{"id":19727,"date":"2021-01-18T09:43:46","date_gmt":"2021-01-18T14:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19727"},"modified":"2021-01-18T09:43:46","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T14:43:46","slug":"true-liberation-in-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19727","title":{"rendered":"True Liberation in God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/V4W8BczJKE4\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>There can be no outer\nfreedom without some level of inner liberation. This is a universal truth, but\na lesson that each of us must learn for ourselves. If we pursue freedom from a\nreactionary position, out of our own fear or anger, we are working on too small\na scale. The path to full liberation always has its source in an Infinite God.\nMy colleague Barbara Holmes puts it this way:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although justice must be enacted in concrete\nways, I agree with V\u00e1clav Havel (1936\u20132011) [who] . . . &nbsp;suggested that\nliberation is an awareness of connections to a reality \u201cbeyond our reach, a\nhigher intention that is the source of all things, a higher memory recording\neverything, a higher authority to which we are all accountable in one way or\nanother.\u201d [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Barbara Holmes continues to explore this idea\nof God as the source of true and transcendent liberation through a creative,\nimagined conversation between civil rights icon Rosa Parks (1913\u20132005) and the\nBlack mystic and theologian Howard Thurman (1899\u20131981).&nbsp; <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>Parks<\/strong><\/em>&nbsp;First, don\u2019t we have to redefine\nliberation? When I refused to get up from the bus seat, when Martin marched and\nMalcolm railed against the artificial constraints of segregation, it was not to\ngrant a small sliver of freedom to earthbound people. It was the spiritual launch\nof a liberation too vast to be circumscribed by a single life. This is a\nliberation worth dying for, worth risking everything for. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>Thurman<\/strong><\/em>&nbsp;The power that is meaningful for\nfuture generations comes through the human spirit but emanates from a divine\nsource. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>Parks<\/strong><\/em>&nbsp;Liberation requires individuals\nwilling to stand when no one else will, to sit when others are threatening you\nwith harm, to embrace an outsider in full view of an insider, to proclaim the\nwisdom of the ages and the already\/not yet justice of God in the midst of\nhorrific circumstances. We do this although we don\u2019t know what the end will be,\nand we do this because liberation is the responsibility of each and every\nperson. I know that the sacred heart of the liberation story lies in ordinary\nacts of obedience and resistance by ordinary people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>Thurman<\/strong><\/em>&nbsp;Thank you for that, Rosa.\nLiberation is not a goal or an event to be enjoyed. It is a series of events\nthat draw us closer to true liberation in God. Liberation comes in the moment\nthat we hear the leading of the Divine and follow. It is the freedom to unbind\nthe shackled and to reunite with God and neighbor. Until we achieve that\nreunion, we move from liberation to liberation gathering seekers as we go,\ncelebrating only long enough to encourage our spirits and then moving on to new\nstruggles around old issues in different contexts. [2] &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Barbara Holmes\u2019 ability to\n\u201clisten in\u201d to these conversations between \u201cthe ancestors\u201d is a sign of her own\nspiritual freedom, which she shares so generously with the world.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A Journey to Freedom<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Book of Exodus, Egypt is the place of slavery and the promised land is the place of freedom. The journey from Egypt to the promised land is a standing paradigm for the universal struggle from slavery to freedom\u2014and thus for the spiritual journey as well. The story of Israel symbolically describes the experience of our own liberation by God, which is both an outer freedom and an inner freedom or it is not real liberation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The word <em>exodus<\/em>&nbsp;means \u201cthe way out,\u201d as scholar Allen Dwight\nCallahan explains:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A loanword\nfrom the Greek, <em>exodus <\/em>signifies the road of\nescape. The biblical drama of Exodus recounts the story of the escape of the\nancient Israelites from Egypt and their formation as a new people in Canaan.\nThe Lord had commanded that the Egyptians \u201clet my son [Israel] go\u201d (Exodus\n4:23), and the imperative phrase \u201cLet my people go\u201d is repeated seven times in\nthe drama that climaxes in the Israelites\u2019 flight across the Red Sea. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The liberation that Moses leads is first cemented in a \u201cface to face\u201d\nencounter with God. According to the book of Exodus, \u201cThe Lord used to speak to\nMoses face to face, as a person speaks to a friend\u201d (33:11). God gradually\nanswers Moses\u2019 many objections as to why he should not lead his people: 1) \u201cWho\nam I?\u201d 2) \u201cWho are you?\u201d 3) \u201cWhat if they do not believe me?\u201d 4) \u201cI stutter\u201d\nand 5) \u201cWhy not send someone else?\u201d In each case, God patiently stays in the\ndialogue, answering Moses respectfully and even intimately, offering a promise\nof personal Presence and an ever-sustaining glimpse into who God is. God is\nBeing Itself, Existence Itself, a nameless God beyond all names, a formless God\nprevious to all forms, a liberator God who is utterly liberated from the limits\nculture and religion put on any Divinity. God asserts God\u2019s ultimate freedom\nfrom human attempts to capture God in concepts and words by saying, \u201cI AM who I\nAM\u201d (Exodus 3:14). Over the course of his story, we see that Moses slowly\nabsorbs this same daring freedom. Despite the failings and limitations Moses\nperceived in himself, he is liberated by God\u2019s faith in him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is this same daring and unequivocal freedom that inspired many Black\nAmericans when they read this text. Callahan again: \u201cAfrican Americans heard,\nread, and retold the story of the Exodus more than any other biblical\nnarrative. In it they saw their own aspirations for liberation from bondage in\nthe story of the ancient Hebrew slaves. . . . The Exodus signified God\u2019s will\nthat African Americans too would no longer be sold as bondspeople, that they\ntoo would go free.\u201d [2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In working for outer freedom, peace, and justice in the world we&nbsp;discover the even deeper inner freedom of our True Self in God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There can be no outer freedom without some level of inner liberation. This is a universal truth, but a lesson that each of us must learn for ourselves. If we pursue freedom from a reactionary position, out of our own fear or anger, we are working on too small a scale. The path to full [&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\/19727"}],"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=19727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19728,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19727\/revisions\/19728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}