{"id":18324,"date":"2019-10-03T09:35:10","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T13:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18324"},"modified":"2019-10-03T10:09:07","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T14:09:07","slug":"a-new-way-of-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18324","title":{"rendered":"A New Way of Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Franciscan Way: Part One<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/a-new-way-of-thinking-2019-10-03\/\"><strong>A New Way of Thinking<\/strong><\/a><br>\n<strong>Thursday, October 3, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/APMOR4_7Kx0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>God gave St. Francis to history in a pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war. Francis was himself a soldier, and his father was a tradesman in cloth. Francis came from the very world he was then able to critique, but he offered a positive critique of these very systems at the beginning of their now eight centuries of world dominance. Rather than fighting the systems directly and in so doing becoming a mirror image of them, Francis just did things differently. <em>The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better<\/em> (one of the Center\u2019s core principles). [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Adolf Holl put it, Francis emerged precisely when we started \u201cputting clocks into church towers.\u201d [2] When Christian leaders started counting, Francis stopped counting. He moved from the common economy of merit to the scary and wondrous economy of grace, where God does not do any counting, but only gives unreservedly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Europe began to centralize and organize everything at high levels of control and fashion, Francis, like a divine trickster, said, \u201cWho cares!\u201d When Roman Catholicism under Pope Innocent III reached the height of papal and worldly power, he said in effect, \u201cThere is another way that is much better!\u201d Exactly when we began a style of production and consumption that would eventually ravage planet earth, he decided to love the earth and live simply and barefoot upon it. Francis of Assisi is a Prime Attractor to what we really want, what we definitely need, and who we finally are. And, apparently, he did it all with a \u201cperfect joy\u201d that comes from letting go of the ego!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>We are only afraid of death as long as we do not know who we are, <\/em>but once we know ourselves objectively to be a child of God, we are already home and our inheritance is given to us ahead of time. Then we can begin living and enjoying instead of climbing, proving, or defending. Our false self, as all religions say in one way or another, must \u201cdie before we die.\u201d Only then can we sincerely say with Francis, \u201cWelcome, Sister Death\u201d which he said on this day in 1226. Those who face this first death of dying to self lose nothing that is real. And so, \u201cthe second death can do them no harm,\u201d as Francis says in his \u201cCanticle of the Creatures.\u201d [3] Death itself will only \u201ckeep opening, and opening, and opening,\u201d which is what resurrection means. [4]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of this creates a very different form and shape to our spiritual life. It is no longer elitist, separatist, or competitive, but changes our deepest imagination in the direction of simplicity. Our worldview will not normally change until we place ourselves, or <em>are placed,<\/em> in new and different lifestyle situations. Another of the Center\u2019s core principles is: <em>You do not think yourself into a new way of living, you live yourself into a new way of thinking. <\/em>Francis and Clare displaced themselves into different worlds where their hearts could imagine very different things and they had to pay attention to something other than comfort or convenience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Franciscan Way: Part One A New Way of Thinking Thursday, October 3, 2019 God gave St. Francis to history in a pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war. Francis was himself a soldier, and his father was a tradesman in cloth. Francis came from the very world [&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":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18324"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18324"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18339,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18324\/revisions\/18339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}