{"id":23802,"date":"2024-06-04T10:50:25","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T14:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23802"},"modified":"2024-06-04T11:06:44","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T15:06:44","slug":"23802","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23802","title":{"rendered":"Sitting in Silence"},"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=\"Jason Gray - Remind Me Who I Am (Official Music Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QSIVjjY8Ou8?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<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Sit down alone and in silence.&nbsp;<br>\u2014St. Symeon the New Theologian&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In&nbsp;<\/em>Turning to the Mystics,&nbsp;<em>CAC teacher James Finley focuses on the instructions of St. Symeon the New Theologian&nbsp;<\/em>(d. 1022)&nbsp;<em>for praying the Jesus Prayer:&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First, St. Symeon says, \u201cSit down.\u201d The prayer is in our bodily presence sitting in the presence of God. Sensing that we cannot settle into the prayer if we keep fidgeting, we discover that in learning to sit still, we can <strong>learn to be still. In this way, we are graced with an experiential understanding of God revealing to us in the Psalms, \u201cBe still and know that I am God\u201d<\/strong> (Psalm 46:10). When you\u2019re sitting this way, it\u2019s like the still point of the turning world is this deep axis of your own body.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Next, St. Symeon urges us \u201cto sit down alone.\u201d We\u2019re alone in a mystical sense: God alone is God, and &#8230; you alone are you\u2026. It isn\u2019t that each of us\u00a0<em>has\u00a0<\/em>a relationship with God, it\u2019s that <strong>each of us\u00a0<em>is<\/em>\u00a0an utterly unique relationship with God<\/strong>. We\u2019re trying to <strong>awaken and surrender to that aloneness in which we are all\u2014living and dead\u2014alone together as siblings in this love in whom we\u2019re one and subsist as one. We start to see all people with love, because everybody is walking around created by God in the image of God.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>St. Symeon also says, \u201cSit down alone, and&nbsp;<em>in silence<\/em>.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>In silence we are learning how to listen.<\/strong> If we\u2019re not silent, we can\u2019t listen, and it\u2019s in listening that we can learn to hear. This ties into a mystical understanding of creation. In God\u2019s \u201cLet it be,\u201d God is speaking all things into being: \u201cLet there be light, let there be stones, and trees, and stars.\u201d It isn\u2019t as if God speaks everything into being and then goes off to leave the universe to run on its own. Rather, creation is absolute and perpetual. <strong>Right now, we\u2019re being created by God in this self-donating act by which God is giving God\u2019s very presence to us in our nothingness without God. <\/strong>Our body embodies the presence of God in our nothingness without God. <strong>God is speaking all things into being right now, and if God would cease this speaking, we\u2019d all disappear.<\/strong> So we\u2019re trying to become so silent that we can hear God speaking us into being. How can I become so silent that I can hear God speaking the sun into being as it moves across the sky, over the trees and fields rendered sacred in being created by God in their nothingness without God? And so the silence of our prayer embodies the deep, vast silence in which we learn from God how to listen to the living word of God, embodying itself as the reality of all things in their nothingness without God.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>=======================><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">The Kingdom is Not the Church<\/span><\/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\">Among causal readers of the Bible, there has been a long tradition of confusing the kingdom of God with the church. This was especially common during the <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">era of Christendom in Europe<\/span><\/strong> where the church and state powers were enmeshed, and it persists today where people assume the organizational structures of the church and the power wielded by church leaders is synonymous with God\u2019s kingdom. Unfortunately, this has led to a dangerous misreading of Jesus\u2019 parable of the wheat and the weeds.<br><br>In the story, Jesus compares \u201cthe kingdom of heaven\u201d to a man who sowed good seed in a field while his enemy secretly sowed weeds. In order to protect the wheat from being uprooted prematurely, the weeds are allowed to grow alongside the wheat until the harvest. Those who equate the kingdom with the church have understood this parable to <strong>mean that wicked, harmful people should be tolerated within the church alongside those seeking righteousness. In other words, it is not appropriate to exercise church discipline or expel anyone for any reason<\/strong>. Such actions, they say, are reserved for God alone at the final judgment.<br><br>This view, however, is a complete misreading of Jesus\u2019 parable and requires one to ignore many other passages within the New Testament\u2014and the words of Jesus himself\u2014that call upon church leaders to exercise discernment and discipline in order to protect the church from harm and guide everyone toward godliness. In its worst application, this read of the parable has been an excuse for not removing corrupt or abusive church leaders.<br><br>The story of the wheat and the weeds is\u00a0<strong><em>not<\/em>\u00a0about the church. It is about the world.<\/strong> We occupy an age in which the <strong>kingdom of God and its righteousness has taken root. It is growing and expanding. But its presence is not without resistance. Alongside God\u2019s kingdom is also the evil of the world. Until the harvest, we must expect the goodness of God\u2019s kingdom and the evil of the world to coexist in tension with each other. <\/strong>But the fact that evil persists in the world is never an excuse for the church to ignore it within its own community or to silence those who have been wounded by its agents.<br><br>DAILY SCRIPTURE<br><br><a href=\"https:\/\/withgoddaily.us2.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=87188c8737bc50c1a2fb8e2c9&amp;id=b7cf0b2da4&amp;e=f52fc38132\">MATTHEW 13:24-30<br>MATTHEW 13:36-43<br>1 CORINTHIANS 5:6-13<\/a><br><br>WEEKLY PRAYERC. Eric Lincoln (1924 &#8211; 2000)<br><br>Lord, let me love, though love may be the losing of every earthly treasure I possess.<br>Lord, make your love the pattern of my choosing. And let your will dictate my happiness.<br>I have no wish to wield the sword of power, and I want no man to leap at my command; nor let my critics feel constrained to cower for fear of some reprisal at my hand.<br>Lord, let me love the lowly and the humble, forgetting not the mighty and the strong; and give me grace to love those who may stumble, nor let me seek to judge of right or wrong.<br>Lord, let my parish be the world unbounded, let love of race and clan be at an end. Let every hateful doctrine be confounded that interdicts the love of friend for friend.<br>Amen.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sit down alone and in silence.&nbsp;\u2014St. Symeon the New Theologian&nbsp; In&nbsp;Turning to the Mystics,&nbsp;CAC teacher James Finley focuses on the instructions of St. Symeon the New Theologian&nbsp;(d. 1022)&nbsp;for praying the Jesus Prayer:&nbsp;&nbsp; First, St. Symeon says, \u201cSit down.\u201d The prayer is in our bodily presence sitting in the presence of God. Sensing that we cannot [&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\/23802"}],"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=23802"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23807,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23802\/revisions\/23807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}