{"id":18132,"date":"2019-06-27T11:15:28","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T15:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18132"},"modified":"2019-06-27T11:15:28","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T15:15:28","slug":"18132","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18132","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/god-interrupting-2019-06-27\/\"><strong>God Interrupting<\/strong><\/a><br>\n<strong>Thursday, June 27, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Brie Stoner shares her experience in the Living School as a mother of young children: <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IVHtZrFUrBs\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>I was sitting in the women\u2019s bathroom between sessions and had exactly thirteen minutes before the next talk to pump and dump my breast milk. [1] Every woman walking by me would smile and exclaim how sweet it was that I was there, ask how old my baby was, and offer some kind of encouragement for the Herculean effort of simply being a mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was so excited to have been admitted to the first class of the Living School and determined to somehow make it work even with a toddler and a nine-month-old at home. But as each day proceeded, the more uncertain I became: sure, I could have uninterrupted prayer sits <em>here . . . <\/em>here where the meals were provided for me and the dishes were picked up and cleaned by not-me. Here where I slept in a hotel bed (a whole bed to myself . . . just for me, with no one needing me, ever). Here where I had access to these wisdom teachers and a peaceful path through the Cottonwood <em>bosque<\/em> with a view of the Sandia mountains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, during one of James Finley\u2019s sessions I couldn\u2019t take it anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cJim, can we talk about how much harder all of this is when I\u2019m back home? Because I get up sometimes at 5:00 a.m., desperate to have one prayer sit, and it\u2019s like my kids have radar and inevitably one of them wakes up ten minutes later. I mean, where is the icon of the mystic with one baby on the hip, a toddler crying at their feet, cooking dinner with one hand, trying to finish work on a laptop with the other? Because <em>that\u2019s <\/em>my real life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jim said, \u201cOk, you be you and I\u2019ll be God. And since I\u2019m God, I\u2019m watching you get up exhausted every morning, and I\u2019m so touched that you want to spend this time with me. Really, I am! It just means the world to me. The thing is, I just can\u2019t bear how much I love you. It\u2019s too much! And so at a certain point I rush into the bodies of your children and wake them up because. . . .\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jim paused. \u201c<em>Because I want to know what it feels like to be held by you<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, the interruption <em>is <\/em>the presence of God that I was so desperately trying to access in moments of stillness and silence. With or without the luxury of stillness and silence, God comes to us disguised as our very lives (as Paula D\u2019Arcy has said). In my case, Jim helped me to discover how my path as an exhausted young parent <em>was<\/em> the monastery of my own transformation. If I learned to let my heart open enough, I just might begin to recognize each cry, each diaper change, every choo-choo play time request . . . <em>all of it<\/em>, as the startlingly stunning, diaphanous infusion of infinite love colliding into the small shape of my very finite and ordinary reality. There, at the intersection of everything, is God with us . . . wanting to be touched, noticed, nurtured . . . <em>held <\/em>by us. All we have to do is <em>behold<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>God Interrupting Thursday, June 27, 2019 Brie Stoner shares her experience in the Living School as a mother of young children: I was sitting in the women\u2019s bathroom between sessions and had exactly thirteen minutes before the next talk to pump and dump my breast milk. [1] Every woman walking by me would smile and [&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\/18132"}],"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=18132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18133,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18132\/revisions\/18133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}