Writers will often say that we write our way into our stories. Or that, no matter the plan or outline, our stories or arguments unfold in the writing. That is definitely true for me. In the talk I gave in June entitled, “How Will Grandma Find Us?” I wrote myself into several new insights that I’m still reflecting on.

I may have convinced myself that I’m a naturalist. In my mind, naturalists are atheistic scientists who talk about “laws of nature,” and eschew ideas about God. My former professor and colleague David Griffin framed naturalism in his book, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: a Process Philosophy of Religion:

Griffin writes:

“Completely rejecting supernaturalism – understood as the belief in the possibility of occasional interruptions of the world’s most fundamental causal order – I present a worldview that, although saturated with values, is fully natural. This worldview does involve a form of theism, according to which divine influence is a natural dimension of the world’s most fundamental causal order, never an interruption thereof.” vii

I love how Griffin says that God’s influence, God’s love, God’s activity is part of how the world works. This is different from believing that the world works in a certain way and then God breaks-into the world to interrupt what’s happening and does something … supernatural. Like Griffin, process thought is a big part of how I get here. But so is Ifa.

I hasten to even use the word “God” when talking about Ifa, because that’s not a term Ifa uses. For decades, scholars of African and African American religions have noted that there is a porous boundary between the sacred and the secular. It can be difficult to describe what “religion” is because all of life is permeated with the ideas, practices and concepts of what one might call “religious.”

​In Ifa, every one and every thing has “àşę”. Many people know “àşę” as a kind of affirmation, like “Amen.” Which it is. Àşę is also the name given to a fundamental element in Yoruba cosmology. It is a morally neutral force found in all things everywhere. It is the power to make things happen. Tools, medicine, people, animals and leaves all have àşę. So do ancestors and òrìşà. There is a distinction between orun and aiye, the nontemporal realm and the temporal realm – what we might call an ancestral realm and the earth – but there is less of a distinction between sacred and secular.

These are not new ideas for me, but naming them as naturalist is. Does it matter how I name my beliefs? It can. It puts me in conversation with other naturalists. Bringing an African traditional religious perspective brings some new elements to these talks. That for when I nerd out at conferences. Calling myself a naturalist also a more distinct reminder that I am not a supernaturalist. I don’t think of God as outside of history or the normal workings of the world and then interceding on certain occasions or “just in time.” I don’t think that God has all these special powers that I don’t have. And I’d like to think that when we are at our best, we can move and operate with the same God-given energy or àşę as the ancestors and òrìşà. It’s also a well-needed reminder that all of creation is sacred.

​I understand Christianity in similar ways, but I use terms like “panentheism,” and “incarnation,” and “closer than our very breath.”

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