{"id":19390,"date":"2020-10-09T09:20:51","date_gmt":"2020-10-09T13:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19390"},"modified":"2020-10-09T09:20:51","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T13:20:51","slug":"the-soft-prophecy-of-francis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19390","title":{"rendered":"The Soft Prophecy of Francis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>St. Francis:<br>\nA Message for Our Times<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The\nSoft Prophecy of Francis<\/strong><br>\nFriday, October 9, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DANgNI6rqxI\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>At its core, Franciscan prophecy is \u201csoft prophecy\u201d\u2014which\nis often the hardest of all! It is a way of life that is counter to the ways of\nthe world. I personally have found that few of us can offer \u201chard\nprophecy\u201d\u2014direct and challenging words\u2014from a truly clean heart and humble\nspirit. \u201cHard prophecy\u201d often has more to do with our own self-image as strong,\nsmart, zealous, or committed than with actual service or caring for others. The\npresent culture of angry partisan politics that exists on both the Left and the\nRight is far more effective at making us feel morally superior than it is at\nchanging anyone\u2019s mind. We should first seek to \u201cclean the inside of our own\ndish,\u201d as Matthew puts it (23:26), before we try to clean other people\u2019s\ndishes, but that is less visible or heroic and, therefore, less common.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nFranciscan teaching of soft prophecy became a primary reason why we founded the\nCenter for Action and Contemplation in 1987. The teaching and seeking of the\nnondual mind through solid contemplative practice seems to be the only\neffective way to integrate the inner with the outer journey. The result is\nsummed up in one of our eight core principles: <em>\u201cThe best criticism of the bad is the practice of the\nbetter.\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;[1] This approach guards against the most common\ncriticisms of religion in general and social-justice work in particular, which,\nfrankly, has tended to produce many negative, oppositional, and judgmental\npeople. It has given Christianity a very bad name in much of the world, and\nseldom looks or feels like love. Integral Theory calls such people on the Left\n\u201cmean greens\u201d!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Soft\nprophecy, a change in lifestyle, moves all religion from any kind of elitism to\nthe most egalitarian worldview of all. The broadest and biggest viewpoint\npossible is <em>the harmony of\ngoodness itself, where goodness is its own inherent reward<\/em>. This is always beautiful\nin people and yet also demands a basic change in attitude. For some reason,\n\u201cdoing charity\u201d to get a reward later became much more common among Christians.\nSuch service and \u201cgood works,\u201d however, are often not so beautiful or healing\nfor those who receive it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\nlost our unique and prophetic way when we turned Brother Francis into \u201cSaint\nFrancis.\u201d It was no longer considered \u201cfoolish\u201d to say that we followed either\nJesus or Francis and were living on the \u201cedge of the inside.\u201d In fact, it\nbecame fashionable, tame, sweet, and safe to do so. A truly prophetic lifestyle\nis never fashionable or safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is why we\nmust move to the laboratory where all such radical change can occur\u2014inside of\nour very mind, heart, and the cells of our body. I call it the laboratory of\ncontemplative practice, which rewires our inner life and actually confirms in\nthe soul a kind of \u201cemotional sobriety.\u201d [2] It gives us an inner sense of\ndivine union so we can do the needed works of justice with peace, enduring\npassion, and insofar as possible, personal invisibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>St. Francis: A Message for Our Times The Soft Prophecy of Francis Friday, October 9, 2020 At its core, Franciscan prophecy is \u201csoft prophecy\u201d\u2014which is often the hardest of all! It is a way of life that is counter to the ways of the world. I personally have found that few of us can offer [&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\/19390"}],"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=19390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19391,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19390\/revisions\/19391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}