{"id":22851,"date":"2023-09-04T10:57:03","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T14:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22851"},"modified":"2023-09-04T12:17:26","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T16:17:26","slug":"22851","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22851","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) Lyric Video - Hillsong UNITED\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dy9nwe9_xzw?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\">An Alternative Orthodoxy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Richard Rohr explains that Francis of Assisi (1182\u20131226)<\/em>&nbsp;<em>paid attention to different things than the Catholic Church of his time. Eventually, his prophetic witness and emphasis became an \u201calternative orthodoxy\u201d through the Franciscan tradition. Richard begins:<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the&nbsp;<em>Legend of Perugia,&nbsp;<\/em>one of the earliest accounts of his life, Francis offers this instruction to the first friars: \u201cYou only know as much as you&nbsp;<em>do.<\/em>\u201d [1] His emphasis on action, practice, and lifestyle was foundational and revolutionary for its time and remains at the heart of Franciscan alternative orthodoxy. For Francis and Clare, Jesus became someone to actually follow and imitate.&nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Up to this point, most of Christian spirituality was based in desert asceticism, monastic discipline, theories of prayer, or academic theology, which itself was often based in \u201ccorrect belief\u201d or liturgical texts, but not in a kind of&nbsp;<em>practical<\/em>Christianity that could be lived in the streets of the world.&nbsp;<em><strong>Francis emphasized an imitation and love of the humanity of Jesus, and not just the worshiping of his divinity.<\/strong><\/em>&nbsp;That is a major shift.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Throughout history, the Franciscan School has typically been a minority position inside of the Roman Catholic and larger Christian tradition, yet it has never been condemned or considered heretical\u2014in fact, quite the opposite. <strong>It simply emphasized different teachings of Jesus, new perspectives and behaviors, and focused on the full and final implications of the incarnation of God in Christ.<\/strong> For Franciscans, the incarnation was not just about Jesus but was manifested everywhere. As Francis said, \u201c<strong>The whole world is our cloister<\/strong>!\u201d [2]&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis\u2019 <strong>starting place was human suffering instead of human sinfulness,<\/strong> and God\u2019s identification with that suffering in Jesus. That did not put him in conflict with any Catholic dogmas or structures. <strong>His Christ was cosmic while also deeply personal, his cathedral was creation itself, and he preferred the bottom of society to the top. <\/strong>He invariably emphasized inclusion of the seeming outsider over any club of insiders, and he was much more a mystic than a moralist. In general, Francis<strong> preferred ego poverty to private perfection, because Jesus \u201cbecame poor for our sake, so that we might become rich out of his poverty\u201d (2 Corinthians 8:9).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I sincerely think Francis found<strong> a Third Way, which is the creative and courageous role of a prophet and a mystic.&nbsp;<em>He basically repeated what all prophets say: that the message and the medium for the message have to be the same thing.<\/em><\/strong><em>&nbsp;<\/em>And Francis emphasized the medium itself, instead of continuing to clarify or contain the mere verbal message; this tends to be the \u201cpriestly\u201d job, one which Francis never wanted for himself.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both Francis and Clare saw orthopraxy (\u201ccorrect practice\u201d) as a necessary parallel, and maybe even precedent, to verbal orthodoxy (\u201ccorrect teaching\u201d) and not an optional add-on or a possible implication. \u201c<strong>Why aren\u2019t you doing what you say you believe?<\/strong>\u201d the prophet invariably asks.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Letting Go of Churchiness<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In the CAC online course&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/email.cac.org\/t\/d-l-vtyhtn-tlkrdrec-y\/\">The Franciscan Way<\/a>,<em>&nbsp;Richard Rohr explains several <strong>different emphases in Franciscan alternative orthodoxy: incarnation instead of redemption, cosmos instead of churchiness, poverty instead of perfection, the bottom instead of the top, the humility of God, and an emphasis on the union of humanity and divinity in Jesus instead of just his divinity. <\/strong>In response to the question \u201cWhich one of these do you think the world is most ripe for at this time?\u201d Richard replies:<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wonder if it isn\u2019t \u201ccosmos instead of churchiness.\u201d There is such a universal disillusionment with churchiness, which is the building and maintenance of churches and services. We\u2019ve overplayed the church card for much of the last thousand years. It\u2019s like the messenger overtook the message. Once we divided Christianity into Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, all of the individual churches had to prove they were the one true church. All that did was<strong> preoccupy us with the churchy conversation, while taking our eyes off the cosmos, off of what was right beneath our feet, in front of our eyes, and the very whole of which we are already a part.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We naturally participate in the universe. We have the reptilian brain, we have the mammalian brain, we have the neocortex. We have the sensate connection with the plant world and the animal world. We\u2019re just involved at every level with this entire universe around us. I\u2019m told that the <strong>atoms and molecules that existed at the Big Bang are the same atoms and molecules here right now, and all they\u2019ve done for 13.8 billion years is change form, that nothing dies.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nothing dies; it just keeps changing form. So, we have a natural foundation for what we call r<strong>esurrection that isn\u2019t a unique belief of Christianity\u2014it is in the very shape of the cosmos. <\/strong>What this leads us to is a whole new partnership with what we used to negatively dismiss as \u201cmere science.\u201d Sadly, we split the universe when we did that. We said that our form of knowledge was the only true form and all those other knowers were ignorant unbelievers. We can\u2019t do that anymore. We now know that <strong>truth is one, and we\u2019re all seeing it from different angles and at different levels<\/strong>. Just because one group uses the vocabulary at one level, and those in our group use the vocabulary at a different level, what right do we have to say our vocabulary is the only true description of the universe?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Religion is no longer a spectator sport, an observing of some distant, far-off truth, but it\u2019s an observing of what is true in me, and what is true in me is true of the cosmos. It\u2019s all one reality. Frankly <strong>this makes the job of evangelization\u2014if we want to use that Christian word\u2014much easier because we\u2019re not bringing in an extraneous message. We\u2019re simply naming&nbsp;<em>what is.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/strong><\/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\/09\/image-484x500.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-22853\" width=\"778\" height=\"804\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-484x500.png 484w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-291x300.png 291w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image-768x793.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image.png 1040w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 778px) 100vw, 778px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Alternative Orthodoxy Richard Rohr explains that Francis of Assisi (1182\u20131226)&nbsp;paid attention to different things than the Catholic Church of his time. Eventually, his prophetic witness and emphasis became an \u201calternative orthodoxy\u201d through the Franciscan tradition. Richard begins:&nbsp; In the&nbsp;Legend of Perugia,&nbsp;one of the earliest accounts of his life, Francis offers this instruction to the [&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\/22851"}],"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=22851"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22860,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22851\/revisions\/22860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}