Practicing the Presence of Amipotence

By Jay McDaniel

Practicing the presence of amipotence involves embracing creativity, healing, and interconnectedness, akin to playing and listening to music, fostering love and flourishing in both human and more-than-human communities.

The Spirit of Amipotence: Music and Flow

Practicing the presence of Amipotence is like playing music and listening to music. It is cooperating with a living spirit of creativity, healing, and whole-making that is at work in the world. This Spirit is like music: flowing, adaptive, nourishing, and sometimes challenging. Just as music is more than an idea in our mind, so the Spirit is more than an idea in our minds. We can talk about it, but equally important is to let it flow through us.

Practicing the presence of Amipotence is being receptive to that Spirit individually and in community with others in active ways, and appreciating that Spirit as it is present in, and practiced by, others. The others include the more-than-human world: the hills and rivers, trees and stars, plants and animals. And, of course, the others include other people. To practice the presence of Amipotence is to sense the nourishing powers of Spirit in their own lives.

Learning from Children: Ezra and Malia

Meet Ezra and Malia. Ezra is ten months old, and Malia is eight. They are my grandchildren. Both of them practice the presence of Amipotence almost all the time. They do it as they learn about their bodies, interact with their parents, make new sounds, play, belly laugh, and dream. They may even do it as they cry. They are responding to the lure of God within them.

The Lure of God: A Universal Invitation

The lure of God within each of us is a fresh and energizing possibility for responding to the moment at hand, given the situations we face. It has no age specifications. It is present within each of us whatever our age and condition in life. It can be experienced unconsciously, and the practice can be unintentional. It is a lure to flourish relative to the situation at hand. It is on the side of life.

From Thinking to Practicing: A Daily Challenge

Ezra and Malia remind me that it is one thing to think about God as amipotent and quite another to practice the presence of Amipotence. This distinction is something I, as an adult, realize daily. I sometimes confuse thinking about God with being receptive to God’s energies in my daily life. I do not always practice the presence of the God in whom I believe. Sometimes I fail miserably.

A Musical Analogy: Letting the Music Play

I am a guitarist, so I’ll use a musical analogy. To fall short of practicing Amipotence, all the while believing in it, is a little like believing in the guitar and the possibility of playing it, but not actually putting your fingers on the strings and playing it. Sometimes I believe in God’s love but do not play the music or let it play through me.

I realize that the phrase “letting the music play through me” can sound odd. Open and relational thinkers like to say that God does not control us. This, I believe, is true. But the flip side of not being “controlled” by God is not absolute, self-contained autonomy. It is not to be a self-conscious, individualized, and somewhat isolated ego; and it is not necessarily to think of God in such terms, either. Rather it is to have a sense of relationality and the interconnectedness of things, and to sense God as a spiritual presence. This spiritual presence can be felt in personal terms, as a Thou, but also in more generative and energetic terms, as a power of love. Sometimes “not being controlled by God” can include being filled with God’s love and being a conduit for God’s living lure.

Cooperation with the Spirit: Willing Not Willful

Here again, music making offers an analogy. Most musicians will tell you that there’s a time when you must “let go” of an overly self-conscious approach and simply let the music flow through you. Your fingers, your muscle memory, take over, and you become a conduit for the music. You are, as it were, filled with the Spirit. Or, to extend the analogy, filled with God. This Spirit is more, much more, than an idea in our minds. Thus, the term “practice” can be misleading if it suggests taking an idea—such as that God is all-loving—and putting it into practice in a willful manner. Practicing God’s presence is willing, to be sure, but not willful. The practice involves a surrender, conscious or unconscious, and a cooperative letting go.

Sometimes this cooperation is conscious and intentional: “Not my will but thy will, O Lord.” There can indeed be a sense of God as a Thou, a personal presence. And sometimes it is unselfconscious and spontaneous, like that of my grandchildren when they belly laugh or like me when I listen to them: “Suffer the little children to come unto me.”

Unconscious Practice and Dreamwork

Practicing the presence of Amipotence isn’t limited to our waking hours. It extends into our unconscious minds, influencing our dreams and the intuitive insights we gain from them. Dreamwork can be a profound way to connect with the Spirit of Amipotence. In our dreams, we often find ourselves exploring themes of creativity, healing, and transformation, the work of the Spirit. These dreams can offer guidance, clarity, and a deeper understanding of our life’s journey.

Engaging with our dreams through practices such as dream journaling and reflection can help us discern the subtle messages and lures of the Spirit. By paying attention to our dreams, we can uncover hidden aspects of our psyche that are seeking integration and wholeness, and in doing so, we allow the Spirit to work within us in deeper, unconscious ways.

The Practice of Listening and Love

How, then, might we practice the presence of Amipotence? The first and most obvious way is to love. Moment by moment love begins, not with assertive action but rather with listening. Practicing Amipotence is to listen to other people, the more-than-human world, and our own hearts in a loving and appreciative way, and then to respond, moment by moment, in kindly ways, doing our best to foster a flourishing of life, including our own. The listening includes sensitivity to the suffering of others, the pain that sometimes lies behind their words, and understanding their actions in light of that pain. The philosopher Whitehead speaks of God as a “fellow sufferer who understands.” The practice of love includes this kind of understanding.

Many Forms of Flourishing

At the heart of love is a desire to promote flourishing. In the house of flourishing, there are many rooms. In human life these include attention, beauty, connectedness, devotion, enthusiasm, forgiveness, gratitude, hospitality, humility, humor, imagination, intimacy, justice, kindness, meaning-making, nurturing, openness, peace, questing, questioning, reverence, silence, vision, wonder, a sense of mystery, positive self-regard, and zest for life. Flourishing also involves honesty about our own shortcomings and failings, an important aspect of humility.

We practice the presence of Amipotence by allowing these qualities of heart and forms of relatedness to flow into us and by recognizing and appreciating them in others—by listening to the music of their lives. When we listen in this way, we participate in a dimension of Amipotence that extends beyond a mere lure. The Amipotence of God is also a Deep Listening that is omnipresent. By listening appreciatively to the music of other people’s lives, we engage in a kind of prayer that is contemplative rather than addressive. It is about being “with” others as God is “with” them.

Building Just, Sustainable, and Joyful Communities

In order to help build just, sustainable, and joyful communities, we humans must have a sense for the beauty and power of the larger web of life in which we are embedded. We must recognize that we are small but included in a greater whole, and that our calling is to live with respect and care for the whole of life, not human life alone. Thus, the practice of Amipotence in our time needs to include a love of life, and not just human life, and perhaps also a recognition that the whole of the more-than-human world, including the inorganic, is living in some way. This holistic perspective encourages us to see ourselves as part of an intricate and interconnected web of existence, where every element, from the smallest particle to the vast cosmos, plays a role in the symphony of life. By embracing this view, we can cultivate a deep reverence for all forms of life, recognizing the intrinsic value and dignity of every being and entity within the universe.

Expanding Our Understanding of Community

Moreover, this perspective invites us to expand our understanding of community to include not only human relationships but also our relationships with the natural world. It calls us to foster a sense of kinship with the earth and its many inhabitants, recognizing that our well-being is intertwined with the health of the planet. Practicing the presence of Amipotence, therefore, involves nurturing an attitude of gratitude and stewardship towards the environment, advocating for sustainable practices, and supporting efforts to protect and restore natural ecosystems.

Incorporating these principles into our daily lives can transform the way we interact with the world around us. It can inspire us to live more mindfully, to make choices that reflect our commitment to the flourishing of all life, and to engage in actions that promote ecological balance and social harmony. By doing so, we not only honor the Spirit of Amipotence but also contribute to the creation of a more just, compassionate, and vibrant world for future generations.

Let the Music Play

Ultimately, the practice of Amipotence is about recognizing and celebrating the interconnectedness of all things, allowing the divine music to flow through us, and participating in the ongoing creation of a world where all beings can thrive in harmony. We need not romanticize this. There is so much to our lives that is frightened, ungrateful, self-centered, and worse. Amipotence is not Omnipotence. The practice of Amipotence can be fleeting, tentative, and fragile. It can sometimes seem as if force and coercion, greed and envy, violence and hatred, are the ruling powers of the world, wrongly projected onto God. But the promise of open and relational theology, and indeed of the very idea of Amipotence, is that its practice can make a powerful difference in the world. What option do we have? Let the music play.

Bio: Dr. Jay McDaniel, a scholar of process theology, integrates Whiteheadian thought into contemporary life and spirituality. His interests include Buddhism, Open and Relational Theology, and discernment in Christian traditions. McDaniel, a musician, performs for Alzheimer’s patients and with the Fat Soul Band. He chairs the Center for Process Studies and edits Open Horizons. His books include Living from the Center and Of God and Pelicans.

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Jay McDaniel presents a powerful essay on how amipotence shapes creativity and healing. All his insights are rich, but I’m especially drawn to the idea that God’s lack of control does not imply absence. Instead, divine presence is revealed through relationality and the deep interconnectedness of all things. Our response to this uncontrolling God can take many forms. I love Jay saying that when we let divine music flow through us, we join in the ongoing creation of the universe. Rightly relating to God also means resisting coercion, greed, and violence. Amipotence, then, transforms how we live, love, and create.

For more on Oord’s view of providence and music, see this article.

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