Love: The Name of the Universe

By T.D. Burnette

What’s in a naming—and why is it both true and vital to call the universe Love?

“If God stopped loving you into the present moment, you would disappear,” said contemplative author and teacher, James Finley.

I remember when I first heard that comment, and how something opened up within me—something that spoke a silent, but resounding, “yes!” As I look back now, it still feels as though it was the one phrase I had been waiting to hear—but didn’t have the words to articulate myself.

I mean, I did have some words (OK, maybe a lot of words). I studied process metaphysics, and I was passionate about finding empirical and rational ways to name the realities of God and the world, and I had read a lot of books and done a lot of theology.

But there was just something to the simplicity of Finley’s phrasing. It was a way to name that Love is our essence—that Love is our very ­being—that Love holds all of us together.

Calling the God—world relationship Love, is peculiar, isn’t it?

Words are funny that way. Someone can come along and say something that you’ve said differently hundreds of times, and they can say it in a way that just encapsulates a central idea so poignantly and succinctly that it’s almost more beautiful said that way.

We are always reaching for expressive possibilities—reaching to articulate something real with words that are themselves mystical boundaries to the unknown.

The mystic Hildegard of Bingen once said, “We cannot live in a world interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.”

The point is, when we use language of any kind, we are always in the process of naming reality.

I gravitate much more naturally toward theopoetics, rather than theology. The difference obviously being the suffix of the word.

Theology is about theo-logos—theos, meaning God, and logos, meaning word, or reason, or discourse. So, theology is generally discourse about God, or, more directly, reasoning about God—trying to find the right words to help us catch the correct snapshot of God.

Theopoetics, on the other hand, is more about theo-poiesis—poiesis, being a Greek word for an act or process of creation. So, theopoetics is about the creative expression of God—it is about making God, linguistically speaking. There is a playfulness to it. In some sense, in theopoetics, we are godding.

What this means is that, when we use words to speak about God, we are always reaching—and every name that we give God is a poetic placeholder for the Mystery.

Peter Rollins has said that, perhaps “…naming God is never really naming God, but only naming our understanding of God.” (p. 2, How Not to Speak of God). He reminds us that the mystic Meister Eckhart similarly once claimed that “The unnameable is omni-nameable.” (p. 13, How Not).

Think about that for a second. Perhaps God goes by many names, because the words that we use to express the depths of existence would, by necessity, be many.

When it comes to naming God in the Christian tradition, one of the most common phrases we hear is “God is Love,” (1 John 14:6). But, in the context of this conversation on language, we must remember that “Love” is simply a poetic naming that many of us use to name divinity—which is to name the sacredness of our collective existence.

So, for Christians who use this name “Love” for God—what does this really mean?

On this theme, theologian John Caputo has asked: “When someone says, ‘God is love,’ do they mean that ‘God’ is one of the best names we have for love? Or is it the other way around (and this is what Augustine would have asked): Is ‘love’ one of the best names we have for God? For Derrida, there is an irresoluble slipping back and forth between these names and no place to stand that would give us the leverage to arrest this play.” (pps. 62–63 Philosophy and Theology)

This “slipping back and forth” is a form of theopoetics. Perhaps we are invited to not expect to arrest this play between the two sides—but rather to let the play arrest us in the beauty of enfleshing and naming the Mystery.

And so, when reaching for words, we say things like, “If God stopped loving you into the present moment, you would disappear.” But is this statement more than just a poetry? What could a statement like this mean, metaphysically speaking? Is there anything true, real, or actual about it?

It is always a reach to describe something real or true about the nature of things. But just because it’s a reach, doesn’t mean that it isn’t describing something real.

The cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead has what philosophers call an “event-based ontology,” which means that it claims that the most actual aspects of reality aren’t substances (matter itself) but events (feelings or emotive happenings that have a materiality to them).

In Whitehead’s terms, these events are deeply and thoroughly affectual and relational, which is to say that they consist mainly of their felt relationships to one another.

Said another way, relationships are the very heart of the universe.

What if Love is simply the name that we give to relationships that we have with both people and things when those relationships are functioning to promote a certain intimation of Beauty for our collective existence?

These relationships comprise the metaphysical scaffolding of our world, and so, it’s no wonder that we talk about Love to name a relational world.

Countless tomes have been written to try and encapsulate the meaning of something like Love. From enrapturing phrases like those in Shakespearean sonnets or the Romanticist poetry, to the embodiment of the Jesus way of living that calls one to extend ‘love to their enemies’—Love calls to us from a place deep in our bones and gives us the language of life.

It’s almost as if we have this intuitive sense that somewhere deep down, Love is what we were made for.

I remember being in the hospital when my firstborn son was born, having one of those special initial moments of bonding between a parent and child. And, for whatever reason, the first thought that came into my head as I wept over this newfound loving connection was, “Bonding with an infant is whatever the opposite of war is. It is a profoundly deep interconnectedness with the inherent preciousness of human life.”

To me, there was something so real about my blossoming love for my son—something that reached beyond just that moment in time—­something that extended down into the depths of reality itself.

That experience with my son reminds me of this quote by author Marilynne Robinson from her book Gilead: “You see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us…and what a blessing to enjoy you now.”

“Love” is the word we use when we feel the feeling of being in life-promoting relationships. The phrase, “I love you,” is a phrase that we use to describe our affection or exuberance for another or for own aliveness.

Perhaps “Love,” as Franciscan contemplative Richard Rohr has so elegantly stated, is “the unceasing stream of reality.”

I would offer that Love is our name for the harmonious relationality of aliveness.

In the most theopoetic sense, Love is our beginning—and it will be our end. It is a way to describe what enfolds our every moment—no matter what difficulties, tragedies, or concerns the current moment holds.

Love is a zoomed-out statement about the entire web of reality whose cosmic relationships support life that can open up for us a wider horizon beyond our collective suffering.

And it is also a completely zoomed-in statement about the intricacies of how entangled life works together to curate our experiences—even in the very depths of something like suffering. Love is the glue that holds together the fragile tissue of our world.

In other words, without it, we would disappear.

When Thomas Jay Oord says that God’s nature is best expressed not through power or coercion, but rather through an uncontrolling love that he calls amipotence, he is illustrating a new theopoetic potential for naming God today.

In this word, amipotence, we see something, like Finley’s poetic statement, which is simply and clearly expressed—not solely as God’s name—but also as descriptive of God’s activity. When Oord asks, “what can God do?,” his response is that “God loves.”

God is the loving and just interrelationality of all cosmic relations. God is the web of the cosmos that yields beauty, intensity, complexity, and aliveness—which is reality itself. God’s job is to Love the becoming world into novel expressions of itself.

So, perhaps it’s both theopoetic, and it’s true, to say something like: “If at the count of three, God would cease loving you…you would disappear. For you are nothing—absolutely nothing—outside and other than the love of God giving itself to you as your very life. But it’s your very nothingness without God that makes your very presence to be the presence of God. And that’s the paradox that lies at the heart of all reality, which then renders the universe as God’s body and that it’s bodying forth the love that’s uttering it into being.”

When we say things like this, we are lapsing into the trance of a theopoetics that lures us deep toward a nonduality—which is a non-­difference at the heart of things. You are not only loved, but you are Love.

Whitehead said at the end of his book, Process and Reality: “It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World.”

Not only is God’s name Love, but Love is also the name of the universe.

In our utterings, as each of us reach for something real to say about our experience here in the world, if we can conjure up the name “Love” on our lips, it just might give us the freedom that each of us desire: namely, the freedom to give ourselves back to the world.

And, as we learn to give ourselves back to the fullness of our lives—even in tragedy, death, and suffering—we might even come to know that all of it is held by, in, and as, Love.

And it is in the Beauty of this Love, that we can find Peace amidst the passage of all things.

Bio: Tim Burnette writes and teaches in philosophy, theology, cosmology, and decolonial mysticism. He earned his doctorate from Claremont School of Theology, where he studied process metaphysics and compassion. He has hosted the Theopoetics Podcast and currently curates Way Collective, which is a contemplative community for love and liberation in Santa Barbara, CA.

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

TD Burnette’s essay is beautifully written and accessible. His reference to theopoetics highlights the importance of language, especially in how we describe God. I agree with Tim that relationships lie at the core of the universe, and we were made to love. However, I wouldn’t go as far as he does in naming love as the universe itself. The universe includes creatures that sometimes commit evil—Donald Trump being an example. I believe a God of love is active throughout the universe, inspiring and empowering all creatures to embrace love. God is even working to persuade Trump toward love’s transformative power.

For more on Oord’s view of Christian materialism, see this article.

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