{"id":19725,"date":"2021-01-14T10:54:33","date_gmt":"2021-01-14T15:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19725"},"modified":"2021-01-14T10:54:33","modified_gmt":"2021-01-14T15:54:33","slug":"a-new-story-to-replace-the-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19725","title":{"rendered":"A New Story to Replace the Old"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jIHmYBKkGa8\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>In this time of unveiling, new stories need to be told about everything\nfrom ecology and faith to money and power, and they need to be told from many\ndifferent perspectives. Only as we contemplate and engage new paradigms and\nvisions can we discern where and how God is calling us to act. Author and\neducator Michael Nagler shares his version of a new story based on his\ndecades-long commitment to the practice of nonviolence. He writes:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <em>new story <\/em>[is] the term we use today\nfor the new\u2014to us\u2014model of a universe of consciousness and purpose, of unity\nand sufficiency. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The currently prevailing story\u2014the <em>old <\/em>story [<em>Richard: which is really only as old as the\nEnlightenment<\/em>], that we live in a material, random universe, so that we, too, are\nprimarily physical objects that need material things to be fulfilled\u2014has led us\nto a permanent state of competition, not excluding violence. Whether you look\nat the story itself or its practical consequences, many\u2014myself included\u2014feel\nit\u2019s radically wrong. We are body, <em>mind,<\/em>&nbsp;and <em>spirit,<\/em>&nbsp;and we\u2019re embraced in what Martin\nLuther King famously called a single garment of destiny. [1] Life is not\nrandom, and we are not helpless to change it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And right now the key change will be the change of the story itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Within the emerging new story . . . just about every social change that\nthoughtful people have long been yearning for\u2014including the change to a\nsustainable planet\u2014becomes more thinkable, and doable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Take, for example, the acute inequality that has polarized our society\n(and, to a lesser extent, societies in other lands). What drives it is greed.\nThe same greed that drives some to profit from war and armaments\u2014the greed that\nis a nearly ubiquitous source of suffering for the many (and even for the few\nwho seem to benefit financially). Is not greed, in turn, a function of the\nbelief that we are primarily physical entities in competition with others? . .\n.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Greed is behind so many destructive processes; greed that\u2019s reached\nunheard-of proportions today, creating an inequality that makes meaningful\ndemocracy impossible. But what is behind greed itself? It could not exist\nwithout the idea that a human being is material and separate from others,\nincluding the environment we live in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Violence, inequality, war, the environment, and almost any aspect of\nsociety we can think of are rooted in the old story. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In contrast to the <em>old <\/em>story\u2014which held that the\nuniverse is primarily made of matter, has no discernable purpose, and scarcity,\ncompetition, and violence are inevitable\u2014the <em>new<\/em>&nbsp;story\nsees the universe as primarily consciousness and the human being as body, mind,\nand spirit, able to locate and carry out their life\u2019s purpose in a\nmeaningful\u2014indeed, fundamentally benevolent\u2014universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Richard again: This new\nstory is, of course, as old as incarnation itself! Somewhere along the line, we\nlost the thread of the true story of union, of wholeness, of God-with-us and us-for-each\nother. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this time of unveiling, new stories need to be told about everything from ecology and faith to money and power, and they need to be told from many different perspectives. Only as we contemplate and engage new paradigms and visions can we discern where and how God is calling us to act. Author and [&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\/19725"}],"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=19725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19726,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19725\/revisions\/19726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}