God as Love: Deepening the Connection

Integrative thinker Layman Pascal joins me to talk about the meaning of "God" from a metamodern perspective. How does thinking in terms of "surplus cohesion" point us to a helpful way of relating to all the meanings of the term? Why and when is a 2nd person relationship with Reality warranted? Who is this Face in the Universe summoning us to greater communion and transcendence? How do we communicate about all this across the various memetic sensemaking structures of culture (traditional, modern, postmodern metamodern)? Finally, what can folks expect about the upcoming metamodern spirituality gathering on the topic, which will be hosted at Sky Meadow in May and led by Layman?

0:00 Introduction

1:21 Layman's "Surplus Cohesion" Framework

4:48 God as Ultimate Reality in the 2nd Person

9:52 The Face of the Universe: Seeking the 2nd Person in the Complexity Stack

16:27 Some Framing: Reality as Dynamic Becoming, Not Static Being

21:36 Reflecting on the Alpha and the Omega: Problematizing the "Creator" Image

27:46 But Is This Still God? Communicating across Memetic Tribes

37:22 "Real in What Way?" across Levels of Memetic Complexity

45:05 Summarizing a Metamodern Sort of God

47:06 "God" in Quotation Marks: Moving beyond Totality

52:10 The God Encounter

1:08:12 The Divine Other

1:13:33 Praxis: Courting Visio Divina

1:16:41 Pluralistic Mysticism

1:23:10 Trinity as Dynamic Architectonic Plurality

1:27:08 Naturalism and Metaphysics

1:30:46 God is Love

1:37:20 Talking about "The G Word"

1:39:40 The Upcoming Metamodern Spirituality Lab on "God" at Sky Meadow (May 24-26)

More on the metamodern spirituality lab at www.skymeadowinstitute.org