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Meditations with Matthew Fox
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Winter Solstice, 2022: The Apophatic
and Uncreated God 12/21/2022 |
If God is the uncreated one, then we cannot know God since everything we know is created and has received its existence from other existences. |
Deepak Chopra puts it this way: “God is uncreated. The universe cannot reveal God, since everything that exists is created.” He writes: “Let’s assume that God is infinite. Our minds are not equipped to perceive the infinite. We perceive what we are prepared to see and know.” We are left ignorant and without language about that which is uncreated. It is for this reason that we talk of God as “Superessential Darkness.” The sixth century Syrian | Attempting to illustrate the unimaginable: Illumination, ca.1220-1230 C.E., of God the Geometer, designing the cosmos. Codex Vindobonensis 2554, f.1
verso. Wikimedia Commons. |
monk Dennis the Areopagite says God is “superessential darkness” and a “darkness beyond light.” Eckhart repeats this language and says, “the final end is the mystery of the darkness of the eternal
Godhead.” Not only does this understanding of Divinity honor the dark and honor our unknowing, it also welcomes and makes room for the unspeakable and ineffable and that which is bigger than words. It makes room for silence
and nothingness. (And also eventually for poetry and art of many kinds including the arts of compassion and justice and social transformation, the Via Transformativa.) Given today’s physics, we might ask: Are the mysterious Dark
Energy and Dark Matter that scientists teach make up 97% of the universe also images of the Dark Divinity? Does the “double dark” theory plus Divinity as superessential darkness offer humankind a new kind of Trinity in our time? One wrapped in darkness? |
Receptive all-one-ness. Photo by Max on Unsplash | God in this context becomes the Great Mystery. What is mystery is very
shy around words and namings. Mystery does not want to be named. It wishes to remain hidden. It invites us in to be with and to be still and to receive, not talk. |
The
uniqueness of the Divine, the immensity of the Divine, renders it a great mystery that may well be without any name. As Meister Eckhart put it: The mystery of the darkness of the eternal Godhead is unknown and never was known and
never will be known. God dwells therein, unknown to the Godself. |
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Adapted from Matthew Fox, Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God…Including the Unnameable God, pp. 125-127. Banner Image: Darkness from which all emerges. Image by Peace,love,happiness from Pixabay |
Queries for Contemplation Do these meditations on the Unnameable Mystery of Divinity assist you to let God be God and infinite and something greater than we can speak about or imagine? Are you becoming at home with unknowing? What difference does that make? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field. |
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 Robert Holden and Matthew Fox for A WINTER OF IMAGINATION – a mystical 75-minute
webinar that reveals the spiritual invitation and deeper meaning of Advent, the Solstice, and Christmas time.12/22 ("Soul of Christmas"), 12 pm PT/3 pm ET/8 pm UK. Register HERE. Join Matthew Fox as the Center for Contemporary Mysticism hosts him in a Conversation on “Creation Spirituality: Birthing a New World.” Sunday, January 8, 2023, 11 am PT
(UTC/GMT-7). Register HERE. Creation Spirituality Conversations |
In a podcast episode with the Earth and Spirit Center, Matthew Fox reflects on how creation-centered spirituality, and the marriage of the divine feminine and sacred masculine, can help us respond with hope
to the troubles of our apocalyptic times. Listen HERE. | |
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