{"id":17498,"date":"2018-11-19T10:08:57","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T15:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17498"},"modified":"2018-11-19T10:13:07","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T15:13:07","slug":"17498","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17498","title":{"rendered":"Death and Resurrection: Week 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vXMPNXXnCls\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Death and Resurrection: Week 1<br \/>\nAll Things New<br \/>\nSunday, November 18, 2018<br \/>\nBehold, I make all things new. \u2014Revelation 21:5<br \/>\nAs I\u2019ve recently faced my own mortality through cancer once again, I\u2019ve been comforted by others who have experienced loss and aging with fearless grace. Over the next few days I\u2019ll share some of their thoughts. Today, join me in reflecting on this passage from Quaker teacher and author Parker Palmer\u2019s new book, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity and Getting Old.<br \/>\nI\u2019m a professional melancholic, and for years my delight in the autumn color show quickly morphed into sadness as I watched the beauty die. Focused on the browning of summer\u2019s green growth, I allowed the prospect of death to eclipse all that\u2019s life-giving about the fall and its sensuous delights.<br \/>\nThen I began to understand a simple fact: all the \u201cfalling\u201d that\u2019s going on out there is full of promise. Seeds are being planted and leaves are being composted as earth prepares for yet another uprising of green.<br \/>\nToday, as I weather the late autumn of my own life, I find nature a trustworthy guide. It\u2019s easy to fixate on everything that goes to the ground as time goes by: the disintegration of a relationship, the disappearance of good work well done, the diminishment of a sense of purpose and meaning. But as I\u2019ve come to understand that life \u201ccomposts\u201d and \u201cseeds\u201d us as autumn does the earth, I\u2019ve seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the hardest of times.<br \/>\nLooking back, I see how the job I lost pushed me to find work that was mine to do, how the \u201cRoad Closed\u201d sign turned me toward terrain that I\u2019m glad I traveled, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to find new sources of meaning. In each of these experiences, it felt as though something was dying, and so it was. Yet deep down, amid all the falling, the seeds of new life were always being silently and lavishly sown. . . .<br \/>\nPerhaps death possesses a grace that we who fear dying, who find it ugly and even obscene, cannot see. How shall we understand nature\u2019s testimony that dying itself\u2014as devastating as we know it can be\u2014contains the hope of a certain beauty?<br \/>\nThe closest I\u2019ve ever come to answering that question begins with these words from Thomas Merton, . . . \u201cThere is in all visible things . . . a hidden wholeness.\u201d [1]<br \/>\nIn the visible world of nature, a great truth is concealed in plain sight. Diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites: they are held together in the paradox of the \u201chidden wholeness.\u201d In a paradox, opposites do not negate each other\u2014they cohabit and cocreate in mysterious unity at the heart of reality. Deeper still, they need each other for health, just as our well-being depends on breathing in and breathing out. . . .<br \/>\nWhen I give myself over to organic reality\u2014to the endless interplay of darkness and light, falling and rising\u2014the life I am given is as real and colorful, fruitful and whole as this graced and graceful world and the seasonal cycles that make it so. Though I still grieve as beauty goes to ground, autumn reminds me to celebrate the primal power that is forever making all things new in me, in us, and in the natural world.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>The Abyss of Grief<br \/>\nMonday, November 19, 2018<\/p>\n<p>My friend and brilliant translator of many mystics, Mirabai Starr, who lives nearby in Taos, New Mexico, has encountered numerous deaths and losses, each cultivating in her a deeper spiritual practice and longing for God. But the death of her fourteen-year-old daughter, Jenny, in a car crash was \u201can avalanche,\u201d Starr writes, \u201cannihilating everything in its path\u201d:<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, the sacred fire I have been chasing all my life engulfed me. I was plunged into the abyss, instantaneously dropped into the vast stillness and pulsing silence at which all my favorite mystics hint. So shattered I could not see my own hand in front of my face, I was suspended in the invisible arms of a Love I had only dreamed of. Immolated, I found myself resting in fire. Drowning, I surrendered, and discovered I could breathe under water.<\/p>\n<p>So this was the state of profound suchness I had been searching for during all those years of contemplative practice. This was the holy longing the saints had been talking about in poems that had broken my heart again and again. This was the sacred emptiness that put that small smile on the face of the great sages. And I hated it. I didn\u2019t want vastness of being. I wanted my baby back.<\/p>\n<p>But I discovered that there was nowhere to hide when radical sorrow unraveled the fabric of my life. I could rage against the terrible unknown\u2014and I did, for I am human and have this vulnerable body, passionate heart, and complicated mind\u2014or I could turn toward the cup, bow to the Cupbearer, and say, \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t do it right away, nor was I able to sustain it when I did manage a breath of surrender. But gradually I learned to soften into the pain and yield to my suffering. In the process, compassion for all suffering beings began unexpectedly to swell in my heart. I became acutely aware of my connectedness to mothers everywhere who had lost children, who were, at this very moment, hearing the impossible news that their child had died. . . . .<\/p>\n<p>Grief strips us. According to the mystics, this is good news. Because it is only when we are naked that we can have union with the Beloved. We can cultivate spiritual disciplines designed to dismantle our identity so that we have hope of merging with the Divine. Or someone we love very much may die, and we may find ourselves catapulted into the emptiness we had been striving for. Even as we cry out in the anguish of loss, the boundless love of the Holy One comes pouring into the shattered container of our hearts. This replenishing of our emptiness is a mystery, it is grace, and it is built into the human condition.<\/p>\n<p>Few among us would ever opt for the narrow gate of grief, even if it were guaranteed to lead us to God. But if our most profound losses\u2014the death of a loved one, the ending of a marriage or a career, catastrophic disease or alienation from community\u2014bring us to our knees before that threshold, we might as well enter. The Beloved might be waiting in the next room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Death and Resurrection: Week 1 All Things New Sunday, November 18, 2018 Behold, I make all things new. \u2014Revelation 21:5 As I\u2019ve recently faced my own mortality through cancer once again, I\u2019ve been comforted by others who have experienced loss and aging with fearless grace. Over the next few days I\u2019ll share some of their [&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\/17498"}],"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=17498"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17502,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17498\/revisions\/17502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}