{"id":18915,"date":"2020-06-01T09:38:49","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T13:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18915"},"modified":"2020-06-01T09:38:49","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T13:38:49","slug":"community-as-alternative-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18915","title":{"rendered":"Community as Alternative Consciousness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Alternative Community<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Community\nas Alternative Consciousness<\/strong><br>\nMonday, \u202fJune&nbsp;1,\n2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nBJYxPN8qIA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>The goal of the spiritual journey is to discover and move\ntoward connectedness on ever new levels. We may begin by making little\nconnections with other people, with nature and animals, then grow into deeper\nconnectedness with people. Finally, we can experience full connectedness as\nunion with God. Remember, <em>how you do\nanything is how you do everything<\/em>. Without connectedness and communion, we don\u2019t exist\nfully as our truest selves. Becoming who we really are is a matter of learning\nhow to become more and more deeply connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nspiritual experience is about trusting that when you stop holding yourself,\nInherent Goodness will still uphold you. Many of us call that God, but you\ndon\u2019t have to. It is the trusting that is important. When you fall into such\nPrimal Love, you realize that everything is foundationally okay. Unfortunately,\nthis confidence is often absent in our world especially under conditions of\ngreat upheaval and suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Foundational\nlove gives us hope and allows us to trust \u201cwhat is\u201d as the jumping-off point,\nno matter how unsteady it feels. It allows us to work together toward \u201cwhat can\nbe.\u201d The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus shows us what\u2019s fully possible.\nGod will always bring yet more life and wholeness out of seeming chaos and death.\nIn the words of Timothy Gorringe and Rosie Beckham, \u201cFaith in the resurrection\nis the ground on which Christians hope for a <em>different<\/em>&nbsp;future, a\ntransition to a society less destructive, more peaceful and more whole. Living\nin this hope . . . calls <em>ekklesia<\/em>&nbsp;[the assembly of Christians] to live as a\n\u2018contrast community\u2019 to society.\u201d [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Building\nsuch \u201ccontrast\u201d communities was precisely Paul\u2019s missionary strategy. You can\nsee it throughout the New Testament. Paul believed that small communities of\nJesus\u2019 followers would make the Gospel message believable: Jesus is Lord\n(rather than Caesar is Lord); sharing abundance and living in simplicity\n(rather than hoarding wealth); nonviolence and chosen suffering (rather than\naligning with power). Paul was very practical. He taught that our faith must\ntake actual form in a living, loving group of people. Otherwise, love is just a\ntheory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paul seems to think that corporate evil can only be confronted or overcome with corporate good. He knows that a love-transformed individual can do little against what he calls \u201cthe powers and the principalities,\u201d or what some of us call the \u201csystem.\u201d Our collective consciousness deems such institutions \u201ctoo big to fail.\u201d We are mostly oblivious to these forces because we take them as normative and in fact absolutely necessary. Cultural blind spots can only be overcome by a group of people affirming and supporting one another in an alternative consciousness. Thankfully, we\u2019re now seeing many people, religious and secular, from all around the world, coming together to form alternative systems for sharing resources, living simply, and imagining a sustainable future. It has been one of the spiritual gifts of the pandemic. God never misses a chance to help us grow up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alternative Community<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Common\nGround and Purpose<\/strong><br>\nSunday, \u202fMay 31, 2020<br>\n<em>Pentecost Sunday<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s\nsad to say, but for centuries the Christian vision was narrowed to what we have\ntoday\u2014a preoccupation with private salvation. Our \u201cpersonal relationship with\nJesus\u201d seems to be based on a very small notion of Christ. We\u2019ve modeled church\nafter a service station where members attend weekly services to \u201cfill up\u201d on\ntheir faith. We\u2019ve commodified the very notion of salvation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People want\nsomething more from church than membership. They long for a spiritual home that\nconnects with their whole life, not just somewhere to go on Sunday morning.\nChurch is meant to be a place that nurtures and supports individuals along\ntheir full journey toward the ultimate goal: a lived experience of the\ncommunion of saints, a shared life together as one family, the Reign of God \u201con\nearth as it is in heaven\u201d (Matthew 6:10).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Too often, the\nformal church has been unable to create any authentic practical community,\nespecially over the last half-century. In response, we see the emergence of new\nfaith communities seeking to return to this foundational definition of church.\nThese may not look like our versions of traditional \u201cchurch,\u201d but they often\nexemplify the kinds of actual community that Jesus, Paul, and early Christians\nenvisioned. People are gathering digitally and in person today through\nneighborhood associations, study groups, community gardens, social services,\nand volunteer groups. They\u2019re seeking creative ways of coming together,\nnurturing connection, of healing and whole-making. The \u201cinvisible\u201d church might\nbe doing this just as much, if not more, than the visible one. <em>The Holy Spirit is humble and seems to\nwork best anonymously.<\/em> I suspect that is why the Holy Spirit is\noften pictured as a simple bird or blowing wind that is here one minute and\nseemingly gone and then nowhere<em>\n<\/em>(John 3:8).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s all too\neasy to project unrealistic expectations on any community. No group can meet\nall our needs as individuals for emotional, mental, and physical well-being.\nThe human psyche needs space and healthy boundaries and not co-dependent groupings.\nI certainly learned this lesson myself through my participation in the New\nJerusalem Community in Cincinnati in the 1970s and 80s, and even earlier as a\nFranciscan brother. Almost any community can serve as an excellent school for\ngrowth, character, and conversion, even though it may not be a permanent \u201chome\u201d\nfor many reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what makes a good community? The remainder\nof this week we\u2019ll look at a few of the factors that contribute to healthy,\nwhole communities. Our very survival as a faith tradition, not to mention a\nspecies, might just depend upon this. Remember, the isolated individual is\nfragile and largely helpless to evoke long-term change or renewal. By\nourselves, we can accomplish very little. We must find common ground and common\npurpose to move forward. It was Jesus\u2019 first and foundational definition of\nchurch and even divine presence\u2014\u201ctwo or three gathered together\u201d in the right\nspirit (Matthew 18:20), and \u201cI am there\u201d\u2014just as much as in bread or Bible!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alternative Community Community as Alternative Consciousness Monday, \u202fJune&nbsp;1, 2020 The goal of the spiritual journey is to discover and move toward connectedness on ever new levels. We may begin by making little connections with other people, with nature and animals, then grow into deeper connectedness with people. Finally, we can experience full connectedness as union [&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\/18915"}],"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=18915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18916,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18915\/revisions\/18916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}