{"id":16443,"date":"2018-02-14T09:55:45","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T14:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16443"},"modified":"2018-02-14T09:55:45","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T14:55:45","slug":"the-great-nest-of-being","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16443","title":{"rendered":"The Great Nest of Being"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jlHqG00xCLA\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Great Nest of Being<\/strong><br \/>\nWednesday, February 14, 2018<br \/>\nAsh Wednesday<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cCatholic synthesis\u201d of the early Middle Ages had its limitations, but at its best it held together one coherent world. It was a positive intellectual vision that was not defined by opposition or enemies, but by the clarity and beauty of form. Such coherence is visible architecturally in the European cathedrals in Salisbury, Cologne, Orvieto, and V\u00e9zelay. This synthesis was a cosmic egg of meaning, a vision of Creator and a multitude of creatures that excluded nothing.<br \/>\nThe Great Chain of Being (or The Great Nest of Being, as I prefer to call it, to give an image that doesn\u2019t depend on higher and lower but simply ever greater capacity to include) is a holistic metaphor for the new seeing offered us by the Incarnation: Jesus as the living icon of integration, \u201cthe coincidence of opposites\u201d who \u201cholds all things in unity\u201d within himself (Colossians 1:15-20). God is One. God is whole, and everything in creation\u2014from minerals, stones, plants, animals, people, planets, and angels\u2014can be seen as a holon (a part that mimics, replicates, and somehow includes the whole).<br \/>\nSadly, the Catholic synthesis seldom moved beyond philosophers\u2019 books and mystics\u2019 prayers and some architecture, art, and music. Most Christians remained in a fragmented and dualistic world, usually looking for the contaminating element to punish or the unworthy member to expel. While still daring to worship the cosmic Scapegoat\u2014Jesus\u2014we scapegoated the other links in the great chain We have been unwilling to see the Divine Image in those we judged to be inferior or unworthy: so-called sinners and heretics, women, LGBTQ individuals, people from other races and ethnicities, the poor, those with disabilities, animals, non-Christians, and the Earth itself.<br \/>\nOnce the great chain (each level protected and held by its inherent connection to the previous link) was broken or disbelieved, we were soon unable to see the Divine Image in our own species either, except for those who look and think just like us. We were all on our own! The dominant view\u2014\u201cpatriarchy\u201d (usually white, educated, or land-owning men)\u2014formed the mentality of most \u201cdeveloped\u201d cultures. It becomes a contest, of sorts, and the patriarchs (in whatever form) decide who is worthy, who is holy, and who is not. Then the strangely named Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and modern secularism denied the heavenly and divine links altogether\u2014an attitude unknown in human history until recently. The coherence fell utterly apart, and this is the disenchanted world you and I live in today. It is hard to trust our own holiness if we are cut off from the Source.<br \/>\nAs the medieval teachers predicted, once the Great Chain of Being is broken or denied, and any one link is not honored and included, the whole cosmic vision collapses. It seems that either we acknowledge that God is in all things or we lose the basis for seeing God in anything, including ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>============================<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Discipline of Hearing<\/strong><br \/>\nBy Oswald Chambers<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. \u2014Matthew 10:27<\/strong><\/em><br \/>\nSometimes God puts us through the experience and discipline of darkness to teach us to hear and obey Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and God puts us into \u201cthe shadow of His hand\u201d until we learn to hear Him (Isaiah 49:2). \u201cWhatever I tell you in the dark\u2026\u201d \u2014 pay attention when God puts you into darkness, and keep your mouth closed while you are there. Are you in the dark right now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? If so, then remain quiet. If you open your mouth in the dark, you will speak while in the wrong mood\u2014 darkness is the time to listen. Don\u2019t talk to other people about it; don\u2019t read books to find out the reason for the darkness; just listen and obey. If you talk to other people, you cannot hear what God is saying. When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else once you are back in the light.<br \/>\nAfter every time of darkness, we should experience a mixture of delight and humiliation. If there is only delight, I question whether we have really heard God at all. We should experience delight for having heard God speak, but mostly humiliation for having taken so long to hear Him! Then we will exclaim, \u201cHow slow I have been to listen and understand what God has been telling me!\u201d And yet God has been saying it for days and even weeks. But once you hear Him, He gives you the gift of humiliation, which brings a softness of heart\u2014 a gift that will always cause you to listen to God now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Great Nest of Being Wednesday, February 14, 2018 Ash Wednesday The \u201cCatholic synthesis\u201d of the early Middle Ages had its limitations, but at its best it held together one coherent world. It was a positive intellectual vision that was not defined by opposition or enemies, but by the clarity and beauty of form. Such [&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":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16444,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16443\/revisions\/16444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}