stand-alone phrase. By all means, I plead, do not show this document to my English teacher!

Whether this story is read by an individual or by members of a discussion group, I would invite you as readers to ask: How do these experiences compare with my own? How have I interpreted the unfolding events in my own life? How have I been formed by my own theology? How has my theology informed my faith? How has my theology transformed my actions? Who does my theology call me to become?

I dedicate this work to two persons whom I hold as beloved, Adrienne Brizee and Julie Gotthold. They have labored lovingly, patiently and persistently over these words. Their wisdom has helped to form and shape my thought into its present form.