Come what may, we can find healing and wholeness in the embrace of a beautiful God, because a beautiful God dares to linger in the dark alleyways of the soul.
Patricia Adams Farmer
Healing and Wholeness
Topic: Self-Cultivation & Health
Come what may, we can find healing and wholeness in the embrace of a beautiful God, because a beautiful God dares to linger in the dark alleyways of the soul.
Patricia Adams Farmer is an American writer, process theologian, and retired minister. Public sources do not record her exact birth date or birthplace, but they show a life shaped by study in philosophy, theology, and education, leading to graduate degrees (M.Div., M.A., and M.Ed.). She has taught philosophy at the university level, served as an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and worked with at-risk high school students. Across these roles, Patricia Adams Farmer has held together intellectual work, pastoral care, and concern for people who live with real struggle.
As a graduate student, Patricia Adams Farmer was deeply influenced by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, especially his description of God as the “poet of the world.” This process vision of God as relational and responsive shaped her central themes of beauty, divine compassion, and a world in motion. Her books include Embracing a Beautiful God (2003), the novels The Metaphor Maker (2009) and Fat Soul Fridays (2013), Fat Soul: A Philosophy of S-I-Z-E (2016), and Beauty and Process Theology: A Journey of Transformation (2020). She also co-edited Replanting Ourselves in Beauty: Toward an Ecological Civilization (2015), bringing questions of beauty into dialogue with ecology and public life.
Geography has also shaped Patricia Adams Farmer’s perspective. She spent five years living on the coast of Ecuador, near an old fishing village and in the dry tropical forest, an experience that deepened her appreciation for cultural and ecological diversity and fed her reflection on “Beauty with a capital B” and “Fat Soul Philosophy.” She later returned to the United States and now lives in Missouri with her husband, biblical scholar and minister Ron Farmer, and their ginger cat, Alfie. Her essays appear on Open Horizons and in the “Process Musings” blog at Spirituality & Practice, as well as in other online platforms. Throughout this work, she links beauty, process theology, and care for the Earth with a steady concern for the healing and widening of the human soul.
Farmer, Patricia Adams. “‘B’ Is for Beauty.” Open Horizons, 2018, https://www.openhorizons.org/b-is-for-beauty-patricia-adams-farmer.html . Accessed 13 Nov. 2025.
Patricia Adams Farmer
Theme: Healing
About This Patricia Adams Farmer Quotation [Commentary]
Patricia Adams Farmer’s words, “Come what may, we can find healing and wholeness in the embrace of a beautiful God, because a beautiful God dares to linger in the dark alleyways of the soul,” draw us into a very specific way of knowing God. She speaks of “healing and wholeness” not as abstract ideas, but as something we discover in “the embrace of a beautiful God.” When Patricia Adams Farmer says that this God “dares to linger in the dark alleyways of the soul,” she is naming the very places we often hide—our confusion, grief, shame, and regret—and affirming that, come what may, they are not abandoned.
In her wider reflection on beauty, Patricia Adams Farmer contrasts this “beautiful God” with images of God as distant, punitive, or controlling. Instead of standing far off, this God moves toward us and stays with us, even when our inner lives feel more like “dark alleyways” than bright sanctuaries. Such a presence does not require us to “clean up” before we are held in an embrace. The beauty of God shows itself in a willingness to dwell in our hardest experiences without shame or hurry, honoring what we have lived through and holding it gently.
Seen in this light, “healing and wholeness in the embrace of a beautiful God” are not quick fixes or denials of pain. They grow out of being companioned in our real lives until something new can slowly emerge. Because a beautiful God “dares to linger in the dark alleyways of the soul,” even the most hidden corners of our story can become places of courage, honesty, and renewed compassion. As we allow ourselves to rest in this steady embrace, Patricia Adams Farmer points to a beauty and love already at work, drawing our lives toward deeper unity and peace.
Patricia Adams Farmer Quotes Rainer Maria Rilke
Come what may, we can find healing and wholeness in the embrace of a beautiful God, because a beautiful God dares to linger in the dark alleyways of the soul. Rainer Maria Rilke says it best when he speaks of God this way:
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