{"id":22618,"date":"2023-07-11T10:50:32","date_gmt":"2023-07-11T14:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22618"},"modified":"2023-07-11T10:55:50","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T14:55:50","slug":"22618","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22618","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"I Have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King .Jr HD (subtitled)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vP4iY1TtS3s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">We Create Exclusion or Belonging<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Richard Rohr describes how exclusion works. Everything does&nbsp;<\/em>not&nbsp;<em>belong when people and systems project their evil elsewhere:&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If our egos are still in charge, we will find a \u201cdisposable\u201d person or group on which to project our problems. <strong>People who haven\u2019t come to at least a minimal awareness of their own shadow side will always find someone else to hate, fear, and exclude. Hatred holds a group together much more quickly and easily than love and inclusivity<\/strong>, I am sorry to say. [1]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sadly, the <strong>history of violence and the history of religion are almost the same history<\/strong>. When religion remains at an immature level, it tends to create very violent people who ensconce themselves on the side of the good, the worthy, the pure, the saved. They project all their evil somewhere else and attack it over there. [2]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Something has to be sacrificed. Blood has to be shed. <strong>Someone has to be blamed, attacked, tortured, imprisoned, or killed. <\/strong>Sacrificial systems create religions and governments of exclusion and violence. <strong>Yet Jesus taught and modeled inclusivity and forgiveness!\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>As long as we try to deal with evil by some other means than forgiveness, we will never experience the real meaning of evil and sin. <\/strong>We will keep projecting, fearing, and attacking it over there, <strong>instead of \u201cgazing\u201d on it within ourselves and weeping over it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The longer we gaze, the more we will see our own complicity\u00a0<em>in<\/em>\u00a0and profitability\u00a0<em>from<\/em>\u00a0the sin of others, even if it\u2019s the satisfaction of feeling we are on higher moral ground.<strong> Forgiveness demands three new simultaneous \u201cseeings\u201d: I must see God in the other, I must access God in myself, and I must experience God in a new way that is larger than an \u201cEnforcer.\u201d <\/strong>[3]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Author Cole Arthur Riley, creator of Black Liturgies, considers the toll that exclusion takes:&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exclusion operates by the same rule of mutuality as welcome, for it harms both the excluded and the excluder. <strong>If you are the hands of exclusion for long enough, you learn acceptance only at the hands of someone else\u2019s exile. You learn belonging as competition, not restoration. <\/strong>It is also a kind of restlessness, for the energy you expend forbidding others to walk through the door of community is only matched by the energy you expend competing to stay inside yourself. This is maybe more dangerous; <strong>no one ever perceives the doorkeeper as needing an invitation themselves.\u2026<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wonder if God feels as alienated from us as we do from [God]. Sometimes, it cracks me up to think of the stories that describe Christ just boldly inviting himself over to people\u2019s houses for dinner. Roaming around telling people to stop everything and follow him. Multiplying food, but making everyone sit down in groups to eat it. He knew how to make his own belonging. Do we? [4]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">[53] Goodness <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Father was all in all to the Son, and the Son no more thought of His own goodness than an honest man thinks of his honesty. When the good man sees goodness, he thinks of his own evil: Jesus had no evil to think of, but neither does He think of His goodness: He delights in His Father\u2019s. \u201cWhy callest thou Me good?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (p. 29). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We Create Exclusion or Belonging Richard Rohr describes how exclusion works. Everything does&nbsp;not&nbsp;belong when people and systems project their evil elsewhere:&nbsp;&nbsp; If our egos are still in charge, we will find a \u201cdisposable\u201d person or group on which to project our problems. People who haven\u2019t come to at least a minimal awareness of their own [&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\/22618"}],"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=22618"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22622,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22618\/revisions\/22622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}