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Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox
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A View on the Sacred Cosmos from Italy |
Contemporary Italian philosopher and psychologist (and ex-priest) Vito Mancuso, wrote a very rich Introduction to my book Original Blessing when it was translated into Italian. In Italian the title was changed to, In principio era la gioia,
“In the Beginning there was Joy” because, as the translator explained to me, the word “blessing” in Italian has come to mean something very ecclesiastical, a priest’s blessing or a pope’s blessing, so the word has lost its primary meaning.
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Mancuso talks about the journey from fall redemption religion to creation spirituality that includes a Via Positiva this way: In putting the good and not the bad at the center, the bene-diction and not the male-diction (or the sin), the joy and not the sorrow, almost
automatically brings forth a new pedagogy for which our society, so closed and depressed, has an indescribable need. | The Italian version of Original Blessing |
Is our society closed and depressed? |
There is a mystical spark, a capacity of marvelous origins, present in every child. It is this dimension that the pedagogy must cultivate, awakening in each of us the recognition of the primal joy of being, of being in the world as an innocent piece of the creation. Mancuso uses the term “Cosmocentrico”, or “cosmocentric”, to describe the journey and ride we are making and “amartiocentrico”, or “sin-centered” to describe its antithesis. The journey from Fall/redemption to Creation spirituality. He also invokes martyr and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in this way: |
| Bonhoeffer criticized the theology of God as “a stopgap” when he shed light on the falsity of sin-centered Christianity that insistently reminds us of humanity’s weakness in its natural state, for which “if one is not able to lead humanity to consider or to designate his happiness as a disaster, his health as a sickness,
his life force as despair, then [our theology] is good for nothing.” He expressed the desire for a theology that knows “to speak of god not as a boundary, but as the center; not of weakness, but of strength; not in relation to death and culpability, but of life and of the goodness of humanity.” |
Bonhoeffer would have been happy with Fox’s cosmocentric spirituality, and would have read this book with pleasure. |
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today's video, please click the image. You will be taken to today's post on the Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox website, where you can see the meditation in a larger version and also view and post your Comments. In the sharing that follows, a kind of community is developing around the DM.
If you can't reach Matthew's video on the website, try his Vimeo channel HERE. |
See Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation
Spirituality and In principio era la gioia, pp. vii-xiii.
See also Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality.
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image: "Milky Way into the Darkness: I was waiting for her." Location: Fellito, Italy. Photo by Erriko Boccia on Unsplash |
Queries for Contemplation Do you agree with Bonhoeffer about what makes for despair in religion? And do you recognize the phrases of “cosmocentric” as distinct from “sin-centered” as useful language as applied to how to look at the world as sacred? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field. |
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 Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit | |
Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation
Spirituality To encapsulate the life and work of Matthew Fox would be a daunting task for any save his colleague Dr. Charles Burack, who had the full cooperation of his subject. Fox has devoted 50 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation
Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His more than 40 books, translated into 78 languages, are inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and have awakened millions to the much neglected
earth-based mystical tradition of the West. Essential Writings begins by exploring the influences on Fox's life and spirituality, then presents selections from all Fox’s major works in 10 sections.
“The critical insights, the creative connections, the centrality of Matthew Fox’s writings and teaching are second to none for the radical renewal of
Christianity." Richard Rohr, OFM.
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See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE
Join Matthew Fox in a 6-week virtual course on “Mystics, Mysticism and Ourselves as Mystic-Prophets,” hosted by Creation Spirituality Communities. Wednesdays, 8/24, 8/31, 9/7, 9/14,
9/21, and 9/28, 4:00pm-6:00pm PT. Register HERE. Join Matthew Fox and Neil Douglas-Klotz for “The Aramaic Jesus and the Cosmic Christ: Enduring Lessons for a World in Confusion,” a live video conversation online, a
pre-launch event for the release of Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus, Sunday, September 11, 10:00am-11:15am PT. Register HERE. Join Matthew Fox for the monthly Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat, discussing The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, Thursday, September 15, 4:00pm-6:00pm PT. Register HERE. |
Matthew Fox, Caroline Myss, and Andrew Harvey offer a 3-part series of solo online lectures on “The Power of Truth, Wisdom, Choice Part 2” through the Sophia Institute in Charleston, SC. Wednesdays, September 21, 28, October 5, 3:00pm-4:30pm PT. Register HERE. Creation Spirituality in Conversation |
| Andrew Harvey, author of The
Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism, interviews Matthew Fox on The Essential Writings of Creation Spirituality, July 26, 2022. |
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