{"id":26000,"date":"2025-10-19T19:40:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T23:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26000"},"modified":"2025-10-20T09:45:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T13:45:27","slug":"26000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26000","title":{"rendered":"Welcoming Change"},"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=\"Background - Lecrae (feat. C-Lite) - lyrics on screen\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xZosXYJYV8c?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<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>We are part of a living tradition of action and contemplation, people who have gone beyond the theoretical and are living out this wisdom in their daily lives. Truly, it will take a movement of such people to create a world where everything belongs.&nbsp;<br>\u2014Richard Rohr&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard Rohr shares his hope that the Holy Spirit will continue to shape the church into a living, evolving tradition:<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Christianity isn\u2019t done growing and changing.<\/strong> Jesus himself invites us to <strong>take things out of our faith-filled \u201cstorage room\u201d <\/strong>and discern what is essential, saying, \u201cEvery disciple of the kingdom is like a householder who draws out from his storage room, things\u202fboth old and new\u201d (Matthew 13:52).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We don\u2019t want the church or the Christian tradition to become an antique shop just preserving old things. We want to <strong>build on old things and allow them to be useful in different ages, vocabularies, and cultures. <\/strong> We want our faith to be ever new, so that it can speak to souls alive and in need right now! Otherwise, the faith we cherish so much stops working and it can\u2019t do its job of turning our hearts toward God and toward one another.\u202f[1]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I believe it\u2019s possible for Christianity to move toward <strong>a way of following Jesus that has much more to do with lifestyle than&nbsp;belief<em>.<\/em><\/strong><em>&nbsp;<\/em>We don\u2019t want to remain <strong>an institution focused on certain words and the writing of official documents<\/strong>. We can\u2019t remain a <strong>church obsessed with maintaining power and illusions of innocence.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is needed in Christianity today is far bigger than any mere structural rearrangement.&nbsp;<em>It\u2019s a <strong>revolutionary change in Christian consciousness itself.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/em>It\u2019s a change of mind and of heart through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. <strong>Only such a sea-change of consciousness\u2014drawing from the depths of the Great Ocean of Love\u2014will bear fruits that will last.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I believe the teaching of contemplation is absolutely key to embracing Christianity as a living tradition. If we settle for old patterns of habitual and reactionary thought, any new phenomenon that emerges will be just one more of the many reformations in Christianity that have characterized our entire history. The movement will quickly and predictably subdivide into unhelpful dualisms that pit themselves against one another like Catholic or Protestant, intellectual or emotional, feminist or patriarchal, activist or contemplative\u2014instead of the <strong>wonderful holism of Jesus,&nbsp;<em>a fully contemplative way of being active and involved in our suffering world.<\/em>&nbsp;<\/strong>We can be grateful and content to<strong> let our historic churches and denominations take care of the substructures and the superstructures of Christianity<\/strong>. Some are gifted and called to that, but most are not. Our churches have trained us, grounded us, and sent us on this radical mission. <strong>We will keep one happy foot in our mother churches, but we have something else that we must do and other places that we must also stand. We have no time to walk&nbsp;away<em>&nbsp;<\/em>from anything. We want to walk&nbsp;toward<em>&nbsp;<\/em>and&nbsp;alongside<\/strong><em>.&nbsp;<\/em>[2]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>=============================<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Contemplation Is Christianity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Director of the&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/email.cac.org\/t\/d-l-gguiud-tlkriywur-j\/\"><em>Center for Spiritual Imagination<\/em><\/a><em>&nbsp;Adam Bucko describes how practices of contemplation have evolved and enlivened the Christian faith.<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From the beginning, the Christian life was shaped by the rhythm Jesus himself modeled\u2014a life of action flowing from deep stillness. He withdrew to pray alone. He took his friends up the mountain to witness transfiguration. He sought the silence of the wilderness. Clearly, <strong>something transformative happened when Jesus stepped away, <\/strong>and those around him recognized that his outward life was rooted in his inward union with God.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the early centuries of Christianity, this pattern took on clearer shape in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. The desert mothers and fathers <strong>retreated from the cities to resist the empire\u2019s distortions of the gospel.<\/strong> After Constantine\u2019s conversion and the Church\u2019s increasing entanglement with imperial power, many felt that something essential was being lost. So, <strong>they left\u2014not to flee reality, but to seek it more deeply. <\/strong>Into caves, huts, and small communities,<strong> they went to remember, to pray, to live simply, and to wrestle with God\u2026.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What began with Jesus and took clearer shape in the desert then moved West\u2014and began to flourish in new forms. Viewed from a Western monastic perspective, the stream of contemplation flowed through the deserts of the East and eventually exploded into a variety of expressions in Europe. Of course, there are many contemplative traditions\u2014one might say as many as there are people and communities seeking to live in awareness of God\u2019s presence. While we are held by a shared tradition and a common rhythm of prayer, the way this life unfolds can take many forms. The goal has never been to crack some contemplative code or become fluent in the mechanics of prayer. <strong>It has always been to become the kind of person who lives awake to God\u2019s presence\u2014<\/strong>in a way that is rooted, communal, and yet responsive to the unique textures of our lives, cultures, and communities\u2026.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Contemplation, then, is not a separate path or a unique calling. It is Christianity itself, lived with depth and honesty.<\/strong> It is the heart of the Christian tradition, stretching from Jesus to the desert to today. And <strong>as our understanding of the human person has deepened\u2014through psychology, neuroscience, and trauma studies\u2014we are invited to add new tools, not because the tradition was wrong, but because it was formed in a different time, with less knowledge of how we carry and transmit pain. These new tools help us to heal, to stay present, and to love more freely.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the end, contemplation is <strong>not about escaping life but entering it more fully<\/strong>. It is <strong>how we listen for God in the silence\u2014and how we hear God in the cries of the poor, the groaning of creation, and the joy of being alive. It is how we remember what\u2019s good and live from that place for the sake of the world<\/strong>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>==============================<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are part of a living tradition of action and contemplation, people who have gone beyond the theoretical and are living out this wisdom in their daily lives. Truly, it will take a movement of such people to create a world where everything belongs.&nbsp;\u2014Richard Rohr&nbsp; Father Richard Rohr shares his hope that the Holy Spirit [&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\/26000"}],"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=26000"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26008,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26000\/revisions\/26008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}