{"id":22613,"date":"2023-07-10T09:34:50","date_gmt":"2023-07-10T13:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22613"},"modified":"2023-07-10T09:51:10","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T13:51:10","slug":"22613","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22613","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=\"Micah Tyler - I See Grace (Official Lyric Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eMHoKdawIEY?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\">Holding the Paradox<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This week, the Daily Meditations focus on the fourth of CAC\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Seven Themes of an Alternative Orthodoxy:&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Everything belongs. No one needs to be punished, scapegoated, or excluded. We cannot directly fight or separate ourselves from evil or untruth. Evil becomes apparent when exposed to the Truth. <\/strong>[1]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Richard Rohr affirms that \u201ceverything belongs,\u201d both the good and the bad, and it takes discernment to learn how to hold the paradox:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The spiritual gift of discernment (1 Corinthians 12:10) shows how seemingly good things can be recognized as sometimes bad things, and seemingly bad things can also be seen to bear some good fruit. Darn it! This kind of discernment <strong>invites people into yes\/and thinking, rather than simplistic either\/or thinking.<\/strong> This is the <strong>difference between merely having correct information and the true spiritual gift of wisdom (<\/strong>1 Corinthians 12:8).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once we have learned to discern the real and disguised nature of both good and evil, we recognize that <strong>everything is broken and fallen, weak and poor\u2014while still being the dwelling place of God: you and me, our countries, our children, our marriages, and even our churches, mosques, and synagogues.<\/strong> That is not a put-down of anybody or anything, but actually <strong>creates the freedom to love imperfect things. <\/strong>As Jesus told the rich young man, \u201cGod alone is good\u201d (Mark 10:18). <strong>We cannot wait for things to be totally perfect to fall in love with them, or we will never love anything. Now, instead, we can love everything!<\/strong> [2]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus uses a number of\u00a0<em>mixture images<\/em>\u00a0to illustrate the tension of our own mixture of good and evil. They seem to say this world is a mixture of different things, and unless we learn how to see, we don\u2019t know how to separate; we get lost in the weeds and can\u2019t see the wheat. In one parable, servants ask, \u201cShould we pull out the weeds?\u201d Jesus responds, \u201cNo. Let them both grow together until the harvest.\u201d Then, at the end of time, he will decide what is wheat and what is weed (Matthew 13:24\u201330). <strong>But we are a mixture of weed and wheat, and we always will be.<\/strong> As Martin Luther put it, we are\u00a0<em>simul justus et peccator<\/em>[at once justified and a sinner], each of us simultaneously saint and sinner. That\u2019s the mystery of holding weed and wheat together in our one field of life. It takes a lot more patience, compassion, forgiveness, and love than aiming for some illusory perfection that usually cannot see its own faults. <strong>The only true perfection available to us is the honest acceptance of our imperfection.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we must have perfection to be happy with ourselves, we have only two choices. We can either ignore our own evil (deny the weeds) or we can give up in discouragement (deny the wheat). <strong>But if we put aside perfection and face the tension of having both, then we can hear the good news with open hearts. [<\/strong>3]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Oneness with Everyone<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>If \u201ceverything belongs,\u201d then no one needs to be punished, scapegoated, or excluded.\u00a0<\/em>[1]<em>\u00a0God has loving room for all of us\u2014even those we consider enemies<\/em><\/strong><em>. Author Lerita Coleman Brown considers the mystic Howard Thurman\u2019s (1899\u20131981) insistence that everyone is a child of God.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The understanding that I am a holy child of God contains within itself often unrealized consequences. If I embrace this notion about myself, I must accept its corollary: that is, <strong>if I am a holy child of God, then so\u00a0<em>is everyone else.<\/em><\/strong><em>\u00a0<\/em>This sentiment is echoed in an interview in which Howard\u2019s daughter, Olive Thurman Wong, bemoaned the fact that people didn\u2019t fully comprehend the importance of oneness in her father\u2019s life and work. \u201c\u2018Oneness\u2019 is an easy enough thing to bandy about,\u201d writes Thurman scholar Liza Rankow, who interviewed Wong. \u201cIt is even an easy thing to profess, until we realize that it must include not only the people we like and agree with, not only those to whom we are sympathetic, but <strong>also those whom we view as abhorrent (whatever side of a political position we may hold). We don\u2019t get to choose who we are one with\u2014it\u2019s everybody.\u201d [2]\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes the faces of the people I detest flash across my mind and heart\u2026. How can they possibly be holy children of God? Howard Thurman answers this question in the final chapter of&nbsp;<em>Jesus and the Disinherited<\/em>. Pointing to the centrality of the love ethic in Jesus\u2019s teachings, he observes the types of people Jesus befriended who, by all accounts, should have been absolute enemies. Thurman points to the necessity of extinguishing bitterness within the heart in order to recognize adversaries as holy children of God. [3]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Thurman emphasizes Jesus\u2019 teaching to love our enemies as a radical challenge to love as if everyone belongs:<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus, however, approaches life from the point of view of God. The serious problem for him had to be: Is the Roman a child of God? Is my enemy God\u2019s child? If he is, I must work upon myself until I am willing to bring him back into the family.\u2026<strong> If God loves them, that binds me. Can it be that God does not know how terrible my enemy is? No, God knows them as well as he knows himself and much better than I know them. It must be true, then, that there is something in every human that remains intact, inviolate, regardless of what he [or she] does.<\/strong> I wonder! Is this true? Is there an integrity of the person,<strong> so intrinsic in its value and significance that no deed, however evil, can ultimately undermine this given thing?<\/strong> If a person is of infinite worth in the sight of God, whether they are saint or sinner, whether they are a good person or a bad person, evil or not, if that is true, then<strong> I am never relieved of my responsibility for trying to make contact with this worthy thing in them. [4]\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">[52] The Body <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is by the body that we come into contact with Nature, with our fellowmen, with all their revelations to us. It is through the body that we receive all the lessons of passion, of suffering, of love, of beauty, of science. It is through the body that we are both trained outward from ourselves, and driven inward into our deepest selves to find God. There is glory and might in this vital evanescence, this slow glacier like flow of clothing and revealing matter, this ever uptossed rainbow of tangible humanity. It is <strong>no less of God\u2019s making than the spirit that is clothed therein.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 28-29). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 28). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Holding the Paradox This week, the Daily Meditations focus on the fourth of CAC\u2019s&nbsp;Seven Themes of an Alternative Orthodoxy:&nbsp;&nbsp; Everything belongs. No one needs to be punished, scapegoated, or excluded. We cannot directly fight or separate ourselves from evil or untruth. Evil becomes apparent when exposed to the Truth. [1]\u00a0 Richard Rohr affirms that \u201ceverything [&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\/22613"}],"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=22613"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22617,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22613\/revisions\/22617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}