{"id":20002,"date":"2021-04-05T09:36:54","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T13:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=20002"},"modified":"2021-04-05T09:36:54","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T13:36:54","slug":"a-mystic-for-our-times-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=20002","title":{"rendered":"A Mystic for Our Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3lDvD-O9xhg\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>My friend Matthew Fox\npublished a book during the COVID-19 pandemic about Julian of Norwich. I love\nJulian\u2019s teachings because she focuses on God\u2019s infinite love, goodness, and\nmercy. Even during the Black Death (bubonic plague) in which perhaps a third of\nthe world\u2019s population died, even during her own near-death experience when she\nreceived visions of Jesus\u2019 brutal crucifixion, Julian trusts that \u201call will be\nwell.\u201d Matthew Fox shows how Julian is a mystic for our own time. He writes:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A time of crisis and chaos, the kind that a\npandemic brings, is, among other things, a time to call on our ancestors for\ntheir deep wisdom. Not just knowledge but true <em>wisdom <\/em>is needed in a time of death and profound\nchange, for at such times we are beckoned not simply to return to the immediate\npast, that which we remember fondly as \u201cthe normal,\u201d but to reimagine a new\nfuture, a renewed humanity, a more just and therefore sustainable culture, and\none even filled with joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Julian of Norwich [1343\u2013c. 1416] is one of\nthose ancestors calling to us today. After all, she lived her entire life\nduring a raging pandemic. Julian is a stunning thinker, a profound theologian\nand mystic, a fully awake woman, and a remarkable guide with a mighty vision to\nshare for twenty-first-century seekers. She is a special chaperone for those\nnavigating a time of pandemic. Julian knew a thing or two about \u201csheltering in\nplace,\u201d because she was an anchoress\u2014that is, someone who, by definition, is literally\nwalled up inside a small space for life. Julian also knew something about\nfostering a spirituality that can survive the trauma of a pandemic. While\nothers all about her were freaking out about nature gone awry, Julian kept her\nspiritual and intellectual composure, staying grounded and true to her belief\nin the goodness of life, creation, and humanity and, in no uncertain terms,\ninviting others to do the same. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Julian\u2019s response to the pandemic, as we know\nit from her two books, [is] amazingly grounded in a love of life and gratitude.\nInstead of running from death, she actually prayed to enter into it and it is\nfrom that experience of death all around her and meditating on the cruel\ncrucifixion of Christ that she interpreted as a communal, not just a personal\nevent, that her visions arrived. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our sister and\nancestor Julian is eager not only to speak to us today but <em>to shout at us<\/em>\u2014albeit in a gentle way\u2014to\nwake up and to go deep, to face the darkness and to dig down and find goodness,\njoy and awe. And to go to work to defend Mother Earth and all her creatures,\nstripping ourselves of racism, sexism, nationalisms, anthropocentrism,\nsectarianism\u2014anything that interferes with our greatness as human beings. And\nto connect anew to the sacredness of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><strong>A Pattern We Can Trust<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>All will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well.<br> \u2014<\/em>Julian of Norwich, <em>Showings, <\/em>chapter 27<em> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus\nChrist, which allows faithful Christians to trust that, indeed, all will be\nwell. I like to think of the resurrection as God\u2019s way of telling us that God\ncan take the worst thing in the world\u2014the killing of the God-Human Jesus\u2014and\nchange it into the best thing: the redemption of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To believe that Jesus was raised from the dead\nis actually not a leap of faith. <em>Resurrection\nand renewal are, in fact, the universal and observable pattern of everything. <\/em>We\nmight just as well use non-religious terms like \u201cspringtime,\u201d \u201cregeneration,\u201d\n\u201chealing,\u201d \u201cforgiveness,\u201d \u201clife cycles,\u201d \u201cdarkness,\u201d and \u201clight.\u201d If\nincarnation is real, if material creation is inspirited, then resurrection in\nmultitudinous forms is to be fully expected. Or to paraphrase a statement\nattributed to Albert Einstein, it is not that one thing is a miracle, but that\nthe whole thing is a miracle!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If divine incarnation has any truth to it,\nthen resurrection is a foregone conclusion, not a one-time anomaly in the body\nof Jesus, as our Western understanding of the resurrection felt it needed to\nprove\u2014and then it couldn\u2019t. <em>The\nRisen Christ is not a one-time miracle but the revelation of a universal\npattern that is hard to see in the short run<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Simply put, if death is not possible for the\nChrist, then it is not possible for anything that \u201cshares in the divine nature\u201d\n(2 Peter 1:4). God is by definition eternal, and God is Love (1 John 4:16),\nwhich is also eternal (1 Corinthians 13:8), and this same Love has been planted\nin our hearts (Romans 5:5; 8:9) by the Spirit dwelling within us. <em>Such fully Implanted Love cannot help but\nevolve and prove victorious, and our word for that final victory is\n\u201cresurrection.\u201d <\/em>Peter states this rather directly: \u201cBy raising\nJesus Christ from the dead, we have a sure hope and the promise of an\ninheritance that can never be spoiled or soiled or fade away. It is being kept\nfor you in the heavens . . . and will be fully revealed at the end of time\u201d (1\nPeter 1:3\u20135).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My book <em>The Universal Christ <\/em>is about the Eternal Christ,\nwho never dies\u2014and who never dies <em>in you<\/em>! Resurrection is about the whole of creation, it is about history, it\nis about every human who has ever been conceived, sinned, suffered, and died,\nevery animal that has lived and died a tortured death, every element that has\nchanged from solid, to liquid, to ether, over great expanses of time. It is\nabout you and it is about me. It is about everything. The \u201cChrist journey\u201d is\nindeed another name for every thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My friend Matthew Fox published a book during the COVID-19 pandemic about Julian of Norwich. I love Julian\u2019s teachings because she focuses on God\u2019s infinite love, goodness, and mercy. Even during the Black Death (bubonic plague) in which perhaps a third of the world\u2019s population died, even during her own near-death experience when she received [&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\/20002"}],"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=20002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20003,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20002\/revisions\/20003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}