{"id":7242,"date":"2015-01-08T17:47:27","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T17:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=7242"},"modified":"2015-01-08T17:48:12","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T17:48:12","slug":"everyday-life-as-sacrament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=7242","title":{"rendered":"EVERYDAY LIFE AS SACRAMENT"},"content":{"rendered":"

EVERYDAY LIFE AS SACRAMENT<\/strong>
\nwww.ronrolheiser.com.<\/a><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

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For Christians, ultimately the whole world is holy and everything in it, especially the physical, is potential material for sacrament. Our belief is that the universe shows forth God\u2019s glory, that each of us is made in God\u2019s image, that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, that the food we eat is sacramental, and that in our work and in our sexual embrace we are co-creators with God.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a stunning belief, and it separates us from most other religions, where so much of the purpose of religion is to free oneself from the physical, the earth. But in Christianity \u201cthe word becomes flesh\u201d, God enters into the physical and thus everything that is physical is potentially sacramental. It\u2019s noteworthy that scripture, in that famous line about God becoming flesh does not simply say that God became a man, a human being. It says more: \u201cGod becomes flesh\u201d, physical, earth. Therefore everything physical is potentially a sacrament.<\/p>\n

But we struggle with this. Our daily lives are often so distracted, dram, and fixed upon things that seem un-holy that the idea that everything is a sacrament can appear more like wishful thinking than theology. The world doesn\u2019t always show forth the glory of God, what we do with our bodies at times makes us wonder whether we really are temples of the Holy Spirit, the mindless way that we so often eat and drink doesn\u2019t speak much of sacramentality, and the language we use to speak about our work, sex, and our lives in general rarely hints at the fact that we are co-creators with God.<\/p>\n

Why? Why aren\u2019t we more habitually alert to the fact that we are standing on holy ground and that are everyday activities come laden with sacrament?<\/p>\n

There are many reasons, mostly rooted in the fact that we are human, that life is long, and that it isn\u2019t easy to sustain high symbols, high language, and high ideals in the muck and grime of everyday life. Eating, working, and making love should be holy, but too often we do them more for survival than for any sacramentality and \u201cgetting by\u201d is about as a high symbol as we can muster on a weekday. I say this with sympathy. It isn\u2019t easy, day by day, hour by hour, to experience sacrament in the ordinary actions of our lives.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s another reason why we have lost the sense of sacramentality in our lives, namely, we have too little prayer and ritual around our ordinary actions. We too seldom use prayer or ritual to connect our actions \u2013 eating, drinking, working, socializing, making love, giving birth to things \u2013 to their sacred origins. For example:<\/p>\n

Among the Osage Indians, there\u2019s a custom when a child is born, before it is allowed to drink from its mother\u2019s breast, that a holy person, someone \u201cwho has talked to the gods\u201d, is brought into the room. This person recites to the newborn the story of the creation of the world and of terrestrial animals. Not until this has been done is the baby given the mother\u2019s breast. Later, when the child is old enough to drink water, the same holy person is brought back, this time to tell the story of creation and the sacred origins of water. Only after hearing this story is the child given water. Then, when the child is old enough to take solid foods, \u201cthe person who talked to the gods\u201d is brought in again and this time ,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EVERYDAY LIFE AS SACRAMENT www.ronrolheiser.com. For Christians, ultimately the whole world is holy and everything in it, especially the physical, is potential material for sacrament. Our belief is that the universe shows forth God\u2019s glory, that each of us is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fr-ron-rolheiser-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7242"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7244,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7242\/revisions\/7244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}