{"id":19697,"date":"2021-01-06T09:44:44","date_gmt":"2021-01-06T14:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19697"},"modified":"2021-01-06T09:44:44","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T14:44:44","slug":"a-foundational-sense-of-awe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19697","title":{"rendered":"A Foundational Sense of Awe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Abandon hidden things, \/ Take up what is revealed!<\/em><br>\n\u2014Ephrem the Syrian, Hymn 81<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/I3BkstBWwVc\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>Healthy religion gives us a foundational sense of awe. It re-enchants an\notherwise empty universe. It gives people a universal reverence toward all\nthings. Only with such reverence do we find confidence and coherence. Only then\ndoes the world become a safe home. Then we can see the reflection of the divine\nimage in the human, in the animal, in the entire natural world\u2014which has now\nbecome inherently \u201csupernatural.\u201d CAC teacher Barbara Holmes describes this\nawakening so well and poetically:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we are\nfully alert in spirit, mind, and body, we are more than we imagine and can\naccomplish more than we suppose. Moments of awareness occur as a dawning of\nmeaning, when the familiar suddenly becomes infused with new insights or\nunfamiliar ideas merge with the wellspring of experiences and beliefs that\npervade human consciousness. Such occasions feel like personal discoveries.\nWhile in the midst of an epiphany, folks inevitably apply the term \u201cdiscovery\u201d\nto lands, people, and ideas that have always been present. We use the language\nof strange and alien sightings when the more accurate statement would be,\n\u201cEureka! I have just awakened to a long-standing reality that an inner\nunveiling has finally allowed me to see.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An awakening\nis necessary to reconnect us to our origins and one another. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead of nurturing awe, reconnection, and awakening, I\u2019m sorry to say\nthat today we have a lot of ideological hysteria and junk religion\u2014on both the\nleft and the right. Junk religion is similar to junk food because it only\nsatisfies enough to gratify the momentary desire but does not really feed the\nintellect or the heart. Junk religion is usually characterized by fear of the\npresent and fear of the future. What we experience when people have really met\nGod is that there is no fear of the present because it is always full. There\u2019s\nno fear of the future because a loving God is in charge. There\u2019s no fear of the\npast because it has been healed and forgiven. Then people do not use God to\navoid reality or to fabricate a private, self-serving reality. They let God\nlead them into the fullness of Reality; not away from dilemmas and paradoxes,\nbut right onto the horns of the human dilemma!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whatever\nreconstruction we\u2019re going to do cannot be based on fear or on reaction. <em>It has to be based on a positive and fully\nhuman experience of God as a loving Presence.<\/em>&nbsp;True religion is ready to let God be God, and\nto let God lead us into a new future that we do not yet understand\u2014and no\nlonger even need to understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abandon hidden things, \/ Take up what is revealed! \u2014Ephrem the Syrian, Hymn 81 Healthy religion gives us a foundational sense of awe. It re-enchants an otherwise empty universe. It gives people a universal reverence toward all things. Only with such reverence do we find confidence and coherence. Only then does the world become 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\/19697"}],"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=19697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19698,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19697\/revisions\/19698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}