{"id":18343,"date":"2019-10-08T09:34:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T13:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18343"},"modified":"2019-10-08T09:34:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T13:34:00","slug":"inner-and-outer-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18343","title":{"rendered":"Inner and Outer Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Franciscan Way: Part Two<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/inner-and-outer-freedom-2019-10-08\/\"><strong>Inner and Outer Freedom<\/strong><\/a><br>\n<strong>Tuesday, October 8, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PvYCF1slbEY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>Francis and Clare of Assisi were not so much prophets by what they said as by the radical, system-critiquing way that they lived their lives. They found both their inner and outer freedom by structurally living <em>on the edge of the inside of both church and society. <\/em>Too often people seek either inner or outer freedom, but seldom do they find both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis and Clare\u2019s agenda for justice was the most foundational and undercutting of all: a very simple lifestyle outside the system of production and consumption (the real meaning of the vow of poverty) plus a conscious identification with the marginalized of society (the communion of saints pushed to its outer edge). In this position we do not \u201cdo\u201d acts of peace and justice as much as our life is <em>itself <\/em>peace and justice. We take our small and sufficient place in the great and grand scheme of God. By \u201cliving on the edge of the inside\u201d I mean building on the solid Tradition (\u201cfrom the inside\u201d) but doing it from a new and creative stance (\u201con the edge\u201d) where we cannot be coopted for purposes of security, possessions, or the illusions of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis and Clare placed themselves outside the system of not just <em>social <\/em>production and consumption, but ecclesiastical too! Francis was not a priest, nor were Franciscan men originally priests. Theirs was not a spirituality of earning or seeking worthiness, career, church status, or divine favor (which they knew they already had). They represented in their own unique way the old tradition of \u201choly fools\u201d among the desert fathers and mothers and the Eastern Church, and offered that notion to the very organized and \u201cefficient\u201d Western Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the most part, the path they offered has been ignored or not understood. Most of us prefer <em>quid pro quo <\/em>(retributive justice) to restorative justice. But those formed by the Gospels should know better. When we try to find personal and individual freedom while remaining inside structural boxes and a system of consumption, we are often unable or unwilling to critique those very structures. Whoever is paying our bills and giving us security and status determines what we can and cannot say, or even what we can or cannot think. We cannot remove the plank we are standing on. Self-serving institutions that give us our security, status, or identity are almost always considered \u201ctoo big to fail\u201d and are often beyond any honest critique. And thus corruption grows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The way of radical Christianity is simply to stay out of such systems to begin with, so they cannot control your breadth of thinking, feeling, loving, and living out universal justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Jesus and John\u2019s Gospel used the term \u201cthe world,\u201d they did not mean the earth, creation, or civilization, which Jesus clearly came to love and save (John 12:47). They were referring to idolatrous systems and institutions that are invariably self-referential and always passing away (1 Corinthians 7:31).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Franciscan Way: Part Two Inner and Outer Freedom Tuesday, October 8, 2019 Francis and Clare of Assisi were not so much prophets by what they said as by the radical, system-critiquing way that they lived their lives. They found both their inner and outer freedom by structurally living on the edge of the inside of [&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\/18343"}],"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=18343"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18344,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18343\/revisions\/18344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}