{"id":19046,"date":"2020-07-08T09:03:14","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T13:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19046"},"modified":"2020-07-08T09:35:29","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T13:35:29","slug":"dying-before-we-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19046","title":{"rendered":"Dying Before We Die"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Wisdom in Times of Crisis<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Dying\nBefore We Die<\/strong><br>\nWednesday, \u202fJuly 8, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gYUJjsgd96k\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>CAC\nfaculty member Cynthia Bourgeault addresses a fear that motivates all of us on\nsome level\u2014the fear of death. It is a matter of true wisdom to know how to face\ndeath wisely and courageously, which is why every religion and culture since\nthe beginning of time has tried to \u201cmake sense\u201d of it in some way. From her\nhome off the coast of Maine, Cynthia shares these words, which come from the\nvery heart of the Christian tradition.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is the wisdom that matters now? For me, it\u2019s the Paschal Mystery [the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Christ]. . . . Simply, the one who would save his life or her life will lose it and the one who\u2019s willing to lose it, will save it. In all great religious traditions, this is the eye of the needle. <strong>Everything that\u2019s good, everything that\u2019s abiding, everything that\u2019s worthy, everything that\u2019s generative about a human being arises on the other side of our fear of death.<\/strong> . . . The whole tradition we\u2019ve had of \u201cdying before you die\u201d sounds like martyrdom from the outside, but what you really discover is, it\u2019s the gateway to freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus\nwithin our own Christian path not only tried to point toward what this new life\nis, but he also took us there and left us with the promise that he carries\nthis, that he takes it on. Any one of us who summons the great courage within\nus to gird up our loins and die before we die are not left unaccompanied. It\u2019s\non the other edge of that that we\u2019re really set free to courage, to compassion,\nand to generosity\u2014this is where the Paschal Mystery begins to come in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nvalues that are called the fruits of the Spirit by St. Paul\u2014gentleness and\npeace and forbearance, compassion, love, joy\u2014these are alchemical products that\ngrow on the other side of the human being not afraid to die. We can find and\ncollectively draw on those wonderful gifts. But it requires the personal\nwillingness (as the old monks in the desert said), to \u201csit in your cell and\nponder the hour of your death\u201d until you\u2019ve really worked through your system\nwhat this promise means: \u201cWhether we live or die, we are the Lord\u2019s\u201d [Romans\n14:8]. . . . With that, having moved from something nice you recite on Sundays\nto something you know in the marrow of your bones, then you walk into the\nplanet as a vessel of love and nothing can touch you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To the extent\nthat we live our life from the heart now with utter integrity, death proves to\nbe no interruption to identity. . . . Who we are is held in the love of God\nfrom before time; and as we lean into that now in life and taste it, we\u2019ll be\nprepared to really see death as the fullness of being and not as the lessening\nof it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wisdom in Times of Crisis Dying Before We Die Wednesday, \u202fJuly 8, 2020 CAC faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault addresses a fear that motivates all of us on some level\u2014the fear of death. It is a matter of true wisdom to know how to face death wisely and courageously, which is why every religion and culture [&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\/19046"}],"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=19046"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19048,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19046\/revisions\/19048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}