{"id":23615,"date":"2024-04-12T10:43:22","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T14:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23615"},"modified":"2024-04-12T10:43:22","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T14:43:22","slug":"a-true-encounter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23615","title":{"rendered":"A True Encounter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"One True God - Mark Harris - Worship Video w lyrics\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QJtPKRMmttU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, an ability to bounce back when we thought we were completely defeated, a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative transformation.<\/strong><br>\u2014Thomas Merton, He Is Risen\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Father Richard teaches that the essence of contemplative prayer is presence and love:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It\u2019s an encounter and a life stance.<\/strong> It\u2019s a way of living\u00a0in\u00a0the Presence, with awareness\u00a0of the Presence, and even enjoying the Presence. Fully contemplative people are more than aware of Divine Presence; they trust, allow, and delight in it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The contemplative secret is learning to live in the now, which is not as empty as it might appear to be or that we fear it may be. <strong>Try to realize that everything is right here, right now and God is in this moment\u202fin a non-blaming way. When we\u2019re able to experience that, taste and enjoy it, we don\u2019t need to hold on to it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because most of our moments are not tasted or in the Presence, we are never full. We create artificial fullness and want to hang on to that. <strong>But there\u2019s nothing to hold on to when we begin to taste the fullness of now. God is either in\u00a0this now\u202for God isn\u2019t at all. If the now has never been sufficient, we\u2019ll always be grasping. <\/strong>Here is a litmus test: if we\u2019re pushing ourselves and others around, we haven\u2019t yet found the secret of happiness. This moment is as full of the Divine Presence as it can be.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The present moment has no competition; it\u2019s not judged in comparison to any other. It has never happened before and will not happen again. But when I\u2019m in competition, I\u2019m not in love. I can\u2019t get to love because I\u2019m looking for a new way to dominate. <\/strong>The way we know this mind is\u00a0not\u00a0the truth is that God does not deal with us like this. Mystics, those who really pray, know this. <strong>Those who enter deeply into the great mystery do not experience a God who compares, differentiates, and judges. They experience an all-embracing receptor, a receiver who recognizes the divine image in each and every individual.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>For Jesus, prayer seems to be a matter of\u00a0waiting in love.\u202fReturning to love. Trusting that love is the deepest stream of reality. That\u2019s why prayer isn\u2019t primarily words; it\u2019s primarily an attitude, a stance. T<\/strong>hat\u2019s why Paul could say, \u201cPray always; pray unceasingly\u201d (1 Thessalonians 5:17). <strong>If we read that as requiring words, it\u2019s surely impossible. We\u2019ve got lots of other things to do. We can pray unceasingly, however, if we find the stream and know how to wade in its waters. The stream will flow through us; all we have to do is keep choosing to stay there.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>____________________________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5 For Friday: John Chaffee<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1.<br>&#8220;I have renounced spirituality to find God.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Thomas Merton, Catholic Monk and Activist<br>&nbsp;<br>Thomas Merton frequents these Friday newsletters, I know, I know.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>You can&#8217;t deny it, though, this one is still just golden. &nbsp;It is almost a Christian version of a Koan\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is not that someone &#8220;gives up faith&#8221; to find God, <strong>it is more that God is larger than our concepts, frameworks, rites, and rituals. \u00a0God is willing to be experienced within them, but at some point, we butt up against the limitations of those things.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>For me, there is a season in which it makes sense to &#8220;learn&#8221; religion, and then to &#8220;unlearn&#8221; it, to then &#8220;relearn&#8221; it in a larger, more mysterious sense. \u00a0(This might be similar to Brueggemann&#8217;s idea of &#8220;orientation, disorientation, reorientation&#8221;, which Rohr then calls &#8220;order, disorder, reorder.&#8221;)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It may be the wisdom of the Dark Night of the Soul that first formulated it, but there is a point at which we may need to &#8220;repent&#8221; of our own limiting understandings of God!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2.<br>&#8220;Individuation is the process of becoming a &#8216;person,&#8217; a fully integrated and relational being\u2026 That is to say, <strong>when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of one&#8217;s inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Sr. Ilia Delio, Franciscan Theologian<br>&nbsp;<br>This quote stopped me in my tracks. &nbsp;This week I finished reading The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole. &nbsp;It was not exactly an easy read, but it certainly connected some dots for me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The possibility that all of our external conflict is the result of externalization of internal conflict is striking. \u00a0That which we cannot handle within ourselves, we seek to eliminate outside of ourselves.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every division, every separation, every conflict, and every war is the result of an internal division, separation, conflict, or war we are dealing with. \u00a0<strong>This means that for there to be world peace that lasts, there must be the teaching of internal peace\/shalom.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The book leans heavily into the idea of the Whole and how to be properly &#8220;catholic&#8221; means to be concerned (kata) with the whole (holos) of everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3.<br>&#8220;<strong>For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>1 Corinthians 15:22<br>&nbsp;<br>Not a few.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Not some.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ALL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4.<br>&#8220;<strong>I take my cue from Jesus Christ who told me and told all of us to love each other,\u00a0clothe the naked,\u00a0feed the hungry,\u00a0and visit those in prison. If you can\u2019t do that,\u00a0you\u2019re not a believer\u2014I don\u2019t care what church you go to.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>James Baldwin, Civil Right Activist<br>\u00a0<br><strong>Any &#8220;Christianity&#8221; that does not lead toward loving one&#8217;s neighbor enough that one can&#8217;t help but do acts of compassionate justice while respecting the inherent dignity of the other\u2026 is not Christianity.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>5.<br><strong>&#8220;You&#8217;ve made a holy fool of me and I&#8217;ve thanked You ever since.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>In a Sweater, Poorly Knit by mewithoutYou<br>&nbsp;<br>I think that this singular line from mewithoutYou completely encapsulates my personal spirituality.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, an ability to bounce back when we thought we were completely defeated, a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative transformation.\u2014Thomas Merton, He Is Risen\u00a0 Father Richard teaches that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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\/23615"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23616,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23615\/revisions\/23616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}