{"id":22552,"date":"2023-06-26T10:16:28","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T14:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22552"},"modified":"2023-06-26T10:19:02","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T14:19:02","slug":"22552","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22552","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=\"I Am Not Alone - Kari Jobe - Worship Video with lyrics\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ow4OfW4DP9s?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\">The Spirit Comes in Crisis<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m cracked open now \/ No longer drifting&nbsp;<br>Running past their hate and mine \/ Tipping past \u201cCome here, gal!\u201d\u2026&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>I\u2019m cracked open now \/ looking for myself, &nbsp;<br>Maybe I spilled into the cleft of the rock \/ Hiding from the slave catching dogs&nbsp;<br>Maybe I died trying too hard \/ To birth myself sane&nbsp;<br>I\u2019m cracked, not broken \/ Still searching for me&nbsp;<br>Amid the shards of God\u2019s broken heart.<br>\u2014Barbara A. Holmes,&nbsp;<em>Joy Unspeakable&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In season four of\u00a0<\/em>The Cosmic We<em>, Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes and co-host Rev. Donny Bryant discuss \u201ccrisis contemplation.\u201d Holmes believes <strong>contemplative experience can emerge in times of collective crisis.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Donny Bryant:<\/strong>&nbsp;Crisis contemplation begins with what you call the communal, village, or tribal experience of crisis. Many times, we tend to deal with crisis at the individual level. We tend to look at what\u2019s happening to me, what I have lost, what I feel, how this impacts me \u2026 or my emotional stability. Experience of crisis at the individual level is critically important, and we don\u2019t want to discount that. But you are inviting us to frame and understand how crisis can be experienced at the communal, tribal, national, and global levels. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Barbara Holmes:<\/strong>\u00a0When you\u2019re experiencing <strong>crisis as an individual, that\u2019s what St. John of the Cross calls \u201cthe dark night of the soul.\u201d You\u2019re wrestling with God. You\u2019re doing what you need to do to handle what\u2019s coming up out of you that you don\u2019t understand.<\/strong> It\u2019s personal. You\u2019re getting a divorce, your child is ill &#8230; or you\u2019re just having the catastrophe of everyday life. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that\u2019s not the same thing for a group of people. I use three categories to talk about crisis contemplation\u2014the event is without warning; the people upon whom it is inflicted can\u2019t do anything about it. There is no recourse. You\u2019re caught. There is no place to go in the hold of a slave ship. There is nothing to be done when you\u2019re walking from North Carolina as a Native American to Oklahoma. <strong>Something else has to arise to keep you going, to enliven your spirit, to help you survive<\/strong>\u2014if survival is in the cards. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Crisis contemplation is that <strong>spirit that emerges when the breaking occurs.<\/strong> We find it in every single culture. The Chinese call this spirit<em>\u00a0chi (qi)<\/em>, the Egyptians call it\u00a0<em>Ma\u2019at<\/em>, and Hindus call it\u00a0<em>prana<\/em>. Kuzipa Nalwamba writes of the concept of\u00a0<em>Mupasi<\/em>, which is an African description of a spirit that dwells within all of us. [1] It\u2019s individual but also communal\u2026. When you are all suffering,\u00a0<em>Mupasi<\/em>is that vital <strong>spiritual voice that weaves the lives of all of us into an inseparable bond. It makes reality one whole. It gives kinship to all of us. <\/strong>When you think about it, that means that loving our neighbors is not just a little anecdote or possibility. With the moving of the Spirit, it\u2019s inherent to our being, for where the Spirit abides there\u2019s always unity. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Slowing Down Is the Solution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s in the darkness, it\u2019s <strong>in the moment of crisis when you have fallen through all of your own expectations that there is the opportunity for rebirthing.<\/strong><br>\u2014Barbara A. Holmes, \u201cContemplation,\u201d\u00a0<em>The Cosmic We<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>CAC teacher Barbara A. Holmes calls contemplation \u201ca soft word in a hard world.\u201d In this episode of&nbsp;<\/em>The Cosmic We<em>, she differentiates between crisis contemplation and contemplation as it\u2019s usually considered: &nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of us think of <strong>contemplation as something we do voluntarily<\/strong>. It\u2019s an entry into deep and sometimes sacred places. We\u2019re usually safe and comfortable, and this type of contemplation is more personal. But when we\u2019re talking about crisis contemplation that has communal impact, we\u2019re talking about a c<strong>ompletely different type of contemplation. For me, it\u2019s a breaking and a shattering of expectations. It\u2019s the experience of your worlds colliding. Everything is happening that shouldn\u2019t be happening<\/strong>. So the question becomes, how do you contemplate when you\u2019re devastated? When you\u2019re under siege? When you\u2019re beleaguered by ecological catastrophe, injustice, and oppression? How do you contemplate then?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>Crisis contemplation begins, Barbara Holmes shares, when we relinquish our usual approaches to problem solving: \u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we\u2019re in a crisis situation, the question becomes, \u201cWhat\u2019s the answer?\u201d and \u201cHow does contemplation help, if it can?\u201d<strong> No one is going to like the response because there isn\u2019t a response in the ordinary ways<\/strong>. Everyone is going to <strong>want a clear process to resolve something. What do we do? How do we do it? What\u2019s going to make us all feel better? There aren\u2019t any answers like that. <\/strong>When there is nothing to do, some of the things that can be done are things we don\u2019t want to do. Philosopher Bayo Akomolafe says it most clearly. He says the <strong>first thing you do is slow down: \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>To \u2018slow down\u2019 \u2026 seems like the wrong thing to do when there\u2019s fire on the mountain. But here\u2019s the point: in <strong>\u2018hurrying up\u2019 all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources that might help us meet today\u2019s most challenging crises<\/strong>. We rush through the same patterns we are used to. Of course, there isn\u2019t a single way to respond to a crisis; there is no universally correct way. However the call to slow down works to <strong>bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved&#8230;. It is about staying in the places that are haunted.<\/strong> [1] \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Holmes describes the challenge of \u201cslowing down\u201d: &nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In order to love, you have to slow down. There\u2019s no such thing as \u201cdrive-by loving.\u201d You have to give attention to the object, to the person, of your love. There has to be reciprocity and mutuality. It is<strong> giving ourselves over, letting go so that something else can do the loving through us and for us, because we\u2019re not capable of it. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">[47] No One Loves Because He Sees Why <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where a man does not love, the not-loving must seem rational. For no one loves because he sees why, but because he loves. No human reason can be given for the highest necessity of divinely created existence. For reasons are always from above downward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 26). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Spirit Comes in Crisis I\u2019m cracked open now \/ No longer drifting&nbsp;Running past their hate and mine \/ Tipping past \u201cCome here, gal!\u201d\u2026&nbsp;&nbsp;I\u2019m cracked open now \/ looking for myself, &nbsp;Maybe I spilled into the cleft of the rock \/ Hiding from the slave catching dogs&nbsp;Maybe I died trying too hard \/ To birth [&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\/22552"}],"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=22552"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22557,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22552\/revisions\/22557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}