{"id":22112,"date":"2023-02-13T10:21:36","date_gmt":"2023-02-13T15:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22112"},"modified":"2023-02-13T10:26:32","modified_gmt":"2023-02-13T15:26:32","slug":"22112","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22112","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jeremy Camp - Getting Started (Lyrics)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8e1Yc5fWxe0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Life of Relationship<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Richard Rohr speaks in his 1980 recorded series on the Hebrew prophets about the communal and social emphasis of their message:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What the prophet does is lead the Jewish religion into being a social experience\u2026.&nbsp; The prophets keep Judaism social.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Much of modern religion is individualistic, spiritualized instead of social. Prophetic words only speak out of the context of peoplehood, out of the context of community. It\u2019s a call to the covenant people to live the covenant and be the people of the covenant. To be faithful to the pledge that God has made to God\u2019s people. For the most part, the prophets\u2019 teaching is not individualistic; it\u2019s social. Their understanding isn\u2019t, \u201cThis is right for me; I must do this. My conscience tells me this.\u201d Much more, they speak of&nbsp;<em>our<\/em>&nbsp;conscience. There\u2019s a social conscience, what is right for the people. The prophets are convinced that what is right and good for the people&nbsp;<em>as a whole<\/em>&nbsp;will be right for the individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ironically\u2014and this will seem like a paradox\u2014out of that sense of peoplehood, out of that sense of community comes a strong tradition of the importance of the individual. I know that sounds contradictory, but that\u2019s exactly what happens. <strong>A true sense of community creates a strong sense of individual personhood\u2026. True individuals create true community. And true community creates true individuals.<\/strong> They are not conflicting. Because we\u2019ve so often experienced bad community and individualism instead of true personhood, we see them as somehow in conflict. The prophet does not. So the prophet\u2019s sense of Judaism is of a social religion that calls hearers to peoplehood, to togetherness, to relatedness. Only in relatedness can we understand relatedness to God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The life of the Spirit in the Hebrew Scriptures is largely a life of relationship. Those who can be in relationship can learn how to appropriately relate to the other, not just to the self. <strong>We\u2019re caught right now in a very psychological age where we\u2019re coming very close to defining salvation as self-realization, as therapeutic experience, as self-knowledge. It\u2019s all an internal dialogue.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, the life of the Spirit is a life of relatedness and relationship. The prophet leads us into that life of relationship to be in union with nature, the moment, the person, the prayer, the community. As soon as those moments of relationship are cut off, we cut off the possibility of community, and we cut off the possibility of being a people of any real depth. Certainly, we cut ourselves off from what I think the Jewish and Christian traditions offer us, which is a call to relatedness. God leads us further and further into that relatedness, into an experience of intimacy with that with which we are in relationship.<strong> Because of that experience of intimacy with the center, with God, with the Creator, with Life, gradually the scaffolding of fear and self-protection falls away. We\u2019re hopefully finally able to be intimate with everything.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Mercy, Justice, and Walking Humbly<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou have been told, O mortal, what is good and what YHWH requires of you: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.\u201d \u2014Micah 6:8<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Scholar and retreat leader Megan McKenna deepens our understanding of God\u2019s desire for us through the prophet Micah. For McKenna, Micah\u2019s simple and challenging verse reveals the essence of what the prophets are about:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to God, this is life. This is the call of the prophets in a nutshell, the meat at the heart of their very existence. The words used are significant: <strong>\u201cDo justice\u201d<\/strong>\u2014the Hebrew word\u00a0<em>mishpat\u00a0<\/em>means more than specific acts of justice. It defines God\u2019s order in the world; it is the covenant guide for living in community; and it is the memory of God\u2019s words and deeds past and present and the people\u2019s response in gratitude toward one another. In a word it says, Be the Torah; do God\u2019s justice; imitate God in your life.\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDo justice\u201d means to be faithful as God is faithful, holy as God is holy, to set those in bondage free, to hear compassionately the cries of those in slavery, to do for one\u2019s neighbor what God has so graciously done for you. It is the teaching of the Torah, the source of abundant life. <strong>These two words\u2014Do justice\u2014point to the way of God and simply say: walk in it! Whatever the concept of justice might be, it is only by doing acts of justice, by solidly standing with those in need of justice, and by resisting injustice that justice can become a reality.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second demand is \u201cLove mercy\u201d (or \u201cLove tenderly\u201d). The Hebrew word&nbsp;<em>hesed,&nbsp;<\/em>compassion, means coming to the rescue of the poor, the outcast, the alien, the slave, the powerless, hearing the cries of those in misery, giving love that is faithful, sustaining, enduring. It is the way God loves [God\u2019s] people, and God\u2019s people are to return that love by loving one another. This urgent command shoots right to the heart of every individual and to the community. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Howard Thurman (1899\u20131981) asks what it means to walk humbly with God, the third of God\u2019s requirements to Micah:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How do you walk humbly with God? How do you? How do you walk humbly with anybody?\u2026 [By] coming to grips with who I am, what I am as accurately and as fully as possible: a clear-eyed appraisal of myself. And in the light of the dignity of my own sense of being I walk with God step by step as [God] walks with me. <strong>This is I, with my weaknesses and my strength, with my abilities and my liabilities; this is I, a human being myself! And it is that that God salutes. So that the more I walk with God and God walks with me, the more I come into the full-orbed significance of who I am and what I am. <\/strong>That is to walk humbly with God. [2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-1-500x312.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-22116\" width=\"756\" height=\"472\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-1-500x312.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-1-300x187.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-1-768x479.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-1-1536x958.png 1536w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image-1.png 1750w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Life of Relationship Richard Rohr speaks in his 1980 recorded series on the Hebrew prophets about the communal and social emphasis of their message:&nbsp; What the prophet does is lead the Jewish religion into being a social experience\u2026.&nbsp; The prophets keep Judaism social. Much of modern religion is individualistic, spiritualized instead of social. Prophetic [&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\/22112"}],"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=22112"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22118,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22112\/revisions\/22118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}