Amipo-verdant: Love is Green

By Craig Morton

God’s love is green. And not to freak people out – even though there is a weird contemporary repulsive reaction to the word in the United States – it is moist. Green and moist.

Some may appreciate other shades in the spectrum of visible light. Perhaps there are times when beige and brown are nice. But I grew up with those. Growing up in the Arzona desert, I was always in search of green.

I remember talking with somebody like me who was raised in the desert. We talked about our reactions when we saw a mountain stream or stood by a lake or drove along Interstate-84 through the Columbia River Gorge, simply in awe of the water that was there. We former desert-dwellers are often amazed and amused, “Wow! Look. That’s a lot of water.” The ocean simply stops us and tells us to be silent.

This phenomenon, common to people who grew up among sand, cholla, organ pipe, and saguaros. I grew up a short drive from Dead Man Gulch and Big Bug Creek, and many other riverbeds that were absent water for 51-weeks a year. Naming those arroyos and gullies – which rarely hosted flowing water – seemed either a cynical taunt or an unwarranted wish.

The desert does have its beauty. Yet, one is under the constant reminder that it is an inhospitable place. As a young child, I recalled news reports of stranded drivers wandering away from the broken-down cars. Mirages, sun stroke, thirst. The geography itself would vanquish an ill-prepared intruder.

Once, backpacking in the deserts north of Phoenix, we came upon a trickle in one of those arroyos. We followed it upstream, seeking its source. Through some turns and gradual inclines, we came upon an oasis of cottonwood trees and soft grasses, clear pools and fresh water trickling from the side of a cliff. A small spring, sourced by mountain snows and spring rains many miles away.

That trickle, just a wet spot in the sand, seemed like a promise that the surrounding harshness of the sun and cactus and glittering sands conspired to oppose. Hospitality. Coming upon an oasis in the Arizona desert held the promise of life and of sustenance. Of flourishing.

So Many Shades of Green

I’m still searching for the green oases. Riding on a bus through south central Oregon, I looked to my traveling companion and noted, “in Oregon, there are just many shades of green.” While growing up in the Arizona desert, the idea of the Pacific Northwest impacted me. And the lure of the Oregon coast is frequent.

“Far from the city and dread
Somewhere that time don’t change
Some say the ocean
Under endless skies
Will bring you back to life
For the rest of time
Some say the ocean
Helps leave it all behind
Can even free your mind
A soul unconfined” (The Hip Abduction 2024, Some Say the Ocean)

Yesterday, on a hike to a waterfall only a few miles from the Oregon coast, the trail wound through old growth cedars, Sitka spruce, western hemlock, and Douglas firs. The ground was covered with beaked sedge, stepmossand cat-tail mosses. Ferns, vine maple, and salmonberry meet you from knees to eyelevel. Everywhere is a new green.

The Potence of the Ami-Green God

Decades ago, walking through Kansas prairies, I began to see the greening power of God in the emerald “waves of grain” as the green grasses swayed like seas in the swirls of the south-wind. Green is less a color than a testimony to the life arising from God’s love. In those years I became familiar with the language of Hildegard of Bingen, one of the Rhineland mystics, living along the edges of the densely verdant Black Forst of Southwest Germany, appreciated the language of the green-earth. Along with Meister Eckart, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Nicholas of Cusa and others.

This flourishing power of greening is not “other,” not external. We entered it. Greening is a power of flourishing witnessed through living creation. A force that acts.

Nicholas of Cusa (circa 1401CE) wrote of God as the “not other” (Hopkins 1987). These are places we walk are not outside, external, beyond the divine. The Apostle Paul quoted Athenian poets like I quote pop music, noticing for the Greeks the God “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17.28). Not a god external, “not other,” not over there somewhere, but was one “in whom” we live and wander, and walk.

As I drove 500 miles to the Oregon coast, I heard my contemporary poets, David New and Matt Poynter, sing:

Now you’re heading to the countryside
Oh, even for just a little while
Found that the forest gives you peace of mind
Apple pie and the stars align

So free yourself
From the garden of ghosts
Make your way through the heart and soul
Don’t ever tell them you can’t go
A life force in bloom…
Never let go of the wild (The Hip Abduction 2024, Northern Lights)

Hildegard saw in nature, saw in God, the viriditas, the “greening” power, God’s immanent Spirit as “living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity” (Laudato Si Movement 2023). Hildegard noticed that green was much more than an adjective. Greening is even more than a verb. It is the immanent presence of God, acting and loving.

For Nicholas of Cusa, seeing the world as it is – as it really is, as it theologically is – means seeing the webs and integrated strands of everything in each. The challenge was interpreting what we saw. He would assert that certainly, we see differences between oranges, clowns, pancakes, and rivers. Yet upon closer inspection in each thing we see is part of the unified beginning of everything. And in that glimpse of the beginning, we see even God as “de li non aliud,” as not-other.

Certainly, the same could be contemplated while in the hot barren desert, where life feels under threat. But, walking in a fine mist within an old growth forest, there’s no need to try to imagine, the verdancy is welcoming and kinetic and visceral. Nicholas wrote, “For each thing is seen most precisely when it is seen as not-other.” (Hopkins 1987, 98)

Hildegard writes, “O noble verdure, which grows from the Sun of splendor! Your clear serenity shines in the Wheel of Godhead, Your greatness is past all earthly understanding, And Heaven’s wonders surround you in their embrace. You glow like dawn and burn like the Sun in glory.” (Hildegard 1990, 528)

Another translation of this quote is this: “Good people, Most royal greening verdancy, Rooted in the sun, You shine with radiant light, in this circle of earthly existence. You shine so finely, it surpasses understanding. God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God.”

The Potency of the Greening

Viriditas is the creative power of life. Most of all, viriditas is God’s greening power, which “gives life to all things and inspires and revives our spiritual lives” (Church n.d.). This fits Oord’s claims that “An amipotent God creates alongside creatures and creation rather than overpowering or conjuring something from nothing. God co-creates. The steadfast love of an amipotent God is relentless; divine love for creation literally endures forever. An amipotent Lover forgives and never sends anyone to hell. God redeems. The amipotent Spirit enjoys covenantal relations – hesed – with all creation. God relates.” (Oord 2023)

I grew up with an unhelpful self-understanding. As the unplanned child, I sometimes would be called the “bonus.” Deep within was forming an image of being added on, the last one chosen when making teams, like a thing too important to set down but still a burden to carry along. This bent and disfigured my relationships. In any place, at any time, there existed a feeling of not being enough and requiring me to justify the space I take up.

Even as a child, the dark green of ponderosa pine, the shaky aspen leaves, seemed to welcome me and let me know that in the green spaces there is always room for more life, more living, and for me.

Bio: Craig Morton has taught philosophy, ethics, business, and humanities for many years at the college level. Professionally, as a teacher, but also in the various other vocations, philosophical studies have been a constant. Philosophy has enriched his critical thinking, allowed understanding for other points of view, and to find creative solutions for consulting clients. It is Craig’s goal that you too will find philosophy to be a base for building your professional, academic, and even personal life. 

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Craig Morton applies amipotence to ecological concerns through what he calls an amipo–verdant perspective. I find it deeply compelling. His poetic theological proposals align well with my own ideas about amipotence, offering a vision of divine love active in and through creation. While I explore similar themes, Morton delves far more profoundly into the connections between God’s love and ecotheology. His reflections offer rich insight into how divine, uncontrolling love can inspire ecological responsibility. I greatly appreciate how his work expands and deepens the conversation, bringing clarity and creativity to the intersection of theology, nature, and divine relational power.

For more on Oord’s view of climate change, see this article.

* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.