{"id":18731,"date":"2020-04-13T09:20:05","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T13:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18731"},"modified":"2020-04-13T09:41:16","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T13:41:16","slug":"the-universal-pattern-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18731","title":{"rendered":"The Universal Pattern"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rPEfoTLIXJw\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Death Transformed<\/strong><br>Sunday, \u202fApril 12, 2020<br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Rise up]&nbsp;O sleeper, awake!&nbsp;<br>Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>Rise up, work&nbsp;of my hands, for you were created in my image.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>Rise,&nbsp;let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you.&nbsp;<br>Together&nbsp;. . .&nbsp;we cannot be separated!<\/em>&nbsp;[1]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I believe the Christian faith is saying that&nbsp;<em>the<\/em>&nbsp;pattern of transformation is always&nbsp;<em>death transformed, not death avoided<\/em>.&nbsp;The universal spiritual pattern is death&nbsp;<em>and<\/em>&nbsp;resurrection, or loss&nbsp;<em>and<\/em>&nbsp;renewal, if you prefer. That is always a disappointment to humans, because we want one without the other\u2014transformation&nbsp;without&nbsp;cost&nbsp;or surrender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We ordinarily learn to submit and surrender to this scary pattern&nbsp;only when&nbsp;reality demands it of us,&nbsp;as&nbsp;it&nbsp;is doing now.&nbsp;Christians are helped by the fact that Jesus literally submitted to it and came out more than okay.&nbsp;Jesus&nbsp;is our guide, the \u201cpioneer and perfecter of our faith,\u201d as the Letter to the Hebrews puts it (12:2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Each time we surrender, each time we trust the dying, we are led to a deeper level. We are grounded for a while, like an electric wire, so there is less resistance and more available energy to trust it the next time. Yet it is still invariably a leap of faith, a walk through some degree of darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is something essential that we only&nbsp;know by dying. We really don\u2019t know what life is until we know what death is. Divine Life is so big, so deep, and so indestructible, that it is able to include death.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In her March Newsletter from&nbsp;The Omega Center, entitled \u201cHope in a Time of Crisis,\u201d Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia&nbsp;Delio&nbsp;wrote:&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>Christianity can help us realize that death and resurrection are part of the\u00a0evolutionary path toward wholeness; letting go of isolated existence for the sake of deeper union. Something dies but something new is born\u2014which is why the chaos of our times is, in a strange way, a sign of hope; something new is being born within.\u00a0Out of chaos, a star is born.<strong> Breakdown can be break through if we recognize a new pattern of life struggling to emerge.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>We may find Ilia\u2019s words challenging but I hope we also find them encouraging\u2014reminding us to look for new signs of life and new ways of being, today and in the days&nbsp;to come.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The \u201cBackside\u201d of God&nbsp;<\/strong><br>Monday, \u202fApril 13, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I feel a deep solidarity with individuals throughout the world who are wrestling with health issues. In 2016, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent a complete prostatectomy. The wisdom lessons that God offered me before, during, and after the surgery were pretty much constant. The experiences were initially disempowering, sometimes scary in their immediacy, and only in hindsight were they in any way empowering. Prayer was both constant and impossible for much of this period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About ten days after the surgery, during my attempt at some spiritual reading, I opened the Bible to an obscure passage in the Book of Exodus. Moses asks YHWH to \u201cShow me your glory\u201d (33:18), and YHWH shows it in a most unusual way: \u201cI shall place you in the cleft of the rock and shield you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I shall take my hand away, and you will see my backside, but my face will not be seen\u201d (33:22\u201323). In several sermons, I have used that verse to teach that our knowledge of God is indirect at best, and none of our knowledge is fully face-to-face. God is always and forever Mystery. All we see is the \u201cbackside\u201d of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During that time, it was not the indirectness that hit me in this passage, but the\u00a0<em>directness<\/em>! My<strong> best spiritual knowing almost always occurs after the fact, in the remembering<\/strong>\u2014not seen \u201cuntil God has passed by.\u201d I realized that in the moments of diagnosis, doctor\u2019s warnings, waiting, delays, and the surgery itself, I was as fragile, scared, and insecure as anybody would be. <strong>If I could stay with\u00a0<\/strong><em><strong>the full narrative<\/strong><\/em><strong>\u00a0all the way into and through, only afterward could I invariably see, trust, and enjoy the wonderful works of God <\/strong>(<em>mirabilia Dei<\/em>).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The foundation of faith is the ability to look at our entire salvation history and\u00a0<em>then trust that this pattern would never\u2014could never\u2014change<\/em>! It is largely a<em>fter the fact<\/em>\u00a0that faith is formed\u2014and gloriously transmuted into hope for the future. <strong>Only\u00a0<\/strong><em><strong>after<\/strong><\/em><strong>\u00a0the fact can you see that you were being held and led\u00a0<\/strong><em><strong>during<\/strong><\/em><strong>the fact<\/strong>. During the fact, you do not enjoy or trust your own strength at all, in fact, quite the opposite. You just cry out in various ways. Then God, for some wonderful reason, is able to fill the gap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Death TransformedSunday, \u202fApril 12, 2020 [Rise up]&nbsp;O sleeper, awake!&nbsp;Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.&nbsp;&nbsp;Rise up, work&nbsp;of my hands, for you were created in my image.&nbsp;&nbsp;Rise,&nbsp;let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you.&nbsp;Together&nbsp;. . .&nbsp;we cannot be separated!&nbsp;[1]&nbsp; I believe the Christian faith [&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\/18731"}],"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=18731"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18740,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18731\/revisions\/18740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}