{"id":19086,"date":"2020-07-17T09:06:47","date_gmt":"2020-07-17T13:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19086"},"modified":"2020-07-17T10:30:07","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T14:30:07","slug":"two-revelations-of-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19086","title":{"rendered":"Two Revelations of Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Two\nRevelations of Faith<\/strong><br>\nFriday, \u202fJuly 17, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Everything begins in mysticism and\nends in politics.<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014Charles P\u00e9guy<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/K0M3X3_pFD4\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>It seems to me that a\nregular practice of contemplation makes it almost inevitable that our politics\nare going to change. The way we spend our time is going to be called into\nquestion. Our snug socioeconomic perspective will slowly be taken away from us.\nWhen we practice prayer consistently, the things that we think of as our\nnecessary ego boundaries fall away, little by little, as unnecessary and even\nunhelpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whatever our calling on behalf of the world, it must proceed from a foundational \u201cyes\u201d to God, to life, to Reality. Our necessary \u201cno\u201d to injustice and all forms of un-love will actually become even clearer and more urgent in the silence. Now our work <strong>has a chance of being God\u2019s pure healing instead of our impure anger and agenda<\/strong>. We can feel the difference in people on both sides of any issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because contemplation feels\nlike dying and is, in fact, the experience of the death of our small self, we\ncan only do this if Someone Else is holding us in in the process, taking away\nour fear. If we trust that Someone Else to do the knowing for us, we can go\nback to our lives of action with new vitality, but it will now be much\nsmoother. It will be \u201cno longer we\u201d who act or contemplate, but the Life of the\nOne who lives in us (Galatians 2:20), now acting for and with and as us!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Henceforth it does not even matter whether we act or contemplate, contemplate or act, because both articulations of our faith will be inside the One Flow, which is still and forever loving and healing the world. <\/em><\/strong>Christians would call it the very flow of life that is the Trinity. \u201cWe live and move and have our being\u201d (Acts 17:28) inside of this one eternal life and love that never stops giving and receiving. This is how we \u201cdie by brightness and the Holy Spirit,\u201d according to Thomas Merton. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Contemplation is no fantasy, make-believe, or daydream,\nbut the flowering of patience and steady perseverance. When we look at the\nworld today, we may well ask whether it can be transformed on the global level;\nbut I believe that there is a deep relationship between the inner revolution of\nprayer and the transformation of social structures and social consciousness. We\nneed only look at the lives of the contemplatives in action that we read about\nthis week to know that it\u2019s true. Our hope is that contemplation really can\nchange us, and guide our actions for compassion and justice in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two Revelations of Faith Friday, \u202fJuly 17, 2020 Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.&nbsp;\u2014Charles P\u00e9guy It seems to me that a regular practice of contemplation makes it almost inevitable that our politics are going to change. The way we spend our time is going to be called into question. Our snug socioeconomic perspective [&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\/19086"}],"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=19086"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19091,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19086\/revisions\/19091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}