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God, the Holy Spirit as Fire & Compassion
03/27/2023 |
The Holy Spirit is often depicted by the mystics as a kind of fire. Thus Hildegard of Bingen
writes: Who is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is a Burning Spirit. It kindles the hearts of humankind. Like tympanum and lyre it plays them, gathering volume in the temple of the soul. |
Meister
Eckhart says that “God glows and burns with all the divine wealth and all the divine bliss in the spark of the soul” and is never extinguished there. Hidden in this spark is something like the original outbreak of all goodness, something like a brilliant light that glows incessantly and something like a burning fire which burns incessantly. This fire is nothing other than the Holy Spirit. In his poem, “The Living Flame of Love,” John of the Cross describes | |
what he calls the “total transformation of the soul in the Beloved” wherein God and
soul produce a “living flame….this flame of love is the Holy Spirit [that] bathes the soul in glory and refreshes it with the quality of divine life.” |
It follows that our work burns for “all the acts of the soul
are divine” and “since love is never idle, but in continual motion, it is always emitting flames everywhere like a blazing fire.” |
| Thomas Aquinas says that “compassion
is the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth.” How important is that teaching? Rabbi Heschel says that “Humanity is a
reminder of God. As God is compassionate, let humanity be compassionate.” |
Meister Eckhart declares that “we can call God love, we can call God knowledge, but the best name for God is compassion.” Compassion is our
response to interdependence, to our interconnectivity, to our shared humanity, to our shared being-ness with other beings. Compassion is our living out of what Thich Naht Hanh calls our “interbeing.” |
Given that today’s science holds interdependence and interconnectivity as foundations to all bodily and ecological relationships, it would seem that Eckhart has hit on something primal and profound: Our capacity for compassion. In the Jewish tradition compassion is the | “Tara Talks: Remembering Compassion,
with Tara Brach.” YouTube |
“secret” name for God. Jesus let this secret out of the bag in Luke 6:26: “Be you compassionate as your Creator in heaven is
compassionate.” |
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God…Including the Unanmaeable God, pp. 47-49. Banner image: Fire. Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash |
Queries for Contemplation
Does your work “burn”? Is
humanity (sometimes) a “reminder of God” for you? |
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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 |
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, Wednesday, March 29, 11:00am PT. Learn more 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. |
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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