{"id":19825,"date":"2021-02-12T09:38:47","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T14:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19825"},"modified":"2021-02-12T09:38:47","modified_gmt":"2021-02-12T14:38:47","slug":"awe-and-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19825","title":{"rendered":"Awe and Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fKbbRbd2dQs\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>The spiritual journey is a constant interplay\nbetween moments of <em>awe <\/em>followed\nby a general process of <em>surrender\n<\/em>to that moment. We must first allow ourselves to be captured by the\ngoodness, truth, or beauty of something beyond and outside ourselves. Then we\nuniversalize from that moment to the goodness, truth, and beauty of the rest of\nreality, until our realization eventually ricochets back to include ourselves!\nThis is the great inner dialogue we call prayer. Yet we humans resist both the\nawe and, even more, the surrender. The ego resists the awe while the will\nresists the surrender. But both together are vital and necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The way to any universal idea is to proceed\nthrough a concrete encounter. There are a number of ways to say the same thing:\nthe one is the way to the many, the specific is the way to the spacious, the\nnow is the way to the always, the here is the way to the everywhere, the\nmaterial is the way to the spiritual, the visible is the way to the invisible.\nWhen we see contemplatively, we know that we live in a fully <em>sacramental<\/em> universe, where\neverything is a pointer and an epiphany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To let the moment teach us, we must allow\nourselves to be at least slightly <em>stunned\n<\/em>by it until it draws inward and upward, toward a subtle experience\nof wonder. We normally need a single moment of gratuitous awe to get us\nstarted\u2014and such moments are the only solid foundation for the entire religious\ninstinct and journey. <em>&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As she often does, Barbara Holmes expands and\nstrengthens my thinking. She names this moment of <em>awe<\/em> \u201cJoy Unspeakable.\u201d But awe is not always\ninspired by beauty and goodness. Truth sometimes comes in hard packages. It\ntakes both great love and great suffering to stun us and bring us to our knees.\nGod is there in all of it, using every circumstance of our life, to draw us\never more deeply into the heart of God. Barbara writes: &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are not headed toward a single goal: we are\non a pilgrimage toward the center of our hearts. It is in this place of\nprayerful repose that joy unspeakable erupts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joy\nUnspeakable<br>\nerupts when you least expect it,<br>\nwhen the burden is greatest,<br>\nwhen the hope is gone<br>\nafter bullets fly.<br>\nIt rises<br>\non the crest of impossibility,<br>\nit sways to the rhythm<br>\nof steadfast hearts,<br>\nand celebrates<br>\nwhat we cannot see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This joy beckons us not as individual\nmonastics but as a community. It is a joy that lives as comfortably in the\nshout<em> <\/em>as it does in\nsilence. It is expressed in the diversity of personal spiritual disciplines and\nliturgical rituals. This joy is our strength, and we need strength because we\nare well into the twenty-first century, and we are not healed. How shall we\nnegotiate postmodernity without inner strength?<em> <\/em>[1] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The spiritual journey is a constant interplay between moments of awe followed by a general process of surrender to that moment. We must first allow ourselves to be captured by the goodness, truth, or beauty of something beyond and outside ourselves. Then we universalize from that moment to the goodness, truth, and beauty of the [&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\/19825"}],"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=19825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19826,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19825\/revisions\/19826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}