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A Second Story on Healing Acedia and Depression Sans Pills 05/10/2023 |
We are meditating on touching our Joy in spite of darkness and times of acedia. I offer a second concrete story here. |
One Fall semester I was teaching a course on “Psychology and Spirituality” and began the course asking students to draw a picture of their soul. The pictures were alive and interesting and fun—except for one picture that was very dark and
chaotic. | |
I invited the student to my office to talk. She was a Catholic sister who had been seeing a
psychiatrist for years who put her on drugs for her depression. Disturbed that she had been sent to our program, I called her provincial in Boston and said, “we are not a psychological clinic but a degree program in spirituality. Why would you send us a sister who is under psychiatric care?” She said, “Oh, father, we have tried everything–years of therapy, and nothing has pulled her out of her depression. So we sent her to your program as a last resort.” |
| Sitting down with this student, I learned more of her story. She was an artist and one day her convent burned down and all her paintings were destroyed and her superiors gave her a new job—to hand out mail in one of their institutions. She did this for years and was depressed (duh!) and they sent her to psychologists who prescribed lots of pills. |
She stayed in our program, threw away the pills from her therapist, and thrived on art as meditation, the new cosmology and the mystics. By graduation, she was a new person, and her community welcomed her back and she found work designing cards, etc. I do not deny that some times drugs can assist healing for some kinds of depression. But I question whether some psychologists are even exposed in their training to spiritual traditions, the mystics and cosmology as paths to
healing. These are medicine for acedia that nurture the first chakra. |
Picking up the vibrations of the whole universe and dancing on Mother Earth trigger the first
chakra. Such medicine is powerful, especially when done with others in prayerful ceremony or ritual. Today’s story informs us pills are not always the cure to depression. The truth is,
this | |
woman had to get off her pills to move beyond her depression. She had to see the world anew. Cosmology, art/ritual and the mystics allow that healing to happen. |
See Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest, (2015 edition), pp. 327-350. See Fox, “Depth Psychology: Meister Eckhart Mets Carl Jung” and “Psychotherapy and the ‘Unio Mystica’: Meister Eckhart Meets Otto Rank,” in Fox, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic Warrior for Our Times, pp. 117-156. Banner Image: Soul painting, Little Havana, Miami. Photo by Frankie Cordoba on Unsplash |
Queries for Contemplation
Have you found healing from acedia by way of art, ritual, cosmology and the mystics? Do you think it’s possible that our culture, like that of 17th century Europe, actually invites depression? |
| 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.
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Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational
Priest (Revised/Updated Edition)
Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. Five new chapters in this revised and updated edition bring added perspective in light of the author’s continued journey, and his reflections on the current
changes taking place in church, society and the environment.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible spiritual revolutionary enlivens the mind and emboldens the heart — must reading for anyone interested in courage, creativity, and the future of religion.”
—Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self | |
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our
Time While Matthew Fox recognizes that Meister Eckhart has influenced thinkers throughout history, he also wants to introduce Eckhart to today’s activists addressing contemporary crises. Toward that end, Fox creates dialogues between Eckhart and
Carl Jung, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Heschel, Black Elk, Karl Marx, Rumi, Adrienne Rich, Dorothee Soelle, David Korten, Anita Roddick, Lily Yeh, M.C. Richards, and many others.
“Matthew Fox is perhaps the greatest writer on Meister Eckhart that has ever existed. (He) has successfully bridged a gap between Eckhart as a shamanistic personality and Eckhart as a post-modern mentor to the Inter-faith movement, to reveal just how cosmic Eckhart really is, and how
remarkably relevant to today’s religious crisis! ” — Steven Herrmann, Author of Spiritual Democracy: The Wisdom of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Forward | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar
HERE |
Join Matthew Fox as he discusses “The Physics of Angels – Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet” in an Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat.
Thursday, May 18, 4:00-6:00 pm PT. Register HERE. Join Matthew Fox as he discusses “The A.W.E. Project – Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human” in an Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat, Thursday, June 15, 4:00-6:00 pm PT. Register HERE. |
Creation Spirituality Conversations |
Phil Goldberg of Spirit Matters: Conversations on Contemporary Spirituality interviews Matthew Fox on Opening to Original Blessing. To listen to their conversation, click HERE | |
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