{"id":16465,"date":"2018-02-22T09:23:40","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T14:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16465"},"modified":"2018-02-22T09:32:51","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T14:32:51","slug":"the-universe-is-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16465","title":{"rendered":"The Universe Is Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Thursday, February 22, 2018<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mNkDdXhjFy0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nThe future can exist only when we understand the universe as composed of subjects to be communed with, not as objects to be exploited. \u2014Thomas Berry [1]<br \/>\nCynthia Bourgeault, a faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation, writes about how the ancient Wisdom tradition views creation:<br \/>\nContrary to our usual theological notion, which sees God as \u201chaving\u201d certain qualities\u2014such as love, truth, and justice\u2014Wisdom correctly perceives that there are certain states, or qualities of being, that cannot be known (or even truly said to exist) in potential but only in actual manifestation. God \u201chas\u201d these qualities by virtue of enacting them. \u201cI was a hidden treasure and longed to be known,\u201d says God, according to an ancient Islamic teaching, \u201cand so I created the world.\u201d [2]<br \/>\nForemost among these qualities . . . is love. In the Christian West we are accustomed to rattling off the statement \u201cGod is love\u201d [1 John 4: 8, 16]. . . . Love is a relational word, and that relationship presumes duality, or twoness, \u201cbecause,\u201d in the words of Valentin Tomberg (1900-1973), \u201clove is inconceivable without the Lover and the Loved, without ME and YOU, without One and the Other.\u201d [3] In order for love to manifest, there must first be duality. . . . In the words of another Sufi maxim whose truth is apparent to anyone who has ever experienced the sublime dance of recognition and mutual becoming at the heart of all love: \u201cYou are the mirror in which God sees himself.\u201d<br \/>\n. . . As we begin orienting ourselves on the Wisdom road map, it is with the recognition that our manifest universe is not simply an \u201cobject\u201d created by a wholly other God out of the effluence of [God\u2019s] love but is that love itself, made manifest in the only possible way that it can, in the dimensions of energy and form. The created realm is not an artifact but an instrument through which the divine life becomes perceptible to itself. It\u2019s the way the score gets transformed into the music.<\/p>\n<p>___________________________________________<\/p>\n<div class=\"row title-row\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"utmost-devo-title col col-sm-12 col-xs-12\">\n<h2 class=\"entry-title\">The Discipline of Spiritual Perseverance<\/h2>\n<h4>By <a href=\"https:\/\/utmost.org\/oswald-chambers-bio\">Oswald Chambers<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"clearfix\"><strong>Be still, and know that I am God\u2026 \u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?version=31&amp;search=Psalm+46%3A10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Psalm 46:10<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<div class=\"row entry-meta\">\n<div class=\"col-sm-4\">\n<div class=\"top-sharing\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"top-rule\">Perseverance is more than endurance. It is endurance combined with absolute assurance and certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen. Perseverance means more than just hanging on, which may be only exposing our fear of letting go and falling. Perseverance is our supreme effort of refusing to believe that our hero is going to be conquered. Our greatest fear is not that we will be damned, but that somehow Jesus Christ will be defeated. Also, our fear is that the very things our Lord stood for\u2014 love, justice, forgiveness, and kindness among men\u2014 will not win out in the end and will represent an unattainable goal for us. Then there is the call to spiritual perseverance. A call not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately, knowing with certainty that God will never be defeated.<\/div>\n<section class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"post-content\">\n<p>If our hopes seem to be experiencing disappointment right now, it simply means that they are being purified. Every hope or dream of the human mind will be fulfilled if it is noble and of God. But one of the greatest stresses in life is the stress of waiting for God. He brings fulfillment, \u201cbecause you have kept My command to persevere\u2026\u201d (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Revelation+3:10\">Revelation 3:10<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Continue to persevere spiritually.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"bottom-rule\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col-sm-6 col-sm-offset-3\">\n<div class=\" bottom-sharing\">\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\">\n<div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\">\n<div class=\"sd-content\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thursday, February 22, 2018 The future can exist only when we understand the universe as composed of subjects to be communed with, not as objects to be exploited. \u2014Thomas Berry [1] Cynthia Bourgeault, a faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation, writes about how the ancient Wisdom tradition views creation: Contrary to our [&hellip;]<\/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\/16465"}],"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=16465"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16470,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16465\/revisions\/16470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}