The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers |
Welcome to the Via Creativa !!! |
08/07/2023
by Rick Reich-Kuykendall |
This week we will be exploring the Via Creativa by looking at certain key quotations where Matthew
has expressed his views on this path. In the book, Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality, he writes: |
All four paths of creation spirituality find their apex in Path Three, the Via Creativa. Paths One and Two lead up to it
(we create out of what we have beheld of light and darkness) and Path Four flows out of the Via Creativa, since we put our moral imaginations and creativity to service and compassion. | Remember these from summer camp? A simple craft, the God’s Eye, can re-activate the Via Creativa in you. Video by SophiesWorldVideo. |
God is experienced through acts of creativity and
co-creation (Via Creativa). It is our creativity which is the full meaning of humanity’s being an “image of God.”
Until art is allowed its full and proper place in spiritual meditation, meditation itself will remain elitist, a complex and convoluted exercise for an
elite minority of professional pray-ers.
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Making a mandala with sand or cornmeal, is an effective way to meditate while making art. Photo by LettieLepidoptera. Wikimedia Commons. | Liturgy means “the work of the people.”
Art is the basic form of meditation in the creation-centered tradition.
We are to be mothers of God.
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CREATION SPIRITUALITY AND ASCETICISM The creation tradition criticizes asceticism as not being the correct way to carry on God’s creative energy, for what evidence do we possess, after all, that God is herself ascetic? Rather the evidence we have from creation’s beauty and richness, is that our God is a God in love with beauty, with delight and the sharing of it. Creation Spirituality prefers the aesthetic to the ascetic. The vocation to put beauty into a troubled world carries plenty of asceticism in its wake. |
See Matthew Fox, Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality, pp. 57-58.
See also Fox, A New Reformation, p.
86.
And Fox, Original Blessing, pp. 175, 191, 192, 198, 225, 205, and Chapters 17 and 18. Banner image: A quilt on display inside Quilting Studio, a quilter's supply shop in the San Angel neighborhood of Mexico City. Quilting is a time-honored method of expressing
religious devotion, in both representative and symbolic images. Photo by Thelmadatter. Wikimedia Commons. |
Queries for Contemplation Where in your life do you express the Via Creativa most clearly? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field. |
Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
To encapsulate the life and work of Matthew Fox would be a daunting task for any save his
colleague Dr. Charles Burack, who had the full cooperation of his subject. Fox has devoted 50 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His more than 40 books, translated into 78 languages, are inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and have awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. Essential Writings begins by exploring the influences on Fox’s life and spirituality, then presents selections from all Fox’s major works in 10
sections.
“The critical insights, the creative connections, the centrality of Matthew Fox’s writings and teaching are second to none for the radical renewal of Christianity.” ~~ Richard Rohr, OFM. | |
A New Reformation: Creation Spirituality & The Transformation of
Christianity
A modern-day theologian’s call for the radical transformation of Christianity that will allow us to move once again from the hollow trappings of organized religion to genuine spirituality. A New Reformation echoes the Reformation initiated by Martin Luther in 1517 and
offers a new vision of Christianity that values the Earth, honors the feminine, and respects science and deep ecumenism.
“This is a deep and forceful book….With prophetic insight, Matthew Fox reveals what has corrupted religion in the West and the therapy for its healing.” ~Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography | |
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar
HERE |
Join Matthew Fox and Brian Swimme in a new 7-week online course hosted by The Shift Network: "Science, Spirituality & the Noosphere: Deepen the Meaning of Your Life & the Power You Hold to Create Fulfillment & Happiness," beginning August 8. Register
HERE and receive access to a free introductory video. 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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