{"id":19205,"date":"2020-08-17T09:13:58","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T13:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19205"},"modified":"2020-08-17T09:48:57","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T13:48:57","slug":"it-must-happen-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19205","title":{"rendered":"It Must Happen to Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Order, Disorder, Reorder:<br>\nPart Two<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>It\nMust Happen to Us<\/strong><br>\nMonday, \u202fAugust 17, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-YbdaR7Plac\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>Sooner or later, if we are on any classic \u201cspiritual\nschedule,\u201d some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter our\nlives that we simply cannot deal with using our present skill set, our acquired\nknowledge, or our strong willpower. It will probably have to do with one of\nwhat I call the Big Six: love, death, suffering, sexuality, infinity, and\nGod.&nbsp; Spiritually speaking, we will be led to the edge of our own private\nresources. At that point we will stumble over a necessary stumbling stone, as\nIsaiah calls it (8:14). We will and must \u201close\u201d at something. This is the only\nway that Life\u2013Fate\u2013God\u2013Grace\u2013Mystery can get us to change, let go of our\negocentric preoccupations, and go on the further and larger journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\nis no practical or compelling reason to leave one\u2019s present comfort zone in\nlife. If it\u2019s working for us, why would we? Nor can we force ourselves into the\nsecond stage of disorder (though we must certainly be open to it). Any\nconscious attempt to engineer or plan our own enlightenment is doomed to\nfailure because it will be ego driven. We will try to \u201csucceed\u201d in the midst of\nour failure and \u201corder\u201d our time in disorder! But unexpected weaknesses,\nfailure, and humiliation force us to go where we never would otherwise. We must\nstumble and be brought to our knees by reality. \u201cGod comes to you disguised as\nyour life,\u201d as my friend Paula D\u2019Arcy wisely says. We must actually be out of\nthe driver\u2019s seat for a while, or we will never learn how to give up control to\nthe Real Guide. It is the necessary pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There must be, and if we are honest, there always will be at least <em>one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand<\/em>. Normally a job, a fortune, or a reputation has to be lost, a house has to be flooded, an illness has to be endured. Some kind of falling, what I call \u201cnecessary suffering,\u201d is programmed into the journey. By denying our pain or avoiding our necessary falling, many of us have kept ourselves from our own spiritual depths. We still want some kind of order and reason, instead of suffering life\u2019s inherent disorder and tragedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Order, Disorder, Reorder:<br>\nPart Two<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Disorder:\nStage Two of a Three-Part Journey<\/strong><br>\nSunday, \u202fAugust 16, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week\u2019s Daily Meditations focused on <em>Order<\/em>&nbsp;as the first stage\nof healthy development. To continue growing, we must go through a period\u2014or\neven many periods\u2014of <em>Disorder<\/em>. The pattern of\ntransformation involves at least some measure of suffering. Part of us has to\ndie if we are ever to grow larger (John 12:24). If we\u2019re not willing to let go\nof our smaller selves, our norms, beliefs, and preferences, we won\u2019t be able to\nenter the more expansive and inclusive space of <em>Reorder<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\ninvitation from Jesus to move from one stage to another seems quite clear in\nhis frequent invitation to <em>metanoia<\/em>: to turn around or change\nour minds. I remember having problems with that myself. I thought, \u201cWhy should\nI turn around? I\u2019m baptized, confirmed, have shared the Eucharist, and am even\nordained! I\u2019m right!\u201d How foolish and yet how typical of someone in love with <em>Order<\/em>. That\u2019s precisely the stubbornness Jesus is talking\nabout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost\ninevitably, our ideally ordered universe\u2014our \u201cprivate salvation project\u201d as\nThomas Merton called it\u2014will eventually disappoint us, at least <em>if we are honest<\/em>. At some point in our lives, we will be deeply\ndisappointed by what we were originally taught, by where our choices have led\nus, or by the seemingly random tragedies that take place in all our lives.\nThere will be a death, a disease, a disruption to our normal way of thinking or\nbeing in the world. It is necessary <em>if\nany real growth is to occur.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some\nof us find this stage so uncomfortable we try to flee back to our first created\norder\u2014even if it is killing us. Others today seem to have given up and decided\nthat \u201cthere is no universal order,\u201d at least no order we will submit to. That\u2019s\nthe postmodern stance, which distrusts all grand narratives and ideologies,\nincluding often any notions of reason, a common human nature, social progress,\nuniversal human norms, absolute truth, or objective reality. Much of the chaos\nthat reigns in the American culture and government these days is the direct\nresult of such a \u201cpost-truth society.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But\npermanent residence in <em>Disorder<\/em>&nbsp;is rather tragic and certainly unhelpful. It\ntends to make people negative and cynical, and usually angry. Searching for\nsome solid ground, we can easily become quite opinionated and dogmatic about\none form of political correctness or another. While some accuse religious\npeople of being overly dogmatic, this stymied position worships disorder itself\nas though it were a dogma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can see why Christianity adopted the language of being \u201cborn again.\u201d The great traditions seem to say the first birth is not enough. We not only have to be born, but remade. The remaking of the soul and the refreshing of the eye has to be done again and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"317\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-17-at-9.48.06-AM-500x317.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19208\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-17-at-9.48.06-AM-500x317.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-17-at-9.48.06-AM-300x190.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-17-at-9.48.06-AM-768x487.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Screen-Shot-2020-08-17-at-9.48.06-AM.png 1936w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Order, Disorder, Reorder: Part Two It Must Happen to Us Monday, \u202fAugust 17, 2020 Sooner or later, if we are on any classic \u201cspiritual schedule,\u201d some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter our lives that we simply cannot deal with using our present skill set, our acquired knowledge, or our strong willpower. It [&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\/19205"}],"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=19205"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19210,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19205\/revisions\/19210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}