Recognizing a fuller, more expansive God in unassuming places and people

Abstract

We live in a society that promotes ideologies of hyper-individualism that breed crude and greedy competition interwoven with myths of scarcity of resources. These frameworks create a type of traumatic epidemic of separation. Separation denies the inherent value of being in communion with Spirit. The separation between races, religions, gender, sexual orientations, nations, and interest groups (even effects caused by man-made disasters) calls for a different way of thinking in order to heal isolation and discord: a different way of thinking that endorses greater intimate relationships emphasizing a mutual reliance and the interconnectedness of all life while denying the false narratives that prioritize self-interests. At the very heart of various contemporary social movements is a revolutionary way of thinking and behaving that lifts up narratives of an interrelational God. God as Spirit is relational as God works with, through, and for us in each and everything.1 This interconnection exists as a communion of love—love as an essence of God. This article will address the need to cultivate encounters with God as Spirit through public worship and ritual protests. It will explore a vision for a future church, proposing aesthetic practices that emphasize the intimate, dynamic, and fluid movement of a God we have failed to remember, see, or imagine—a God that functions as the emancipator of all of humanity.