{"id":21173,"date":"2022-03-27T18:05:04","date_gmt":"2022-03-27T22:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21173"},"modified":"2022-03-28T09:57:19","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T13:57:19","slug":"21173","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=21173","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PLamtM9Qeds\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Fear Is Contraction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard Rohr locates the <strong>primary source of our fears in our small or false selves,<\/strong> which are unable to trust the love of God that infuses all of reality.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fear unites the disparate parts of our false selves very quickly. The ego moves forward by contraction, self-protection, and refusal, by saying no. Contraction gives us focus, purpose, direction, superiority, and a strange kind of security. It takes our aimless anxiety, covers it up, and tries to turn it into purposefulness and urgency, which results in a kind of drivenness. But this drive is not peaceful or happy. It is filled with fear and locates all its problems as \u201cout there,\u201d never \u201cin here.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The soul or the True Self does not proceed by contraction but by expansion. It moves forward, not by exclusion, but by inclusion<\/strong>. It sees things deeply and broadly <strong>not by saying no but by saying yes, at least on some level, to whatever comes its way.<\/strong> Can you\u00a0distinguish between\u00a0those two very different movements within yourself?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fear and contraction allow us to eliminate other people, write them off, exclude them, and somehow expel them, at least in our minds. This immediately gives us a sense of being in control and having a secure set of boundaries\u2014even holy boundaries. But <strong>people who are controlling are usually\u00a0afraid of losing something.<\/strong> If we go deeper into ourselves, we will see that <strong>there is both a rebel and a dictator in all of us, <\/strong>two different ends of the same spectrum. It is almost always fear that justifies our knee-jerk rebellion or our need to dominate\u2014a fear that is hardly ever recognized as such because we are acting out and trying to control the situation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Author Gareth Higgins describes moving through the \u201cno\u201d of fear to the \u201cyes\u201d of love:&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Look beneath your fear and you will discover what it is you really care about. What you wish to protect: people, places, things, hopes, dreams. Aggression, shame, and disconnection\u2014even as attempts at making a better life for me or a better world for all of us\u2014don\u2019t work. But as we expand our circle of caring to include\u00a0<em>all\u00a0<\/em>people,\u00a0<em>all\u00a0<\/em>places,\u00a0<em>all<\/em>\u00a0of creation, we discover that our fears are shared and that all our cares come from the same place. <strong>Come to understand your fear, and you may find that we\u2019re all just trying to figure out how to love<\/strong>. [1]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard continues:&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unless there is someone to hold and accompany us on these inner journeys, much of humanity cannot go\u00a0very deep\u00a0inside. If only we knew Who we would meet there, and could say, with St. Catherine of Genoa (1447\u20131510), <strong>\u201cMy deepest me is God!\u201d<\/strong> [2] Without such accompaniment, most of us will stay on the surface of our own lives, where small-spiritedness keeps us from being bothered by others. Yet <strong>with divine\u00a0accompaniment, we will literally \u201cfind our souls\u201d and the One who lovingly dwells there.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Mother Hen God<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to [Jesus], \u201cGet away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.\u201d<\/em><em>He said to them, \u201cGo and tell that fox for me, \u2018Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.\u2019 . . . Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014Luke 13:31\u201332, 34&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor, author, and dear friend of Father Richard\u2019s. She published this sermon during the first COVID shutdown in the United States. She describes how Christians might interpret the oft-given scriptural command to \u201cBe not afraid.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Never once have I stopped being afraid just because someone said that.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I AM afraid.&nbsp;. . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So maybe our hope for becoming unafraid is found in . . . the part where Jesus calls Herod a fox and then refers to himself as a mother hen.\u202f&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A mother hen.\u202f&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe that beautiful image of God could mean something important for us: and by us I mean we fragile, vulnerable human beings who face very real danger. I can\u2019t bear to say that this scripture is a description of what behaviors and attitudes you could imitate if you want to be a good, not-afraid person. But neither can I tell you that the Mother Hen thing means that God will protect you from Herod or that God is going to keep bad things from happening to you.\u202f&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because honestly, <strong>nothing actually keeps danger from being dangerous.\u202f<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A mother hen cannot actually keep a determined fox from killing her chicks.\u202fSo where does that leave us? I mean, if danger is real, and a hen can\u2019t actually keep their chicks out of danger, then what good is this image of God as Mother Hen if faith in her can\u2019t make us safe?&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, today I started to think that maybe it\u2019s not\u202f<em>safety&nbsp;<\/em>that keeps us from being afraid.\u202f&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe it\u2019s\u202f<em>love<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which means that a Mother Hen of a God doesn\u2019t keep foxes from being dangerous . . . a Mother Hen of a God keeps foxes from being what determines how we experience the unbelievably beautiful gift of being alive.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>God the Mother Hen gathers all of her downy feathered, vulnerable little ones<strong> under God\u2019s protective wings so that we know where we belong, because it is there that we find warmth and shelter.\u202f\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Faith in God does not bring you safety.\u202f&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The fox still exists.\u202f&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Danger still exists.\u202f&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And by that I mean, <strong>danger is not optional, but fear is.\u202f\u202f\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because maybe the opposite of fear isn\u2019t bravery.\u202f\u202fMaybe the opposite of fear is love. So in the response to our own Herods, <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"318\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/image-10-500x318.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-21177\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/image-10-500x318.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/image-10-300x191.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/image-10-768x489.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/image-10.png 1816w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fear Is Contraction Father Richard Rohr locates the primary source of our fears in our small or false selves, which are unable to trust the love of God that infuses all of reality.\u00a0\u00a0 Fear unites the disparate parts of our false selves very quickly. The ego moves forward by contraction, self-protection, and refusal, by saying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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\/21173"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21173"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21188,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21173\/revisions\/21188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}