{"id":19009,"date":"2020-06-26T09:12:50","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T13:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19009"},"modified":"2020-06-26T10:00:27","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T14:00:27","slug":"a-communion-of-subjects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19009","title":{"rendered":"A Communion of Subjects"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Cosmology and Nature<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/a-communion-of-subjects-2020-06-26\/\"><strong>A Communion of Subjects<\/strong><\/a><br><strong>Friday, June 26, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/V4bB7BUxBbY\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>Acknowledging the intrinsic value, beauty, and even soul of creation, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western Christians. In fact, many in the past often dismissed such thinking as animism or paganism. We limited God\u2019s love and salvation to our own human species and, then, in this theology of scarcity, we did not even have enough love left to cover all of humanity! To be honest, God ended up looking quite stingy and inept\u2014hardly \u201cvictorious,\u201d as our Easter hymns claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The word&nbsp;<em>profane<\/em>&nbsp;comes from the Latin words&nbsp;<em>pro<\/em>, meaning \u201cin front of,\u201d and&nbsp;<em>fanum<\/em>, meaning \u201ctemple.\u201d We thought we lived \u201coutside the temple.\u201d Without a nature-based spirituality, it was a profane universe, bereft of Spirit. We had to keep building shrines and churches to capture and hold our now domesticated and tamed God. Soon we did not know where to look for the divine, as we made God\u2019s presence so limited. We became like fish swimming around looking for water, and often arguing about who owned the water!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m not saying that God&nbsp;<em>is<\/em>&nbsp;all things or that all things are God (pantheism). I am saying that each living thing reveals some aspect of God. God is greater than the whole of our universe, and as Creator inter-penetrates all created things (pan<em>en<\/em>theism).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When God manifests spirit through matter, then matter becomes a holy thing. The material world is the place where we can comfortably worship God just by walking on it, loving it, and respecting it. Everything visible, without exception, is the outpouring of God. What else could it really be? The incarnation is not only \u201cGod becoming Jesus.\u201d It is a much broader event, which is why John\u2019s Gospel first describes God\u2019s presence in the general word \u201cflesh\u201d (John 1:14). This is the ubiquitous Christ that we continue to encounter in other human beings, in a mountain, a blade of grass, a spider web, or a starling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we can enjoy all these things as holy,&nbsp;<em>\u201cthe world becomes a communion of subjects more than a collection of objects\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;as the \u201cgeologian\u201d Fr. Thomas Berry (1914\u20132009) said so wisely. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we love something, we grant it soul, we see its soul, and we let its soul touch ours. We must love something deeply to know its soul (<em>anima<\/em>). Before the resonance of love, we are largely blind to the meaning, value, and power of ordinary things to \u201csave\u201d us and help us live in union with the source of all being. In fact, until we can appreciate and even delight in the soul of other things, even trees and animals, we probably haven\u2019t discovered our own souls either. Soul knows soul through love, which is why it\u2019s the great commandment (Matthew 22:36).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"340\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-26-at-9.59.29-AM-500x340.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19012\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-26-at-9.59.29-AM-500x340.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-26-at-9.59.29-AM-300x204.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-26-at-9.59.29-AM-768x523.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-26-at-9.59.29-AM.png 1972w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cosmology and Nature A Communion of SubjectsFriday, June 26, 2020 Acknowledging the intrinsic value, beauty, and even soul of creation, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western Christians. In fact, many in the past often dismissed such thinking as animism or paganism. We limited God\u2019s love and salvation to our [&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\/19009"}],"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=19009"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19013,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19009\/revisions\/19013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}