{"id":19919,"date":"2021-03-10T09:37:20","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T14:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19919"},"modified":"2021-03-10T11:19:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T16:19:13","slug":"the-circle-of-eternity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19919","title":{"rendered":"The Circle of Eternity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SagXdu70yF4\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>I once shared a happy dinner\nwith the beloved Irish poet and philosopher John O\u2019Donohue (1956\u00ad\u20132008). He\npassed away far too soon at the age of 52, and I imagine he was immediately\nwelcomed into the communion of saints, living in the \u201ccircle of eternity\u201d he\ndescribes in this passage:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Celtic Irish tradition recognizes that the\neternal and the transient worlds are woven in and through each other. Very\noften at death, the inhabitants of the eternal world come out toward the\nvisible world. . . . Your friends who now live in the eternal world come to\nmeet you, to bring you home. Usually, for people who are dying to see their own\nfriends gives them great strength, support, and encouragement. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here we are caught in linear time. . . . Time\nmust be totally different for the dead because they live now within a circle of\neternity. . . . The Celtic mind never liked the line but always loved the shape\nof the circle. . . . I imagine that in the eternal world time has become the\ncircle of eternity. Maybe when a person goes into that world, he or she can\nlook back at what we call past time here. That person may also see all of\nfuture time. For the dead, present time is total presence. This suggests that\nour friends among the dead know us better than they can ever have known us in\nlife. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I believe that our friends among the dead\nreally mind us and look out for us. Often there might be a big boulder of\nmisery over your path about to fall on you, but your friends among the dead\nhold it back until you have passed by. One of the exciting developments that\nmay happen in evolution and in human consciousness in the next several hundred\nyears is a whole new relationship with the invisible, eternal world. We might\nbegin to link up in a very creative way with our friends in the invisible\nworld. . . . They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness,\nloneliness, isolation, or pain. They are home. They are with God from whom they\ncame. They have returned to the nest of their identity within the great circle\nof God. God is the greatest circle of all, the largest embrace in the universe,\nwhich holds visible and invisible, temporal and eternal, as one. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the eternal world, all is one. In spiritual space there is no distance. In eternal time there is no segmentation into today, yesterday, or tomorrow. In eternal time all is now; time is presence. I believe that this is what eternal life means: it is a life where all that we seek\u2014goodness, unity, beauty, truth, and love\u2014are no longer distant from us but are now completely present with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"328\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-10-500x328.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19921\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-10-500x328.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-10-300x197.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-10-768x503.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-10.png 1816w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I once shared a happy dinner with the beloved Irish poet and philosopher John O\u2019Donohue (1956\u00ad\u20132008). He passed away far too soon at the age of 52, and I imagine he was immediately welcomed into the communion of saints, living in the \u201ccircle of eternity\u201d he describes in this passage: The Celtic Irish tradition recognizes [&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\/19919"}],"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=19919"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19922,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19919\/revisions\/19922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}