{"id":19956,"date":"2021-03-22T09:58:06","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T13:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19956"},"modified":"2021-03-22T10:30:26","modified_gmt":"2021-03-22T14:30:26","slug":"the-path-of-the-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19956","title":{"rendered":"The Path of the Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jLUM48jPBBw\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In spirituality, there are basically two\npaths, what I\u2019ve called the path of the fall and the path of the return. The\npath of return has been the message of the priestly class. True priests talk of\nreligion, communion, love, transcendence, connecting this world with the next,\nand generally offering a coherent world of meaning. In contrast, the path of\nthe fall is directed and legitimated by the prophets, who teach us how to go\ninto our shadows creatively and how to lose gracefully. They teach us how to let\ngo and let things fall apart without fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The role of the prophet is to lead us on an\nindividual and collective level through the necessary deconstruction of what I\nwould call the false self. The prophet\u2019s path is of descent and is never\npopular or easy. It is about letting go of illusion and toppling false gods.\nPeople usually like priests, which is why they are established and comfortable\nin almost all cultures, but the prophets are almost always killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The prophets are disrupters of the social\nconsensus. What everybody is saying, whatever the glib agreement is, prophets\nsay, \u201cit\u2019s not true.\u201d They do this primarily by exposing and toppling what the\nHebrew Scriptures called <em>idols<\/em>,\nthings that are made absolute that are not absolute. The tendency of religion\nis to absolutize. I\u2019m sure it comes from a deep psychological need for some\nsolid ground to stand on, but the prophets remind us that God is the only\nabsolute. And don\u2019t try to make the institutions of God absolutes either!\nJeremiah said, \u201cThe Temple, the Temple, the Temple, don\u2019t you get tired of\ntalking about the Temple?\u201d (see Jeremiah 7:4) This was a good Jewish man who\nsurely loved the Temple but recognized that it, too, had become an idol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through Jeremiah, God reminded them: \u201cIn\nspeaking to your ancestors on the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt,\nI gave them no&nbsp;command&nbsp;concerning burnt offering or sacrifice [in the\nTemple]. This is rather what I commanded them: Listen to my voice; then I will\nbe your God and you shall be my people. Walk exactly in the way I command you,\nso that you may prosper\u201d (Jeremiah 7:22\u201323).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hope we can\nsympathize with the people of Israel who so often rejected their prophets. It\u2019s\nscary whenever we\u2019re offered a new synthesis or paradigm, especially for those\nwho are heavily invested in the old. Opposition will rise, just as it rose\naround Jesus. People inside the status quo usually have much to lose. They\ndon\u2019t necessarily have ill will; it\u2019s just that they\u2019re living in the only\nworld they\u2019ve ever imagined. Perhaps my favorite understanding of prophets is\nthat they\u2019re lovers of spiritual freedom who keep humanity free for God and God\nfree for humanity. It is harder than you think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>On the Edge of the Inside <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the fall of 2020, I began sending out occasional letters that I called \u201cLetters from Outside the Camp,\u201d a reference to the many usages of \u201coutside the camp\u201d in the Hebrew Bible. It is a prophetic position \u201con the edge of the inside,\u201d which is described by the early Israelites as \u201cthe tent of meeting outside the camp\u201d (Exodus 33:7). Even though this tent is foldable, moveable, and disposable, it is still a meeting place for \u201cthe holy,\u201d which is always on the move and out in front of us. The free and graced position found in the tent of meeting is what allowed Jesus and all prophets in his lineage to speak from the privileged minority position. It is always less desirable, compared to the comfortable and enjoyable places at the center and the top; yet it is the Jesus stance, and the place where all Franciscans follow after him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The prophet exercises his or her <em>imagination <\/em>from that place\nof freedom<em>, <\/em>as my\nfavorite Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann describes so well: <em>\u201cBecause the totalism [that is, the system]\nwants to silence, banish, or eliminate every such unwelcome [prophetic]\nintrusion, the tricky work is to find standing ground outside the totalism from\nwhich to think the unthinkable, to imagine the unimaginable, and to utter the\nunutterable.\u201d<\/em> [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The \u201ctent of meeting\u201d is the initial image and\nmetaphor that eventually became our much later notion of \u201cchurch.\u201d The greatest\nprophet of the Jewish tradition, Moses, had the prescience and courage to move\nthe place of hearing God outside and at a distance from the court of common\nreligious and civic opinion\u2014this was the original genius that inspired the\nentire Jewish prophetic tradition. It is quite different than mere liberal and\nconservative positions, and often even at odds with them. Prophecy and Gospel are\nrooted in a contemplative and non-dual way of knowing\u2014a way of being in the\nworld that is utterly free and grounded in the compassion of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It inspires me to wonder how we might maintain\nthat same sense of prophetic freedom outside the contemporary political and\nreligious \u201cencampments\u201d of our day. For those of us who are sincerely and\ndevotedly trying to camp elsewhere than in any political party or religious\ndenomination, we know full well that we must now avoid the temptation to become\nour own defended camp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Somehow our occupation and vocation as believers in this time must be to first restore the Divine Center by holding it and fully occupying it ourselves. If contemplation means anything, it means that we can \u201csafeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves\u201d as Etty Hillesum describes it. [2] What other power do we have now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"blob:http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/2ce9b09d-3875-465d-b2dc-d4c92484ae51\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In spirituality, there are basically two paths, what I\u2019ve called the path of the fall and the path of the return. The path of return has been the message of the priestly class. True priests talk of religion, communion, love, transcendence, connecting this world with the next, and generally offering a coherent world of meaning. [&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\/19956"}],"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=19956"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19961,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19956\/revisions\/19961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}