{"id":19174,"date":"2020-08-07T09:04:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T13:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19174"},"modified":"2020-08-07T10:12:24","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T14:12:24","slug":"spark-of-the-devine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19174","title":{"rendered":"Spark of the Devine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.cmail19.com\/ei\/d\/C3\/AF8\/6DF\/005735\/csfinal\/2020-08-02-CM-header-9900000000079e3c.jpg\" alt=\"Image credit: Motherhood Through the Spirit and Water (detail), c. 1165; Source: Wikimedia Commons, PD-Old-100.\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The Rhineland Mystics<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C53GgUJ6y-Y\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><strong>Spark\nof the Divine<\/strong><br>\nFriday, \u202fAugust 7, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Matthew Fox has studied, written, and taught on theology\nand the mystics for decades. In one of his books on Meister Eckhart, Fox\nwrites:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the soul,\nEckhart maintains, there is \u201csomething like a spark of divine nature, a divine\nlight, a ray, an imprinted picture of the divine nature.\u201d [1] . . . But we have\nto make contact with this divine spark by emptying ourselves or letting go. And\nthen we will know the unity that already exists. [2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indian-born\nteacher Eknath Easwaran (1910\u20131999) puts it in similar terms:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Life\u2019s real and\nhighest goal . . . [is] to discover this spark of the divine that is in our\nhearts. . . . When we realize this goal, we discover simultaneously that the\ndivinity within ourselves is one and the same in all\u2014all individuals, all\ncreatures, all of life. [3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meister\nEckhart was frequently criticized by his contemporaries (and still is by some\npeople today) because his language was far too unitive. We like our\ndistinctions! We don\u2019t want to hear that we have the same soul as our enemies,\nnot our personal ones and certainly not our cultural or global ones! We want to\nhate them, don\u2019t we? And far too often our religion seemingly gives us\npermission to do so. But mystics don\u2019t hate anyone. They simply can\u2019t. They\npray, as Jesus does on the cross, \u201cFather forgive them, they do not know what\nthey are doing\u201d (Luke 23:34). The mystic knows the other person doesn\u2019t know.\nIt\u2019s not malice as much as ignorance and unawareness. And, of course, it\u2019s a\nburden to know; it\u2019s a responsibility to know, because once we know that God\nhas inhabited all that God has created, then all of our distinctions are silly.\nThey are just ways to create self-importance and superiority for ourselves and\nput down someone else. We\u2019ve played this game since grade school!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mysticism\nbegins when we start to make room for a completely new experience of God as\nimmanent, present here and now, with and within all of us. God isn\u2019t only\ntranscendent, \u201cout there,\u201d and separate from me. Augustine of Hippo (354\u2013430)\nwrote that God is \u201cmore intimate to me than I am to myself.\u201d [4] St. Catherine\nof Genoa (1447\u20131510) said, \u201cMy me is God: nor do I know my selfhood except in\nGod.\u201d [5] Like all mystics, they overcame the gap, and we can too. When God is\nno longer out there or over there, we have begun the mystical journey. It\u2019s not\nsimply that we have a new relationship with God. It\u2019s as though we have a whole\nnew God!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s what Meister Eckhart meant when he said, \u201cLet us pray to God that we may be free of God.\u201d [6] That\u2019s not sacrilege; that\u2019s a beautifully humble prayer because we know that our present notion of God is never all God is. As Augustine boldly stated, \u201c<em>Si enim comprehendis, non est Deus<\/em>\u201d (\u201cIf we comprehend it, it is not God\u201d). [7] Our present experience is never enough, but it is gratefully where we begin, and these mystics teach us that we grow with each experience of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"344\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-07-at-10.00.18-AM-500x344.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19180\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-07-at-10.00.18-AM-500x344.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-07-at-10.00.18-AM-300x206.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-07-at-10.00.18-AM-768x528.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-07-at-10.00.18-AM.png 1916w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"366\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-06-at-9.25.02-AM-1-500x366.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19177\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-06-at-9.25.02-AM-1-500x366.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-06-at-9.25.02-AM-1-300x219.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-06-at-9.25.02-AM-1-768x562.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-06-at-9.25.02-AM-1.png 1796w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Rhineland Mystics Spark of the Divine Friday, \u202fAugust 7, 2020 Matthew Fox has studied, written, and taught on theology and the mystics for decades. In one of his books on Meister Eckhart, Fox writes: In the soul, Eckhart maintains, there is \u201csomething like a spark of divine nature, a divine light, a ray, an [&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\/19174"}],"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=19174"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19181,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19174\/revisions\/19181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}