{"id":22818,"date":"2023-08-28T09:37:53","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T13:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22818"},"modified":"2023-08-28T10:30:37","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T14:30:37","slug":"22818","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22818","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Cosmic Dance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=8wJIeZMSxLs%3Fsi%3DNLpOmVizYkPss7S2\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When he teaches about living a contemplative life, CAC faculty memberJames Finley often uses an image he learned from Thomas Merton (1915\u20131968)\u2014the cosmic dance. In Merton\u2019s words<\/em>:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear [God\u2019s] call and follow Him in His mysterious cosmic dance\u2026. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.\u202f<\/strong>[1]  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finley expands on Merton\u2019s metaphor in his book <\/em>The Contemplative Heart: <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning to dance the cosmic dance\u2014this is why we are here on this earth, living the life we are living. At least this is one way of expressing the heart\u2019s conviction concerning the need to recognize and move with the divinity manifested in the primordial rhythms of the day-by-day life we are living. [2]  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a dance of being awake and being asleep, of being alone and being with others. It\u2019s a dance of being seen and understood and not seen and understood at all. There\u2019s a dance of being happy and being sad. There\u2019s a dance of feeling so happy you think you\u2019re finally beginning to understand the spiritual dimension, and then this part where you don\u2019t think you ever will. The dance of being confused and having clarity, going back and forth. And if we were to set it to music, we would say that God is the infinity of the primordial rhythms of your life, and God waits for you to find Her there. God is the infinity of the very rhythms of your day, breathing in, breathing out, being awake, being asleep, standing up and sitting down.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s like God forever comes to visit, but we\u2019re rarely at home<\/strong>. We\u2019re probably out buying a spiritual book or something, or getting in an argument with somebody about God<\/strong>. So we\u2019re always trying to step into this rhythm…. How can you learn to move with the God-given Godly nature of the primordial unfolding rhythms of your life and your passage through time from birth to death? [3] (Good question DJR)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waking up to Life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In a virtual retreat for <\/em>Turning to the Mystics podcast listeners, James Finley shares his wisdom on living a contemplative way of life in the world:<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contemplative way of life is so called because it\u2019s the way of life devoted to the cultivation of contemplative experience. That\u2019s our starting place. To contemplate means to observe carefully, to pay close attention. Most of the things that we notice, we notice in passing, on our way to something else; then, every so often, something gives us reason to pause. Something catches our eye or draws our attention, and we\u2019re drawn for a moment to ponder or to reflect on that which awakened us in this way. [1]  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finley offers examples of moments in which we awaken to God\u2019s presence in \u201cthe cosmic dance\u201d<\/em>:<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without warning, we find ourselves falling into the abyss of a star-strewn sky or find our heart impaled by a child\u2019s laughter or the unexpected appearance of the beloved\u2019s face. Without warning we lose our footing in the silence broken and, in the breaking, deepened by the splash of a frog we did not know was there.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is so extraordinary about such moments is that nothing beyond the ordinary is present. <\/strong>It is just a starlit sky, a child at play. It is just the primal stuff of life that has unexpectedly broken through the mesh of opinions and concerns that all too often hold us in their spell. It is just life in the immediacy of the present moment before thought begins. Here, in this unforeseen defenselessness, is granted the contemplative experience, however obscure it might be, that we are the cosmic dance of God, that the present moment, just the way it is, is already, in its deepest actuality, the fullness of union with God we seek. [2]  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We <\/em>choose a contemplative way of life when we recognize and return to these moments of awakening<\/em>:<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These moments pass and the real question then for us is, \u201cWhat happens next?\u201d All too often, unfortunately, nothing happens next. The gate to Heaven opened and your cell phone went off. You were already late to a meeting. Nothing happened next.<\/strong>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But sometimes what happens is that although the moment has passed, you reflect back upon it, and you realize that the subtle moment was a kind of homecoming. You settled, with a sense like \u201cI belong here.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> When you start understanding your life in the light of these moments, you realize this feeling that you\u2019re skimming over the surface of the depths of your own life. <\/strong>It\u2019s all the more unfortunate because God\u2019s unexplainable oneness with us is hidden in the depths over which we\u2019re skimming. Then there\u2019s the gift of a holy discontent. <\/strong>We say to ourselves \u201cI don\u2019t like living this way.\u201d <\/em>I don\u2019t like living exiled from this inner richness that from time-to-time visits me and quickens me from within…. I want to abide in the depths so fleetingly glimpsed.<\/strong> [3] <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following is an excerpt from Surprised By God<\/span><\/strong>, by Chris Green<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As readers of this Gospel from Origen to the present day have noted, John\u2019s stories are made to work as master-parables for the life of faith. Even the minutest details in these stories (think, for example, of the woman leaving her bucket at the well or the man by the pool taking up his mat after he is healed) are mysteriously freighted with significance. Lazarus, called back to life but still bound in his grave clothes, figures for us what Romans 8 describes as the conflict of \u201cflesh\u201d and \u201cSpirit.\u201d Even after we have been baptized into Christ\u2019s death and filled with the Spirit of his new-creation life, we remain bound by the \u201cgrave clothes\u201d of the old humanity (\u201cAdam\u201d)<\/strong>. Long after we are delivered from slavery in Egypt, we find that we still engage the world as slaves. We are delivered from death not only to life-with-God but also life-with-neighbor<\/strong>. We are saved not from one another, but for and to one another. And so continually we have to have our minds renewed, our hearts purged, our imaginations sanctified, our loves reordered. We have continually to be converted not only to Christ, but also to Lazarus.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Green, Chris E. W.. Surprised by God: How and Why What We Think about the Divine Matters . Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=8wJIeZMSxLs%3Fsi%3DNLpOmVizYkPss7S2\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Cosmic Dance When he teaches about living a contemplative life, CAC faculty memberJames Finley often uses an image he learned from Thomas Merton (1915\u20131968)\u2014the cosmic dance. In Merton\u2019s words:\u00a0\u00a0 If we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear […]<\/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\/22818"}],"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=22818"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22826,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22818\/revisions\/22826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}