{"id":16083,"date":"2017-10-16T09:32:50","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T13:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16083"},"modified":"2017-10-16T09:35:31","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T13:35:31","slug":"deep-hope-flows-over-deep-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16083","title":{"rendered":"Deep Hope Flows Over Deep Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exploring the Mystics with Cynthia Bourgeault<\/h3>\n

Deep Hope Flows Over Deep Time<\/strong><\/a>
\nMonday, October 16, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues reflecting on the Christian mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.<\/em><\/p>\n

The first of the Teilhardian \u201croad signs\u201d helps us reframe our sense of scale: Teilhard reminds us that\u00a0deep hope flows over deep time.\u00a0<\/em>From his perspective as a geologist and paleontologist, Teilhard reassures us that evolution has not changed direction; it has always been and always will be\u00a0\u201ca rise toward consciousness.\u201d [1] But rather than the very small snapshots represented in our short lifetimes, evolution\u2019s span is measured in eons, not decades.\u00a0When we lose sight of the cosmic scale, the result is anguish and impatience. If we measure human progress only by our usual historical benchmarks\u2014the span of a presidential administration, the not-yet 250 years of the American democratic experiment, or the \u201cmere\u201d 2,500 years of Western civilization\u2014we are still only catching the smallest snippet of the inevitable process of what Teilhard calls\u00a0tatonnement<\/em>, or \u201ctrial and error,\u201d part of the necessary play of freedom on its way to new combinations and creativity.<\/p>\n

Teilhard affirmed that even the emergence of human consciousness itself, as it reached its present configuration 125,000 years ago with the stunning debut of homo sapiens <\/em>[current estimate is 200,000 years], followed a 10,000-year ice age, in which it appeared that all that had been gained prior to that point was irreversibly lost. It wasn\u2019t. Paleontological discoveries reveal that humans kept and refined their skills of using fire and making tools\u2014providing unmistakable evidence that even when hidden by ice and apparent desolation, the evolutionary journey was still unperturbedly marching forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeep hope\u201d is not, however, an excuse to relax our vigilance in stewardship for the planet Earth. Teilhard does not permit himself to be used that way; his sense of the oneness of the world pervades everything he sees and writes. But he realizes as well that Creation has an intelligence and a resilience that meets us far more than halfway. Over the millennia our planet has endured meteor strikes, the rise and fall of sea levels, ice ages, the continual shifting of tectonic plates, the appearance and disappearance of species.<\/p>\n

For sure, we need to fall on our knees every morning and beseech God to help us through this latest dark time of human greed and destructiveness. But our real task at this evolutionary cusp is not to lose sight of what is coming to us from the future<\/em>, the vision of our common humanity that is indeed \u201cgroaning and travailing\u201d to be born (Romans 8:22).<\/p>\n

Gateway to Silence:<\/strong>
\nFall fearless into Love.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

The Key to the Master\u2019s Orders<\/p>\n

By Oswald Chambers<\/a><\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. \u2014Matthew 9:38<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

The key to the missionary\u2019s difficult task is in the hand of God, and that key is prayer, not work\u2014 that is, not work as the word is commonly used today, which often results in the shifting of our focus away from God. The key to the missionary\u2019s difficult task is also not the key of common sense, nor is it the key of medicine, civilization, education, or even evangelization. The key is in following the Master\u2019s orders\u2014 the key is prayer. \u201cPray the Lord of the harvest\u2026.\u201d In the natural realm, prayer is not practical but absurd. We have to realize that prayer is foolish from the commonsense point of view.<\/p>\n

From Jesus Christ\u2019s perspective, there are no nations, but only the world<\/em>. How many of us pray without regard to the persons, but with regard to only one Person\u2014 Jesus Christ? He owns the harvest that is produced through distress and through conviction of sin. This is the harvest for which we have to pray that laborers be sent out to reap. We stay busy at work, while people all around us are ripe and ready to be harvested; we do not reap even one of them, but simply waste our Lord\u2019s time in over-energized activities and programs. Suppose a crisis were to come into your father\u2019s or your brother\u2019s life\u2014 are you there as a laborer to reap the harvest for Jesus Christ? Is your response, \u201cOh, but I have a special work to do!\u201d No Christian has a special work to do. A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ\u2019s own, \u201ca servant [who] is not greater than his master\u201d (John 13:16<\/a>), and someone who does not dictate to Jesus Christ what he intends to do. Our Lord calls us to no special work\u2014 He calls us to Himself. \u201cPray the Lord of the harvest,\u201d and He will engineer your circumstances to send you out as His laborer.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exploring the Mystics with Cynthia Bourgeault Deep Hope Flows Over Deep Time Monday, October 16, 2017 Guest writer and CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault continues reflecting on the Christian mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The first of the Teilhardian \u201croad signs\u201d helps us reframe our sense of scale: Teilhard reminds us that\u00a0deep hope flows over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16083"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16083"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16088,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16083\/revisions\/16088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}