{"id":18825,"date":"2020-05-05T09:26:05","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T13:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18825"},"modified":"2020-05-05T09:26:05","modified_gmt":"2020-05-05T13:26:05","slug":"the-foundation-of-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18825","title":{"rendered":"The Foundation of Community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Community<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The\nFoundation of Community<\/strong><br>\nTuesday, \u202fMay 5, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FXHYykW28SA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>A divine foundation of relationship is what all religion,\nspirituality, and perhaps even politics, is aiming for. The Trinity offers us\nthis precise gift\u2014a grounded connection with God, self, others, and the world.\nThis ancient doctrine dared to affirm that <em>God is relationship itself<\/em>. The way of Jesus therefore\nis an invitation to a way of living, loving, and relating\u2014on earth as it is in\nGod. We are intrinsically like the Trinity, living in absolute relatedness.\nWhile we may not always recognize it, we are all together in a web of mutual\ninterdependence. When we recognize it on a spiritual level, we call it <em>love<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\n12th-century mystic Richard of St. Victor (1123\u20131173) wrote about the Trinity\nas a mutual, loving companionship of friends\u2014a community, if you will. In my\nbook <em>The Divine Dance<\/em>, I summarized some of his\nthinking: For God to be good, God can be one. For God to be loving, God has to\nbe two, because love is always a relationship. But for God to share \u201cexcellent\njoy\u201d and \u201cdelight\u201d God has to be three, because supreme happiness is when two\npersons share their common delight in a third something\u2014together. [1] All we\nneed to do is witness a couple after the birth of their new baby, and we know\nthis is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\npeople I have loved with great abandon and freedom were not just the people who\nloved me, but people who loved what I loved. People who cared about community,\nthe Gospel, the poor, justice, honesty\u2014this is where the flow was easy,\nnatural, and life-giving. Two people excited about the same thing are the\nbeginning of almost everything new, creative, and risky in our world. Surely\nthis is what Jesus meant by his first and most basic definition of church as\n\u201ctwo or three gathered\u201d (Matthew 18:20).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A\ncommunity inspired by the Trinity will be a community of people who treat each\nother as subjects and not objects. Just as the persons of the Trinity know and\nlove one another, from God\u2019s side we are always known and loved <em>subject to subject. <\/em>God and the human person must know one another center to\ncenter, subject to subject, and never subject to object. This is why there is\nno seeking of power <em>over <\/em>in the Trinity, but only <em>power with\u2014<\/em>a giving away, a sharing, a letting go, and thus an\ninfinity of trust and mutuality. This has the power to change all relationships:\nin marriage, in culture, and even in international relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we believe in\na Trinitarian God, then we must hold fast to the truth that God<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>is community\u2014a completely\nloving, mutually self-giving, endlessly generative relationship between equal\npartners. We are included in that community and so is everyone else! A\nTrinitarian image of God should have changed our politics, our gender\nrelationships, all power differentials, and friendship itself. But most of\nChristian history was never practically Trinitarian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Community The Foundation of Community Tuesday, \u202fMay 5, 2020 A divine foundation of relationship is what all religion, spirituality, and perhaps even politics, is aiming for. The Trinity offers us this precise gift\u2014a grounded connection with God, self, others, and the world. This ancient doctrine dared to affirm that God is relationship itself. The way [&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\/18825"}],"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=18825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18826,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18825\/revisions\/18826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}