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Meditations with Matthew Fox
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Authentic Mysticism as an Antidote
to Patriarchy 01/14/2023 |
Dualism is a major component of Patriarchy where domination and control trump co-operation and partnering. |
Dorothee Soelle believes that authentic mysticism “comes closest to overcoming the hierarchical masculine concept of God” and that mysticism is a kind of “thirst for real liberation." Mysticism for her is baked into feminism and marks the opposite of patriarchal consciousness. | “We are enfolded…wrapped in God’s love.” Pilgrim Amanda Achtman interviews Sister Pamela of the Community of All Hallows, Ditchingham, which tends Julian’s shrine in Norwich. |
She defines mysticism this way: The mystical certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God grows when we ourselves become one with love by placing ourselves, freely and without guarantee of success, on the side
of love. Soelle understands a healthy mysticism to be the best antidote, detoxing us from a dangerous “masculine concept of God.” Mysticism leads to “real liberation,” or prophetic action. The certainty that nothing can
separate us from the love of God builds courage and freedom and a willingness to risk love and justice-making. |
Michigan Senate Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow, who challenges the NRA and hate-driven religion, calls for inclusion, empathy and understanding in a 2020 prayer breakfast
invocation. Michigan Senate Democrats | Indeed, for Soelle, mysticism offers the authentic language of religion itself, which is very different from “the stolen language in which a male God ordains and imperial power radiates forth.” Her fuller definition of mysticism is this: |
I am completely and utterly in God, I cannot fall out of God, I am imperishable. ‘Who shall separate us from the love of God?’ we can then ask with Paul the mystic: ’neither death nor life, height nor depth, neither present nor future’ (Romans 8:35 and 38). Soelle is not alone in calling Paul, the first writer of the Christian Bible, a mystic. New Testament scholar Dominic Crossan declares that for Paul, “one cannot be a Christian without being a mystic.”All followers of Christ are to be mystics and prophets and I think that holds for followers of most religions who are truly seeking to line up with Spirit. Soelle also links sexual experience to mysticism as of course the “Song of Songs” book in the Hebrew Bible does. She cites a woman who shared how she first experienced God in the ecstasy of making love and concludes that: God
is |
…that oceanic feeling of not being separate from anything or hindered by anything, the happiness of being one with everything living, the ecstasy in which the old “I” is abandoned and I
am new and different. | “Couple in Love” Photo by Lightfield Studios, Adobe Stock |
God is our experience of God. Ecstasy is Thomas Aquinas’s name for the experience of God (and mine I might say) just as “oneing” is Julian of Norwich’s name and “Breakthrough” is Meister Eckhart’s naming for the same. Eckhart: “In breakthrough I learn that God and I are
one.” |
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Adapted from Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations, pp. 278-290. And Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart, pp. 65-69. Banner image: Dance of oneness. Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash |
Queries for Contemplation In what breakthroughs, ecstasies or oneings have you tasted the Divine? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field. |
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
As
Matthew Fox notes, when an aging Albert Einstein was asked if he had any regrets, he replied, “I wish I had read more of the mystics earlier in my life.” The 365 writings in Christian Mystics represent a wide-ranging sampling of these readings for modern-day seekers of all faiths — or no faith. The visionaries quoted range from Julian of Norwich to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Thomas Merton to Dorothee Soelle and Thomas Berry. “Our world is in crisis, and we need road maps that can ground us I wisdom, inspire us to action, and help us gather our talents in service of compassion and justice. This revolutionary book does just that. Matthew Fox takes some of the most profound spiritual teachings of the West and translates them into practical daily mediations. Study and practice these teachings. Take what’s in this
book and teach it to the youth because the new generation cannot afford to suffer the spirit and ethical illiteracy of the past.” — Adam Bucko, spiritual activist and co-founder of the Reciprocity Foundation for Homeless youth | |
Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A
Centering Book
A centering book by Matthew Fox. This book of simple but rich meditations exemplifies the deep yet playful creation-centered spirituality of Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart was a 13th-century Dominican preacher who was a mystic, prophet, feminist, activist, defender of the poor, and advocate of creation-centered spirituality, who was condemned shortly after he died.
“These
quiet presentations of spirituality are remarkable for their immediacy and clarity.” –Publishers Weekly. | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE |
Join Matthew Fox at the virtual Our Lady of the Prairie retreat, offering a discussion and Q&A on “Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God…Including the Unnameable
God.” Thursday, January 19, 4:00pm-6:00pm PT. Register HERE. Join Matthew Fox as he speaks on “The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times” in a virtual event hosted by the Weber Retreat and Conference Center Thursday, January 26, 4:00pm-5:30pm PT. Register HERE. Creation Spirituality Conversations |
Matthew Fox at the Center for Contemporary Mysticism discusses “Birthing a New World: Can Creation-Centered Spirituality Help Reclaim the Sacredness of the Earth?" | |
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