The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers |
Courage = Trust: The Testimony
of Fred Shuttlesworth 05/19/2023 |
We are meditating on holiness in our time and what the signs are that reveal it. And Dr. King’s message that we must love something more than the fear of death if we are to live
fully. Surely holiness has something to do with living fully and generously. |
We spoke yesterday of the love that brought courage—a “big heart”—alive for so many in base communities in Central
and South America responding to the call to preserve the rainforest and the people there. I am blessed that I had the | A brief bio-documentary about Pedro Casadáliga, missionary bishop, poet and writer serving in the Brazilian Amazon. Video by Mathew Paul Vattamattam |
privilege to know Bishop Casigalida and his co-workers in the Amazon as
well as Sister Dorothy Stang who died a martyr there and was a student in our ICCS program. Surely the civil rights movement was such a call also. Fred Shuttlesworth was a street minister and leader during the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama. His life was threatened regularly. He was beaten by chains three times by the Ku Klux Klan, his two children were put in jail by sheriff Bill O’Conner. And his house was blown up—with him
in it—by the KKK. |
Brief bio-documentary on civil rights leader Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., co-founded the SCLC and refused to waver even after
he was brutally attacked. HISTORY | I was invited to dialog with him at the civil rights museum which if I remember correctly was located across the street from the church where six black girls perished when a bomb exploded in the church basement on a Sunday
morning. |
The topic Fred and I were to discuss was “Racism and the Environment.” I was struck how this civil rights warrior was still at it in his eighties and was turning his attention to the new topic of environmental justice. I was pleased that creation spirituality was in his horizon. We sat down to share a sandwich before our public dialog and I said to him, “Fred, I have a question for you. Where do you get your courage?” |
He answered: You can call it courage
if you want, but I don’t. I call it trust. When they blew the roof off my house and I walked out alive I said to myself, ‘they cannot kill me. Oh, some day they might kill my body; but they cannot kill my soul and they cannot kill the movement.’ | A memorial of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth after his passing in 2011. WLWT. |
What a lesson! What a teacher. If you want to know about courage, hang out with
courageous people whenever possible. Courage is about trust. And trust is the primary meaning of faith. |
See Matthew Fox, “Trust,” in Fox, Original Blessing, pp. 81-88. See also Matthew Fox, “Bishop Casalgalida,” in Fox, The Pope’s War, pp. 45f., 54-62. Banner Image: Martin Luther King Jr. (left), Fred Shuttlesworth (center) and Ralph
Abernathy, pivotal leaders of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, hold a press conference in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Photo (c) AP Images through U.S. Embassy The Hague on Flickr. |
Queries for Contemplation
How do you see the relationship between courage and trust? between courage and holiness? |
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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 | |
The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved
The Pope’s War offers a provocative look at three decades of corruption in the Catholic Church, focusing on Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. The final section in the book focuses on birthing a truly catholic christianity.
“This book should be read by everybody, not
only for its ferocious courage, but also for its vision for what needs to be saved from the destructive forces that threaten authentic Christianity.” ~ Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope.
“In the gripping The Pope’s War, Matthew Fox takes an unwavering look at the layers of corruption in the Catholic Church, holding moral truth against power.” — Jason Berry, author of Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in
the Papacy of John Paul II | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar
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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