Also, it’s pretty incredible to think that Anne Lamott pioneered Christian memoir and parenthood memoir.

Polydoxy:
 Theology
 of
 Multiplicity
 and
 Relation



http://depts.drew.edu/tsfac/colloquium/2010/TTCChapter%2013%20-%20Thatamanil.pdf

http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_text_patrick.htm

Much like different spiritualities and not totally unrelated to same, they are radically plural, such that, beyond certain facts and norms, theologies of nature are otherwise very much geared to differences in temperament, cultural evaluations, aesthetic sensibilities and personal preferences, or, in a phrase, personal taste.

The plurality of expressions (very much including your beautiful images) are mutually enriching and not mutually exclusive. However, beyond a certain measure of realism, we must avoid not only an epistemic but also an aesthetic hegemony, being careful about exactly what we might mean when using descriptors like “on target” or “best representation.”

As any seasoned spiritual director knows, not all have been blessed with such loving fathers. Since additional levels of human development don’t contribute value to humans, in my way of looking at reality, they really don’t influence my preferences vis a vis God-images. In fact, I resonate most with the image of God as an infant, sometimes as a sleeping baby, more often, though, crying … but not in desperation but, instead, with an importunate supplication oriented by an unrelenting instinctual faith and hope … in love.

Michelangelo and William Blake were right!

From a Biblical perspective the nature of God is seen as reflected in aspects of the created order. Yes, God to a certain degree does have the nature of space, wind, emptiness, mist, air, sky, force, energy, light, darkness so congenial to Buddhist/Hindu/New Age types. However humans as being made in the image of God, are the best representation of what God is like – especially a human at their highest development, a mature, wise, good, vital 50+ man or woman. I knew a dynamic, spiritual woman in her sixties. She reminded me of a female God the Father.

To me saying God is NOT like a man – the Sky Daddy – is dumbing God down, making God less than what he is, flattening the divine out, a less than human orgasmic gas. In a true sense since humans are made in the divine image, there is a humanness intrinsic to God, though divine humanness is a infinite multidimensional cube compared to our simple flat squares. God is even more human, personal, individual, distinct, even idiosyncratic than any of us – who are mere echoes of him. And we encounter Him in the Spirit, answered prayers, providential circumstances we find Him to be that, and someday when we have a body like the one Jesus has now we will see this peculiar, wonderful Sky Daddy face to face. I remember the magic and power of my own father when I was a little boy.I remember the day when my younger brothers were rushing out of the house to greet my father arriving home from work with ecstatic cries of “Daddy, Daddy” and suddenly I could no longer do that, the magic was gone, though I still loved and respected him. He was mere man. Christ taught us to pray to our “Our Father in Heaven”

There is much wisdom and truth in Michelangelo’s and William Blake’s renditions of God as his a dynamic, active, wise older man. Far from being simplifications of God they point to his depth, his danger, his joy and love.

At the same time, because we as Christians believe that other religions variously participate in the very same pneumatological (Holy Spirit-related) realities, there is some comparative formative spirituality going on in our mapping of concepts interreligiously. The essential dogmas of Christianity, as revealed in scripture, clearly convey THAT we are loved and those beliefs are generally categorized as theological (What about God?), Christological (What about Jesus?), pneumatological (What about the Spirit?), anthropological (What is wo/man?), soteriological (What do we need?), ecclesiological (What about community?) and eschatological (What about ultimates and “end things”?). And, while the answers do include such as our incarnational reality and sacramental economy, they don’t otherwise explain the empirical HOW. So, beginning with what we do know from our human sciences, cultures and philosophies and what we do believe from our religion, we imaginatively engage reality, like the psalmists, and offer what are essentially poetic renderings. Some do begin in philosophy with onto-theology, but all metaphysics are doomed to failure vis a vis primal reality. And, in our theo-ontology, all metaphors eventually collapse. As it is, a theology of nature is a mere heuristic device, a vague model at best, which acts as a conceptual hatrack for our hymns of praise; it doesn’t have speculative value and isn’t falsifiable. It has practical significance for the life of worship and prayer for those who might resonate with its poetry, which goes beyond the essentials of faith but neither without them nor inconsistent with them. Some people DO improperly conflate the otherwise autonomous methods of science, philosophy and theology; some DO aspire to a robust onto-theology; some DO articulate theologies of nature with bad science and bad anthropology. But as long as we avoid those pitfalls, we can otherwise only be guilty of bad poetry. Mea maxima culpa.