The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic
Thinkers, Earth Keepers Daily
Meditations with Matthew Fox
|
A Letter to Chief Justice Roberts on Voting Rights |
Dear Chief Justice Roberts, I write you as a fellow American and fellow human being concerned about voting rights. Your Court, having endangered American democracy by allowing dark money to flood our elections, is now discussing dismantling what is left of voting rights laws. |
I also write you as your elder and as a priest for over 53 years because I am deeply worried about your soul. We cannot forget your gutting the civil rights act in two previous cases
decided by SCOTUS with you as chief justice. | |
I presume you are witnessing, as I and 350 million other Americans are, the tsunami of efforts in state legislatures around the country to reinvent our election laws to assure that people of color, as in the days of Jim Crow that preceded the civil rights voting act of 1965, find it as difficult as possible to vote. Even the counting of the votes by neutral voting
clerks are being tossed aside in favor of state legislature’s choosing their own vote counters who can actually overturn election results that they don’t like. Given this destruction of American democracy and this affront to everything the civil rights movement
accomplished sixty years ago with all of its martyrs and brave marchers and thousands who suffered beatings and jailings and even death to bring about an advance in justice and democracy, I wonder: Does it not rip your heart wide open and make your head spin? This re-writing of what is left of our democracy? |
"A mob beats Freedom Riders in Birmingham. This picture was reclaimed by the FBI from a local journalist who also was beaten and whose camera was smashed." Photo by reporter Tommy Langston of the Birmingham
Post-Herald. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain. | As Supreme Court chief justice, you have been given great powers and responsibilities. If you are seeing the news (on other than Fox news, of course) and seeing what the rest of us are seeing, do you not feel a deep, deep complicity in all this abuse of our
democracy that is going on in state houses? Is there remorse in your soul as you watch the fruits of your labor at work in our country today? |
I wonder where your conscience is at. It is not enough, as a public figure with a public responsibility to protect the constitution under which 350 million of us live, that you go to a private confession to be forgiven sins like this. You need to commit to a public undoing of your sins that truly imperil the future of American democracy. |
Maybe some sackcloth and ashes are in order, as was the case in our religion 1700 years ago. That is the penance I would prescribe for you, were you to come to confession to me. Or
something equally compelling. Like resigning from your job. I pray for you and your soul and for the future of democracy in America, and that judges cleanse their souls of bigotry, racism and unjust decision-making that turns the clock back and
threatens to impact hundreds of millions of people for generations to come. | |
Sincerely, Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox |
| 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, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, pp. 224, xxiii-xxvii. Banner image: Voting Rights are Human Rights. Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash |
Queries for Contemplation What are your concerns resulting from the recent hearing of SCOTUS about a state’s right to take decisions about elections away from the judiciary and put it in the hands of politicians? What might come of that? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field. |
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society In Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. Using today’s science to
rediscover the sacred marriage of spirit and flesh, Fox sets forth a visionary but practical mysticism that lays out a blueprint for social transformation. In this book, Matthew Fox dissects the roots of our culture's spiritual malaise and offers "medicine" for our society's deep spiritual "wounds." He shows how, contrary to mainstream church teachings, flesh is the grounding of spirit, and how spirit and flesh are entwined with each other in a felicitous and spiritually nourishing bond. He
outlines a Theology of Spirit, an approach to the fusing of spirit and flesh which has been underdeveloped in Western thought. His cosmology stresses the need for diversity, the revelatory power of Nature, and the imperative of cooperation. Fox draws together the wisdom of East and West on the subject of human destructiveness by taking Thomas Aquinas's definition of sin as "misdirected love" and ushering us through parallels between the Eastern teachings of the seven chakras and the
Western teachings of the seven capital sins. | |
Order of the Sacred Earth: An
Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
By Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jen Listug
In the midst of global fire, earthquake and flood - as species are going extinct every day and national and global economies totter - the planet doesn't need another church or religion. What it needs is a new Order, grounded in the Wisdom traditions of both East and West, including science and
indigenous. An Order of the Sacred Earth united in one sacred vow: “I promise to be the best lover and defender of the Earth that I can be.” Co-authored by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Listug, with a forward by David Korten, this collection of essays by 21 spiritual visionaries including Brian Swimme, Mirabai Starr, Theodore Richards, and Kristal Parks marks the founding of the diverse and inclusive Order of the Sacred Earth, a community now evolving around the world.
“The Order of the Sacred Earth not only calls us home to our true nature as Earth, but also offers us invaluable guidance and company on the way.” ~~ Joanna Macy, environmental activist and author of Active Hope. | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE Join Matthew Fox for the monthly online Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat, discussing Original Blessing. Thursday, October 20, 4:00pm-6:00pm PT. Register
HERE. |
Join Matthew Fox for the monthly Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat, discussing Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality. Thursday, November 17,
4:00pm-6:00pm PT. Register HERE. Creation Spirituality in Conversation |
| Join
scholars Matthew Fox and Thomas G. Hermans-Webster for Progressive Christianity's monthly “Things that Matter” discussion on eco-spirituality: “The Intersection of Faith and Climate Justice.” |
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
|
|
|
|
