{"id":23527,"date":"2024-03-19T08:51:01","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T12:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23527"},"modified":"2024-03-19T09:14:08","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T13:14:08","slug":"23527","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23527","title":{"rendered":"The Mystics Who Surround Us"},"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=\"Kansas - The Wall - with lyrics\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sPDDyx-L3fw?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\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Dr. Barbara Holmes continues to share her experiences with everyday mysticism.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What was it like growing up as an ordinary mystic? <strong>Dreams and visions were shared, discussed, and interpreted. Ancestors and elders communicated with us<\/strong> from the life after life. They issued warnings, blessings, and updates. It <strong>took a while for me to realize that what I considered normal was considered weird by everybody else.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite this history and my acquaintance with biblical mystery, I tried to subdue the mysticism in me as I entered the academic world. I remember creating the longest, most boring PowerPoint ever on the subject of mysticism when I first started teaching. I used words like \u201cnoetic\u201d and \u201cineffable.\u201d Of course, my students went into an academic stupor, and I wondered why they didn\u2019t get it. Instead, I should have wondered why I was hiding in plain sight. The students already knew that something was different about my process and background, and they sought me out to tell me their stories.\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know about everyday mystics because they were in my house, in my family, at the corner store, and hugging me at church.\u2026 <strong>They mediated the realms of life and the life after life. They were amazing, and they were a little bit scary, too<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The everyday mystics I grew up with had knapsacks full of spiritual gifts. They could conjure in the kitchen, offer blessed assurance, and braid hair. An aunt or a grandma could shake the dirt from a bunch of beets and transform it into a dish that took you to heaven, even when you don\u2019t like beets. The elders knew how to cure you of your ailments\u2026. The mystics I knew could get a prayer through. They could birth babies and they could bring you messages from the other side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Holmes looks for the Divine Presence in all of life.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hear mystery in drumming, in singing bowls, rattles, and in basic hymns, but that\u2019s not the only place mysticism is found. Sacred texts of all faiths contain stories of wondrous happenings. In the Christian tradition we\u2019ve got virgin births, burning bushes not consumed, waters parting, healing, and prophetic leadership. Yet some Christians are nervous as to whether miracles are tied to faith! Miracles and mysteries can be extraordinary. They can be experienced by the entire community or as a vision or a dream for an individual. <strong>Today, we are not looking for colossal mysteries like the parting of the seas. We just want to tap into, or at least recognize, everyday mysticism.<\/strong> Our ancestors hosted this type of mysticism for ages, and we didn\u2019t lose our connection to those many sources of wisdom until more recent generations when we decided that scientific verification and proof would be the only criteria by which we decide between reality and delusion. But <strong>we can make better decisions now. We can acknowledge the continued value of science as we explore our worlds and while we continue our dance with the mysteries of life.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Transactional vs. Devotional<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"auto\" height=\"15\" src=\"https:\/\/mcusercontent.com\/87188c8737bc50c1a2fb8e2c9\/images\/b66516eb-1f2d-8d90-0e02-d4223f78f6f7.png\">After being miraculously healed of his leprosy, Naaman offers Elisha a lavish gift of gold, silver, and expensive clothing which the prophet utterly rejects despite Naaman\u2019s urging. When we read these verses with our modern, Western eyes, we assume Naaman was offering a generous gift out of gratitude, and that Elisha was refusing it out of humble piety. It all appears very polite and gentlemanly. Read these verses through ancient Near Eastern eyes, however, and a different story emerges.Once again, it\u2019s important to understand how idolatry and pagan religion worked in the ancient world. <br><br>Only then can we see what religious assumptions Naaman practiced in Syria and carried with him as he sought healing from the God of Israel. Having been deeply shaped by Christian religious values for 2,000 years, even non-Christians in our culture think of religion in terms of devotion to God and expressive worship. Simply put, for many modern people religion is deeply emotional. That was not the case for pre-Christian, non-Israelite pagan cultures. Bible scholar Nijay Gupta describes ancient pagan religion this way: \u201cReligion was not about love or friendship with the gods; it was about maintaining a healthy circle of reciprocity\u2026 The gods didn\u2019t want devotion\u2026They wanted compliance and homage rendered in ways that were orderly and ritualized, practical and predictable.\u201dGupta also compares pagan religion to the mafia. Just as a mob boss expected the neighborhood to pay him both money and respect in exchange for his protection, pagan deities were appeased in a similar fashion.<br><br> No one liked the gods, and they certainly did not love them. The gods were to be feared and respected, and if you honored them correctly hopefully they\u2019d keep their side of the agreement. Consider a vending machine. Receiving your Doritos has nothing to do with your feelings toward the machine. All that matters is inserting enough money and pushing the right buttons in the correct order. It\u2019s mechanical, not emotional. Likewise, paganism was fundamentally transactional rather than devotional.<br><br>Contrast this with Israel\u2019s God who describes himself as \u201ccompassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness\u201d (Exodus 34:7), and whose greatest commandment to his people was to, \u201cLove the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength\u201d (Deuteronomy 6:5). For the God of Israel, worship was not about appeasement, mechanics, or payment. It was about the heart. The very different values that animated pagan and Israelite worship help us see the subtext of Naaman\u2019s interaction with Elisha.<strong>Naaman\u2019s extravagant offering of gold, silver, and clothing was intended as a payment to Israel\u2019s God for his healing. <\/strong>As God\u2019s representative, Naaman assumed Elisha would accept it as the proper and necessary reciprocity. Therefore, it was not genuinely a free gift offered by a heart overflowing with gratitude, but a payment understood to be obligatory for God\u2019s blessing. I\u2019m not saying Naaman was not thankful for his healing, only that his offering was not given for that reason. Just like we are thankful when a doctor heals our chronic back pain, but gratitude is not why we pay the bill. That part is simply expected.And this explains Elisha\u2019s refusal to accept Naaman\u2019s gift. If he had taken the money, Naaman would have returned to Syria assuming Israel\u2019s God was just like all the others\u2014more powerful perhaps, but essentially the same; a divine vending machine or a malcontent mob boss demanding cash and respect. <strong>By rejecting any payment, Elisha forced Naaman into a religious crisis. He was provoking a revolution in Naaman\u2019s thinking as he grappled with what it meant to encounter a God who operated like no other; a God who graciously healed foreigners without expecting or demanding anything in return.<\/strong><br><br>DAILY SCRIPTURE<br><a href=\"https:\/\/withgoddaily.us2.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=87188c8737bc50c1a2fb8e2c9&amp;id=2a379ba18e&amp;e=f52fc38132\">ACTS 8:14-23\u00a0<br>2 KINGS 5:1-27<\/a><br><br>WEEKLY PRAYER  Ignatius of Loyola (1491 &#8211; 1556)<br><br>Take, Lord, and receive all my freedom, my memory, my intelligence and my will\u2014all that i have and possess. You, Lord, have given those things to me. I now give them back to you, Lord. All belongs to you. Dispose of these gifts according to your will. I ask only for your love and your grace, for they are enough for me.<br>Amen.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Barbara Holmes continues to share her experiences with everyday mysticism. What was it like growing up as an ordinary mystic? Dreams and visions were shared, discussed, and interpreted. Ancestors and elders communicated with us from the life after life. They issued warnings, blessings, and updates. It took a while for me to realize that [&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\/23527"}],"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=23527"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23532,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23527\/revisions\/23532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}