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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Meditations on Nothingness Experiences, continued In recent DMs, we meditated on the rendering of nothingness that humans are capable of such as Hiroshima and climate change and the once Supreme
Court. |
There are many ways in which we taste Nothingness and we will consider some of them here: Metaphysical nothingness of non-being or of our pre-existence. | Worse than pre-Roe: The leaked Dobbs decision would both criminalize and undermine the health of women, particularly women of color, experts told Joy Reid in March
2022. MSNBC |
Psychological
nothingness of feeling oneself to be a nobody or forgotten or utterly ignored. Political nothingness of being subjected to less than human circumstances by decisions of the powerful decision makers. Being a woman in a patriarchal world. Being a person of color in a world where white supremacy reigns. Being a gay or trans person in a world of homophobia and heterosexism. |
David moved to Austin, Texas, to work in construction. With his ID lost on the bus, and his backpack, with everything he owned, stolen, he survives on the street by recycling and panhandling.
Invisible People | Being poor or homeless when possessions are the test of a human being. Sometimes “Nothingness” names the darkness of the Via Negativa as the darkness of loss, grief and suffering, the darkness of the cross, the darkness of the dark night. |
When Thomas
Merton was sick in the hospital, he wrote from his hospital bed of “a flat impersonal song” and of “bleeding in a numbered bed/…all my veins run/with Christ and with the stars’ plasm.” I have no more sweet home
I doubt
the bed here and the road there
And WKLO I most abhor
My head is rotten with the town’s song. He experiences within himself “man’s enormous
want”— |
Until the want itself is gone
Nameless bloodless and alone
The Cross comes and Eckhart’s scandal
The Holy Supper and the precise wrong.
And the accurate little spark
In emptiness in the jet stream
…. A lost spark in Eckhart’s Castle….
Only
the spark is now true
Dancing in the empty room
All around overhead
While the frail body of Christ
Sweats in a technical bed
I am Christ’s lost cell
His childhood and desert age
His descent into hell….
And the spark without identity
Circles the empty ceiling. | One spark. Detail of photo by Zoe Ra on Unsplash. |
It is significant that he invokes one of Eckhart’s favorite images, that of the spark of the soul where
the Christ is born in all of us and where the Holy Spirit’s fire never goes out, to name what was left of him when he was stripped of so much in his hospital sojourn. Sister Lentfoehr calls this poem Merton’s “most poignant and anguished poem.” A return to nothingness where only the spark remains.* |
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Queries for Contemplation
Which of the instances of Nothingness have you encountered personally or in society? How does Merton’s “most anguished poem” speak to you and your experience of the Via
Negativa? *See Sister Therese Lentfoehr, Words and Silence: On the Poetry of
Thomas Merton (NY: New Directions, 1979), pp. 68f. Adapted from Matthew Fox, A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey, pp. 74f. Banner Image: Art installation inspired by Métis artist Jaime Black, at Seaforth Peace Park, Vancouver, 10/3/16, National Day for Vigils for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Photo by Edna Winti, #REDressProject. Wikimedia Commons. |
A Way to God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality
Journey In A Way to God, Fox explores Merton’s pioneering work in interfaith, his essential teachings on mixing contemplation and action, and how the vision of Meister Eckhart profoundly influenced Merton in what Fox calls his Creation Spirituality
journey. “This wise and marvelous book will profoundly inspire all those who love Merton and want to know him more deeply.” — Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism | |
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 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. 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. |
Creation Spirituality in Conversation |
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Host Sandie Sedbeer welcomes Matthew Fox in a discussion of Creation Spirituality: Fresh Perspectives and Approaches to the Most Vital Issues of Our Time on WHAT IS GOING OM. Navigate to the podcast page by clicking the image on the left. |
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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