The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers
Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox
|
How Julian of Norwich Can Help Heal the Doctrine of Discovery
We are meditating on Pope Francis’s visit to the first peoples of Canada this week to apologize for so much abuse and trauma toward the young created by Christian churches (and the government of Canada) in
their various school systems that ripped children away from families and tribes and traditions.
|
What if, instead of demanding redemption of non-Christian peoples in Africa and the Americas, the European explorers had put creation and the goodness of creation at the forefront of their spirituality?
| Pope Francis apologized for the Catholic Church’s “evil” abuse of generations of Indigenous peoples in Canada. CBS News‘ Tanya Rivero and Nikki Battiste
discuss with Washington Post Rome bureau chief Chico Harlan.
|
I wonder how different would history have been if Julian’s creation-centered religious vision had been out front when the encounters between Europe and indigenous peoples took place the world over?
Consider these teachings from Julian’s teachings:
“The first good thing is the goodness of nature.”
“God is the same thing as nature,” and God is “the very essence of nature.”
“The goodness in nature is God.”
God is “unending goodness” and an “endless goodness.”
We are all born into a “birthright of never-ending joy.”
Everything that we encounter in creation is “everything that God loves” also.
“To behold God in all things is to live in complete joy.”
|
“The Breathtaking Beauty of Nature: A video to honor the beautiful world we live in.” Eredus
| The first duty of the
soul is “to reverently marvel.” A “reverent awe is the proper response to the supreme beauty of the divine.”
“This is the holiest prayer—the loving prayer of thanksgiving.”
|
Thanksgiving leads to actions.
“Charged with the quality of reverence and loving awe, we turn ourselves with all our might toward the actions” to which we are guided.
“Nature and Grace are in harmony with each other. . . . Neither works without the other.”
“God is the Ground, the Substance, the same thing as Naturehood.”
“God is the true Father and Mother of Nature.”
“Everything that is created has being because of God’s love.” The entire universe is kept together by love.
“God never began to love us…we have been loved from without beginning.”
|
Faith is trusting that “we are in God and God whom we do not see is in us.”
All nature is interdependent, and this is why “the sky and the earth failed at the time of Christ’s dying because he too was part of nature.”
| Praying contemplative body prayer from the Order of St. Julian, based on the teachings of Julian: Await, Allow, Accept, Attend. The Plural Guild
|
We share the pain of Christ due to “a great oneing between Christ and us because when he was in pain, we were in pain.”
There exists a “true oneing between the divine and the human.”
Trust your body, for “God is in our sensuality.”
“God has forged a glorious union between the soul and the body.”
“Be at home with your body, for “God willed that we have a twofold nature: sensual and spiritual.”
We were created “luminous and noble” and we were “known and loved from without beginning.”
|
| 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.
|
Queries for Contemplation
Do you see deep resonances between Julian’s teachings as listed here and indigenous wisdom? Between creation spirituality therefore and indigenous teachings? Do you
ponder how history might have been different if creation spirituality was integral to the hearts and minds of European explorers who first came upon indigenous peoples?
|
Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic-And Beyond
Julian of Norwich lived through the dreadful bubonic plague that killed close to 50% of Europeans. Being an anchoress, she ‘sheltered in place’ and developed a deep wisdom that she shared in her book, Showings, which was the first book in English by a woman. A theologian way ahead of her time, Julian develops a feminist understanding of God as mother at the heart of nature’s goodness. Fox shares her teachings in this powerful and timely and inspiring book.
“What an utterly magnificent book. The work of Julian of Norwich, lovingly supported by the genius of Matthew Fox, is a roadmap into the heart of the eco-spiritual truth that all life breathes together.” –Caroline Myss
Now also available as an audiobook HERE
| |
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 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.
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.
|
Creation Spirituality in Conversation.
|
|
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.
|
Announcing Matthew Fox's Newest Book!
|
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
| |
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
|
|
|
|
