{"id":20502,"date":"2021-09-20T10:47:18","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T14:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=20502"},"modified":"2021-09-20T10:47:18","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T14:47:18","slug":"20502","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=20502","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hzCUPLfory8\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Money and Soul<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In this week\u2019s meditations, we are delighted to share some of Fr. Richard Rohr\u2019s unpublished notes about money. As a Franciscan dedicated to simple living and the Gospel call to solidarity with the marginalized, Richard sees an opportunity for each of us to rediscover a \u201csoulful\u201d relationship with money.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m convinced that money and soul are united on a deep level. This truth is reappearing from the deep stream of wisdom traditions after centuries of almost total splitting and separation at the conscious level. [1] There is&nbsp;<em>un<\/em>&nbsp;<em>r\u00edo profundo,&nbsp;<\/em>a river beneath the river. The upper stream has always been money in all its forms, beginning with trading and bartering. The deeper stream is the spiritual meaning such exchanges must have for our lives. Money and soul have never been separate in our unconscious because they are both about human exchanges, and therefore, divine exchange, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Notice how much religion uses the language of commerce, such as gaining heaven, acquiring merit, doing penance, earning salvation, losing one\u2019s soul, and&nbsp;deserving hell. Of course, there is also the notion of \u201cpenal substitutionary atonement\u201d itself, with Jesus \u201cpaying the debt\u201d for our sins. On the other side, commerce uses the metaphors of religion far more than it realizes: we purchase bonds and trusts, enter into covenants, forgive debts, are granted grace periods for repayment, enjoy indemnity, reconcile accounts, and redeem coupons!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From my perspective, when money and soul are separated, religion is the major loser. Without a vision of wholeness that puts money in its soulful place, religion \u201csells out.\u201d Religion allowed itself to lose the only ground on which awe and transcendence stand\u2014the foundation of totally gratuitous and \u201camazing grace.\u201d We traded it for a \u201cmess of pottage\u201d (see Genesis 25:27\u201334), a secretly enthroned ego that only knows how to count, weigh, measure, dole out, judge, label, earn, expel, and compete. No wonder Jesus\u2019 direct action in the Temple that exposed the idolatrous game got him killed within a week! All four Gospels in some form speak of \u201cturning over the tables\u201d of buying and selling. [2] Even with this forceful gospel teaching, our faith became transactional<em>&nbsp;<\/em>instead of transformational, calculating instead of consoling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Lynne Twist, founder of the Soul of Money Institute, understands the impact that our culture\u2019s disintegrated view of money has made and invites us to the spiritual practice of bringing the two\u2014money and our souls\u2014together in our lives:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>In a world that seems to revolve around money, it is vital that we deepen our relationship with our soul and bring it to bear on our relationship with money. In that merger and that commitment, we can create a new and profound spiritual practice. We can have our money culture both balanced and nourished by soul. Our relationship with money can become a place where, day in and day out, we can engage in this meaningful spiritual practice. [3]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">We Cannot Serve Two Masters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Fr. Richard continues his reflections on money by considering one of Jesus\u2019 most challenging statements.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many of us, myself included, have a confused, guilt-ridden, obsessive attitude about money. There\u2019s hardly anybody who can think in a clear-headed way about it. At the end of Luke\u2019s parable of the so-called dishonest steward, Jesus creates a clear dualism between God and wealth, or what he calls \u201cmammon\u201d:\u00a0<em>\u201cYou cannot serve God and mammon\u201d<\/em>\u00a0(Luke 16:13). Mammon was the god of wealth, money, superficiality, and success. Jesus says, in effect, \u201cYou\u2019ve finally got to make a choice.\u201d Most of Jesus\u2019 teaching is what I call nondual\u2014a theme I often teach\u2014<strong>but there are a few areas where he\u2019s absolutely dualistic (either-or), and it\u2019s usually anything having to do with power and anything having to do with money.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus is absolute about money and power because he knows what we\u2019re going to do. Most of us will serve this god called mammon. Luke\u2019s Gospel even describes mammon as a type of illness, as Jesuit John Haughey (1930\u20132019) explained: \u201cMammon is not simply a neutral term in Luke. It is not simply money. It connotes disorder. . . . Mammon becomes then a source of disorder because people allow it to make a claim on them that only God can make.\u201d [1] \u201cMammon illness\u201d takes over when we think all of life is counting, weighing, measuring, and deserving. We go to places that have sales, so that we don\u2019t have to give as much to get the same thing. My mother spent much of her time cutting coupons to save ten cents. It was good and even necessary for a while, I guess, but it\u2019s very hard to get rid of that fixation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>To participate in the reign of God, we have to stop counting.<\/em>&nbsp;We have to stop weighing, measuring, and deserving in order to let the flow of forgiveness and love flow through us. The love of God can\u2019t be doled out by any process whatsoever. We can\u2019t earn it. We can\u2019t lose it. As long as we stay in this world of earning and losing, we\u2019ll live in perpetual resentment, envy, or climbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Religion cannot work from a calculator without losing its very method, mind, foundation, and source. Surely this is what Jesus meant by his statement in Luke\u2019s Gospel. Perhaps if we say it a bit differently, we can all get the point: \u201cYou cannot move around inside the world of Infinite Grace and Mercy, and at the same time be counting and measuring with your overly defensive and finite little mind.\u201d It would be like asking an ant to map the galaxies. St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux (1873\u20131897) put it much more directly to a nun worried about God keeping track of her many failings: \u201cThere is a science about which [God] knows nothing\u2014addition!\u201d [2] The reign of God is a worldview of abundance. God lifts us up from a worldview of scarcity to infinity. Remember every part of infinity is still infinite! God\u2019s love is nothing less than infinite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"349\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/image-7-500x349.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-20503\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/image-7-500x349.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/image-7-300x209.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/image-7-768x535.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/image-7.png 1836w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Money and Soul In this week\u2019s meditations, we are delighted to share some of Fr. Richard Rohr\u2019s unpublished notes about money. As a Franciscan dedicated to simple living and the Gospel call to solidarity with the marginalized, Richard sees an opportunity for each of us to rediscover a \u201csoulful\u201d relationship with money.&nbsp; I\u2019m convinced that [&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\/20502"}],"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=20502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20504,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20502\/revisions\/20504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}