The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers |
On Turning Evil Around:
Prescient Teachings by Ernest Becker 04/15/2023 |
We have seen how Rabbi Heschel calls for an invitation to “holiness” in order turn evil around. |
Ernest Becker proposes something parallel when he writes that healthy religion or spirituality needs to offer the possibility of a new heroism, the heroism of sainthood. This meant living in primary awe at the miracle of the created | |
object—including oneself in one’s own godlikeness. His definition of holiness seems to be echoing creation spirituality: Learning not to take creation or existence for granted. Becker continues: Remember the awesome fascination of St. Francis with the revelations of the everyday world—a bird, a flower. It also meant unafraidness of one’s own death, because of the incomparable majesty and power of God. |
| Instead of an invitation to holiness, Becker sees organized religion too often subscribing to culture’s commercial-industrial hero system that is almost openly defunct; it so obviously denies reality, builds war machines against death, and banishes sacredness with bureaucratic dedication. Men |
are treated as things and the world is pulled down to their size. Religion goes along and
in a perverse way, the churches have turned their backs both on the miraculousness of creation and on the need to do something heroic in this world. What was the original vision of Christ followers? |
The early promise of Christianity was to bring about once and for all the social justice that the ancient world was crying for; Christianity never
fulfilled this promise, and is as far away from it today as ever. No wonder it has trouble being taken seriously as a hero system. Instead, he warns us, we have today a toll of unfulfilled life based on a
continuing denial of social justice; it is a toll of internal victimage based on the inequality of social classes and the state repression of freedom…. | |
In science, as in authentic religion, there is no easy refuge for empty-headed patriotism, or for putting off to some future date the exposure of large-scale social lies. | |
Joan Baez sings “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” with Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones (video by @JoshuaBodwell) To hear them sing, click on the image. | This seems like a prescient naming of the
current American political scene: Denial of social justice, victimage, efforts at state repression of freedom, large-scale social lies. And also, as in the state of Florida today, attacks on artists and writers by totalitarians: The free flow of
criticism, satire, art, and science is a continuous attack on the cultural fiction—which is why totalitarians from Plato to Mao have to control these things, as has long been known. |
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, pp. xlf.
CORRECTION. Dear friends: We regret that the original sending of Friday morning's DM had a bad
link to the singing performance of Joan Baez and Justin Jones. We reposted it in today's DM, above, for your listening pleasure. Our apologies, The DM Team Banner image: Turning evil around. Photo by name_ gravity on Unsplash |
Queries for Contemplation
Do you also recognize a
connection between the miraculousness of creation and the need to do something heroic in this world? And holiness? Do you see the Tennessee three as examples of holiness in our time? And other examples also?
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Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul
and Society 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. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one
single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar
HERE |
Join Matthew Fox online as he offers a Worship Service Inspirational Message - “Otto Rank, and Pere Chenu: Two 'Real, Raw and Radiant' Guides Calling Us to Deep Freedom” for
Brentwood Inspired Living Center, Sunday, April 16, 10:00 am PT. Learn more HERE. Join Matthew Fox as he discusses “Creativity – Where the Divine and the Human Meet” in an Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat. Thursday, April 20, 4:00-6:00 pm PT. Register HERE. Join Matthew Fox and Charles Burack in an online conversation on “The Essential Writings On Creation Spirituality” hosted by The Aquarian Minyan. Thursday, April
27, 6:00 pm PT. Register HERE. |
Creation Spirituality Conversations |
Karen Tate interviews Matthew on his latest book Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality to discuss religious vs. spiritual, the nature of evil and angels, compassion vs pity, and wisdom vs knowledge. On Voices of the Sacred Feminine with Karen Tate. Listen HERE. | |
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