The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers
Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox
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Exploring Nothingness: Teachings from
the Mystics, continued
There is such a thing as political nothingness and today, with a politicized SCOTUS, a supreme court nothingness.
The Supreme Court is reducing American jurisprudence to nothing.
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It is pulverizing the doctrines of church/state separation; of peaceful transfer of power; of women having rights over their own bodies (not unlike in slave times and as articulated in the 13th and 14th amendments); of gays and lesbians having the right to marry whom they love (an effort is now afoot to kill it from Clarence Thomas, the
loudest voice on the court); and defending the planet so that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” has a chance.
| PBS NewsHour's John Yang and The National Law Journal's Marcia Coyle unpack the recent SCOTUS decisions and what we’ve learned about the
court.
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Catholic monk Thomas Merton wrote that “our true self is not easy to find. It is hidden in obscurity and ‘nothingness,’ at the center where we are in direct dependence on God.” He tells us that
…one reason why our meditation never gets started is perhaps that we never make this real, serious return to the center of our own nothingness before God. …We do not begin by seeking to ‘find our heart,’ that is to sink into a deep awareness of the ground of our identity before God and in God.
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Nothingness before God. Photo by Ruel Calitis on Unsplash.
| It is interesting that Meister Eckhart sometimes calls the “spark of the soul” a nothing or
nothingness. It is hidden, it is deep, it is mysterious and often needs a powerful spark to ignite it. He also says that “God is nothing….And yet God is something.”
Feminist and naturalist Susan Griffin writes that “Nothingness spreads around us. But in this nothing we find what we did not know existed.”
Beguine Mechtild of Magdeburg tells us to “Love the nothing, flee the self.” A sort of purifying of selfhood and ego happens when we embrace the nothing.
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Meister Eckhart reminds us that
…all creatures are a mere nothing. I do not say that they are something very slight or even something, but that they are a mere nothing. All creatures have been drawn from nothingness and that is why their origin is nothingness.
This is not as esoteric as it may sound. Consider this meditation: Add one year to your current age and think back to that time. In that year and for billions of years previous, you were nothing. You did not yet exist. Our origin is indeed nothingness.
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John of the Cross also speaks to Nothing in this poem:
To reach satisfaction in all
Desire its possession in nothing.
To come to possess all
Desire the possession of nothing.
To arrive at being all
Desire to be nothing.
To come to the knowledge of all
Desire the knowledge of nothing.
Meister Eckhart had a wild dream about nothingness from which he drew an even wilder conclusion:
I once dreamt that I, even though a man, was pregnant, pregnant with nothingness. And out of this nothingness, God was born.
| “Sea and Sky Boundlessness” Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash
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Queries for Contemplation
Are you experiencing Supreme Court Nothingness? Do the mystics cited here assist you to grasp what you are undergoing? Is the nothingness we are tasting a prelude to a
great breakthrough, a great birth, a “new creation,” and birth of God that our nothingness and our moral outrage will give birth to and that Eckhart names?
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, pp. 148-156.
And Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics, p. 315.
Banner Image: Traveling through nothingness. Image by Chen Yichun on Unsplash.
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Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
In this book Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology). Here Fox lays out the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.”
–Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story
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Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
The 365 writings in Christian Mystics represent a wide-ranging sampling of these readings for modern-day seekers of all faiths — or no faith. The visionaries quoted range from Julian of Norwich to Martin Luther King, Jr.; from Hildegard of Bingen and Meister Eckhart to Thomas Merton; from Father Bede Griffiths to Dorothee Soelle and Thomas Berry.
“Our world is in crisis, and we need road maps that can ground us in wisdom, inspire us to action, and help us gather our talents in service of compassion and justice. This revolutionary book does just that. Matthew Fox takes some of the most profound spiritual teachings of the West and translates them into practical daily mediations.” — Adam Bucko, co-author of Occupy Spirituality.
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Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field.
See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE
Join Matthew Fox and special guest Caroline Myss for a 6-part Reflections Parallel course, “Beyond Patriarchy: Recovering the Divine Feminine and Sacred Masculine and
Why it Matters Today,” hosted by the Caroline Myss Educational Institute. July 11, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27 (Mondays & Wednesdays) 4:00pm-5:30pm PT (GMT/UTC-7) Register HERE.
Join Matthew Fox at the monthly Our Lady of the Prairie Virtual Retreat with a discussion of The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times. Thursday, July
14, 4:00pm-6:00pm PT (GMT/UTC-7). Register HERE.
Join Matthew Fox for the monthly Our Lady of the Prairie virtual retreat, discussing One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths. Thursday, August
18, 4:00-6:00pm PT. Learn more HERE.
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Creation Spirituality in Conversation.
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Victor Fuhrman of Destination Unlimited on OMTimes interviews Matthew Fox on Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality. Navigate to the podcast page by clicking the image on the left.
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Announcing Matthew Fox's Newest Book!
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Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Selected with an introduction by Charles Burack
“This collection of Fox’s most life-giving insights blesses the connection between caring for our Mother-the-Earth and lifting up marginalized voices, between waking up from the dream of separation and stepping up to mend the net of creation.”
—Mirabai Starr, author, God of Love and Wild Mercy
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