The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers |
Art, Healing, Learning Discipline for Freedom, Play & Loving of
Enemies 07/18/2023 |
Healing dualisms can occur in art as meditation. M. C. Richards comments: |
Life is bipolar. Everything contains its opposite…. Because of the law of polarity, if we devote ourselves too exclusively to one pole, our world will tend to go flat. It is not a formula we are involved in, but a mystery. The centering process is itself dialectical and can unite what we inherit as separate. The potter pushes the clay and is pushed by it: the writer writes ideas, but is also formed by them. The same holds for students (who are also teachers) and teachers (who are
| “Snow,” a haiku and image by MC Richards. From the collection of Julia Connor. Published with
permission. |
also students). From this dialectical process, the birthing actually takes place. Richards in her writing …pushes as far as I can push, to birth and death, life
and death, getting them centered, unseparated…. Always I try to go toward, not formulation, but organism. Art as meditation teaches us the “discipline of freedom.” Freedom is not the same as “anything goes”–it is “freedom
with order,” as Pablo Casals so fervently insisted. A freedom born of discipline. Says M. C.: |
“A tactile meditation on the art of pottery | Rain Pot: In the hands of a ceramicist-animator, pottery is a cyclical, elemental art form, deeply connected to the rhythms of
nature.” Aeon Video
| Pottery has helped my poetry because I was less instructed in the handicraft and therefore less inhibited. I permitted myself a kind of freedom in the use of clay which I would not have known how to find in the verbal
world. |
This freedom to play is won by hard, determined work. It is the freedom to feel again. We must be able to have fun, we must feel enjoyment, and sometimes long imprisonment has made us numb and sluggish. And then we find out that there are, paradoxically, disciplines which create in us capacities which allow us to seek out freedom…. We become brighter, more energy flows through us, our limbs rise, our spirit comes alive in our
tissues. |
We learn to respond and to yield. We redeem (our energies) not by wrestling with them and managing them, for we have not the wisdom nor the strength to do that, but by letting the light to shine upon them. Our “responses are values,” says Richards, born of discipline. Discipline is hard and sometimes unpleasant but this too art as meditation teaches us—to persevere. | |
The discipline comes in when we have to pay attention to what we don’t like, aren’t interested in, don’t understand, mistrust… when we have to read the poetry of our enemies—within or without.* |
*From M. C. Richards, Centering in
Pottery, Poetry and the Person, pp.96, 116, 5, 22, 35, 64. Adapted from Matthew Fox, Wrestling with the Prophets, pp. 232-238. See also Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet. And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion. Banner Image “Offering Bowl.” Pottery by the late poet/storyteller/artist/permaculture designer Bonnie Ann Burnett. Published with permission. |
Queries for Contemplation Discipline and paying attention to what we don’t like within or without: How important is that on your spiritual journeying? |
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Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life In one of his foundational works, Fox engages with some of history’s greatest mystics, philosophers, and prophets in profound and hard-hitting essays on such varied topics as Eco-Spirituality, AIDS, homosexuality, spiritual feminism, environmental revolution, Native American spirituality, Christian mysticism, Art and Spirituality, Art as Meditation, Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism and more | |
Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet Because creativity is the key to
both our genius and beauty as a species but also to our capacity for evil, we need to teach creativity and to teach ways of steering this God-like power in directions that promote love of life (biophilia) and not love of death (necrophilia). Pushing well beyond the bounds of conventional Christian doctrine, Fox’s focus on creativity attempts nothing less than to shape a new ethic.
“Matt Fox is a pilgrim who seeks a
path into the church of tomorrow. Countless numbers will be happy to follow his lead.” –Bishop John Shelby Spong, author, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Living in Sin | |
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the
substratum of all compassionate activity. “Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar
HERE |
Join Matthew Fox and Brian Swimme in a free online event hosted by The Shift Network: “Hope for Humanity’s Future: Science, Spirituality & the Noosphere: Find Deeper Meaning in Our Spiritual Traditions With Illuminating Insights in Science & Technology.” Saturday, July 22, 10:00am PT. Register HERE. Join Matthew Fox for a Cosmic Mass and Panel Forum at the 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions - A Call to Conscience: Defending Freedom & Human Rights, August 14-18 in Chicago, IL Wed., 8/16,
7:00pm CT - The Cosmic Mass - Honoring Gaia, Solidarity for Our Earth Thurs., 8/17, 1:00pm CT – Panel and Response to The Cosmic Mass Register HERE. |
Creation Spirituality Conversations |
Aaron Perry hosts Matthew Fox on the Y On Earth podcast, on “Hildegard von Bingen & Her “Viriditas,” sharing profound wisdom and deep insights about the essential importance of our relationship with Mother Earth, our celebration of the Divine Feminine, and our connection with Creation Spirituality, drawing upon centuries of knowledge and wisdom from indigenous and
mystical traditions world-wide… particularly from the Rhineland Mystic Movement of the medieval European Renaissance, and a most extraordinary woman at its helm: Hildegard von Bingen. | |
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