The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers |
Julian of Norwich, Eckhart, Merton,
Suzuki on Digging for Truth 03/08/2023 |
Yesterday we meditated on the need to dig deep to get to our true self. Sometimes suffering is a gateway to truth. |
Julian of Norwich acknowledges this and teaches that we cannot sit idly by while suffering happens to ourselves or others; we must dig deeper to find the treasure that lies hidden within life and within ourselves. | Gardening soil and souls: Author/educator/activist Theodore Richards works in the Chicago Wisdom Project food forest/ community garden. Photo by
the Chicago Wisdom Project, shown in TheodoreRichards.com. |
Julian urges us to become gardeners of the soul as well as the soil. There is a treasure in the earth that is a food tasty and pleasing to the Lord. Be a gardener, dig and ditch, toil and sweat, and turn the earth upside down and seek the deepness and water the plants in time. Continue this labor and make sweet floods to run and noble and abundant fruits to
spring. Here Julian returns us to the joy of working in and with nature, the outer work becomes the inner work and the inner the outer. Indeed, this work of gardening is not only a holy inner work with the soil and with the soul, but it
becomes our worship as well. “Take this food and drink and carry it to God as your true worship.” |
| Divinity, as Julian sees it, turns a happy face toward us even when there is hardship. The blessed face that our Beloved turns toward us is a happy
one—joyous and sweet. He sees us lost in love-longing, and he wants to |
see a smile on our souls, because our delight is his reward. Compassion and delight are part of the exchange with the divine. Eckhart’s understanding of God as the “ground of being”—which was Thich Nhat Hanh’s favorite name for divinity—lends itself well to Julian’s talk of “digging and ditching.” |
Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki teaches that the “True Self” is the formless, original mind and Merton says that Suzuki “has explicitly compared this concept to that of the Godhead in Meister Eckhart and the Rhenish mystics.” He says Suzuki’s use of the word mind in Zen does not mean the intellectual faculty as such but rather what the Rhenish mystics [including Eckhart] called the ‘ground’ of our soul or of our being, a ‘ground’ which is . . . enlightened and aware, because it is in immediate contact with God. | Walking meditation: bare feet kiss sacred earth,
communing with the ground of
being. Photo by PNW Production on Pexels. |
Suzuki, he says, was “obviously thinking of Eckhart” when he talks of the light of Prajna penetrating “the ground nature of
consciousness” and illuminating things inside and outside. |
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Adapted from Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond, p. 27. And Fox, A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey, p. 34. Banner Image: “Digging up the onions.” Photo by Woodley Wonder Works on Flickr. |
Queries for Contemplation What does God as the “ground of being” mean to you? How do you “dig and ditch” to arrive there? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field. |
Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond Julian of Norwich lived through the dreadful bubonic plague that killed close to 50% of Europeans. Being an anchoress, she ‘sheltered in place’ and developed a deep wisdom that she shared in her book Showings, which was the first book in English by a woman. A
theologian way ahead of her time, Julian develops a feminist understanding of God as mother at the heart of nature’s goodness. Fox shares her teachings in this powerful and timely and inspiring book. “What an utterly magnificent book. The work of Julian of Norwich, lovingly supported by the genius of Matthew Fox, is a roadmap into
the heart of the eco-spiritual truth that all life breathes together.” –Caroline Myss Now also available as an audiobook HERE | |
A Way to God: Thomas
Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey In A Way to God, Fox explores Merton’s pioneering work in interfaith, his essential teachings on mixing contemplation and action, and how the vision of Meister Eckhart profoundly
influenced Merton in what Fox calls his Creation Spirituality journey.
“This wise and marvelous book will profoundly inspire all those who love Merton and want to know him more deeply.” — Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE |
Join Matthew Fox for a lecture and Q&A on “The Reinvention of Work – A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time” in an Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat, Thursday, March 16, 4:00-6:00 pm PT.
Register HERE. Join Matthew Fox and Isa Gucciardi for a new Lecture & Q&A on “ Liberation and Salvation: Healing Teachings in Buddhism & Christianity” at Convergence Hosted by
Cameron Trimble, Tuesday, March 21, 4:00-6:00 pm PT Register HERE. Creation Spirituality Conversations |
Matthew Fox speaks on "Jung and Teilhard in Dialogue" to the Creation Spirituality Communities at their Global Kinship event in January 2023. | |
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