{"id":19459,"date":"2020-11-04T09:34:36","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T14:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19459"},"modified":"2020-11-04T09:34:36","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T14:34:36","slug":"a-call-to-be-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19459","title":{"rendered":"A Call to Be One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Public Virtue<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A\nCall to Be One<\/strong><br>\nWednesday, \u202fNovember 4, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jhnJXDGfPiE\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>I\nreturn once again to the prophetic words of Sister Joan Chittister who calls us\nto make an unflinching commitment to act with integrity\u2014out of the fullness of\nour being\u2014not simply our pragmatic, comfortable, or fearful selves. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As\na people, we are at a crossover moment. It is a call to all of us to be our\nbest, our least superficial, our most serious about what it means to be a\nChristian as well as a citizen. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where\nin the midst of such polarization and national disunity is even the hope of <em>oneing, <\/em>of integrating the social with what we say are our\nspiritual selves? . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even\nthe ghost of an answer makes serious spiritual demands on us all: To heal such\ndivision means that we are obliged to search out and identify our own personal\nvalue system. It requires us to admit to ourselves what it is that really\ndrives our individual social decisions, our votes, our political alliances. Is\nit the need to look powerful? The desire for personal control? . . . Do we have\nthe courage to confront the debased with the ideal\u2014even in the face of ridicule\nand recrimination\u2014or is cowardice our secret spiritual sickness? In that case,\nour national health can only get worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A\nnational cure also surely demands that we begin to see tradition as a call to\nreturn to the best of the past, not a burden to be overcome in order to secure\nthe best of the present. It is the sense of a commonly held tradition of the\ncommon good\u2014once a strong part of the American past\u2014that we clearly lack in the\npresent. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[We\nmust] make \u201cLove one another as I have loved you\u201d (see John 13:34) the\nfoundation of national respect, the standard of our national discernment, the\nbedrock of both our personal relationships and a civilized society. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To\nbe <em>one, <\/em>we don\u2019t need one party, one\nprogram, one set of policies. What could be duller, more stagnant, more\ndestructive of the soulfulness it takes to create and preserve the best of the\nhuman enterprise than such a narrow-minded view of planetary life?&nbsp; What\nwe need is one heart for the world at large, a single-minded commitment to this\n\u201cmore perfect union,\u201d and one national soul, large enough to listen to one\nanother for the sake of the planet\u2014for the sake of us all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So\nwhere can we look for <em>oneing <\/em>in the political arena? Only\nwithin the confines of our own hearts. Politics\u2014government\u2014does not exist for\nitself and, if it does, that is precisely when it becomes at least\ndeath-dealing if not entirely evil. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the end,\npolitics is nothing more than an instrument of social good and human\ndevelopment. It is meant to be the right arm of those whose souls have melted\ninto God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Public Virtue A Call to Be One Wednesday, \u202fNovember 4, 2020 I return once again to the prophetic words of Sister Joan Chittister who calls us to make an unflinching commitment to act with integrity\u2014out of the fullness of our being\u2014not simply our pragmatic, comfortable, or fearful selves. As a people, we are at a [&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\/19459"}],"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=19459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19460,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19459\/revisions\/19460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}