The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers
Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox
|
Barbara Ehrenreich on Joy and Celebration |
Barbara Ehrenreich’s pursuit of truth was a prophetic work and a spiritual commitment. Her critique of society’s sins and falsities was the same. Her looking for alternatives was of the same
kind. |
She was a champion of the Via Transformativa, always seeking to make unjust circumstances better. She called herself an atheist but wrote a book on God, a “wild God.” Her God was a God of Truth and of Justice. | Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich interviews Barbara Ehrenreich on Living With a Wild God and her lifelong quest for meaning.
BookTV |
Or shall we just say, her God was Truth and Justice. Deep Ecumenism dictates that believers who also believe in a God of Truth and Justice hang out together and work together to speak truth to power and create justice
from injustice irrespective of what religion they do or do not practice. Part of the Via Transformativa and of Compassion is celebration. And Ehrenreich wrote a whole book on the history of celebration that she calls Dancing in the Streets: A History of
Collective Joy, one of the finest books I know on ceremony and celebration. I was so stricken by it that I utilized it in my study on The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine. Allow me to share some of her
teachings here on that all-important subject of ritual or ceremony or liturgy. |
Tamsin Shasha, performer, director, writer, aerialist and Artistic Director of Actors of Dionysus, reads an extract from “Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy” by Barbara
Ehrenreich. Actors of Dionysus | Such rituals insured a “kind of spiritual merger with the group,” that brought healing and joy. She relates how ecstatic ritual was part of the “hunter-gatherers of Australia, the horticulturists of Polynesia, the village peoples of India” and it often led to trance. |
But when Europeans encountered it, they called it “savagery.” The West resisted the drums and “the western male upper-class mind …wall[ed] itself up in a fortress of ego and rationality against the seductive wildness of the world.” If you examine prehistoric rock carvings in various places—Africa, India Australia, Italy, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Egypt and other places you see rituals of dancing figures. “Well before people had a written language, and possibly before they took up a settled lifestyle, they danced and understood dancing as an activity important enough to record on stone.” Of course, indigenous people to this day still pray by dancing and in our Cosmic Masses we do the same. |
Another purpose to these rituals was to create group courage, “early humans probably faced off predatory animals collectively." They may have warded off wild beasts by their collective
shouting and dancing and rituals therefore. | |
I think it can be said that Ehrenreich’s God of Truth and of
Justice was also a God of Celebration. Or shall we say, her God was Celebration. |
| To view
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, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp.
45f. And Fox, The Reinvention of Work, especially Part III on Reinventing Ritual, pp. 249-295. See also, Fox, Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God…Including the Unnameable God, pp. 37, 49f., 58f.] Banner Image: Powwow Dancers, Six Nations
of the Grand River Community, 2014. Photo by Peter K Burian on Wikimedia Commons. |
Queries for Contemplation Do you recognize a rhythm in Ehrenreich’s work of Justice and Joy? Do you find that same rhythm in your own work and celebration? And in that of your community? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments
field. |
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or
archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
–“A gutsy, courageous book, one that confronts the terrible isolation in which men live with archetypal images that once nurtured, guided, and connected our ancestors and that still
course within the depths of each of us.” –Dr James Hollis, author of What Matters Most | |
The Reinvention of
Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time Thomas Aquinas said, “To live well is to work well,” and in this bold call for the revitalization of daily work, Fox shares his vision of a world where our personal and
professional lives are celebrated in harmony–a world where the self is not sacrificed for a job but is sanctified by authentic “soul work.” “Fox approaches the level of poetry in describing the reciprocity that must be present between one’s inner and outer work…[A]n important road map to social change.” ~~ National Catholic
Reporter | |
Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God …Including the Unnameable God Too often, notions of God have been used as a means to control and to promote a narrow worldview.
In Naming the Unnameable, renowned theologian and author Matthew Fox ignites our imaginations by offering a colorful range of Divine Names gathered from scientists and poets and mystics past and present, inviting us to always begin where true spirituality begins: from experience. “This book is timely, important and admirably brief;
it is also open ended—there are always more names to come, and none can exhaust God’s nature.” -Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, author of Science Set Free and The Presence of the Past | |
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. |
Please share this post! Just click the buttons below.
OR share your insights on Instagram or Twitter using the hashtag #RevDrMatthewFox and tag Matt with @RevDrMatthewFox
|
|
|
|
