The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers |
Celebrating the Holiness of
Mahatma Gandhi 05/31/2023 |
Remembering the courage and willingness to sacrifice displayed by Daniel Ellsberg in yesterday’s DM, other issues around holiness arise. For example, how it was the courage and
sacrifice of young draft resisters and their willingness to go to jail rather than fight in a war they found immoral, that inspired then middle-aged Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers at great personal risk. |
That same spirit is alive with many today resisting environmental degradation and taking on governments and fossil fuel conglomerates in doing so. It was also very alive in the civil rights movement when
so many teenagers and adults braved | In 1967, after conferring with Martin Luther King, boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused induction into the armed forces, was stripped of his titles -- and empowered Black
soldiers in Vietnam. Excerpt from Ken Burns' PBS documentary on Ali. |
marching in the streets amidst fire hoses, police on horses beating people, attack dogs, being arrested and sent to jail–all in nonviolent protest. The same holds for those resisting
dictatorships such as the nonviolent protesters in the Philippines who brought down Marco’s dictatorship. The holiness of such actions is evident in the courage and willingness to sacrifice that accompany them. How central Mahatma Gandhi was to the entire history of nonviolent protest! And how central Jesus was to the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. |
“Mohandas Gandhi, the Power of Nonviolence.” Mini-documentary on the life and nonviolent teaching of Mahatma Gandhi. NBC News Learn | Catholic monk Bede Griffiths, who lived in a Christian ashram in India for over 50 years and wrote many important books on Hinduism and Christianity, tells us that Gandhi was the first one to translate Jesus’ |
teachings into truly real practical and political application. His practice of nonviolence and nonviolent civil disobedience does exactly that and of course it has influenced Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, the Filipino overthrow of Marcos and so much more current history. This is how Bede puts it: Mahatma Gandhi himself was deeply
influenced by the gospel, not only directly through the New Testament but still more indirectly through Ruskin and Tolstoy. Thus the social gospel of Christianity… has been incorporated one must say into Hinduism [and] has undergone a most significant transformation…. |
Gandhi has shown how the principles of the Sermon on the Mount can be applied to social and political life in a way which no one before him had done: he made the beatitudes a matter of practical concern in a way which few Christians have realized. | Fr. Gerard Rodricks SJ (Bombay Province) outlines Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings on Christianity and the Sermon on the Mount. |
Gandhi, who was not a Christian but a Hindu, was a deep ecumenist way ahead of his
time. Applying Jesus’ teachings to his essentially Hindu culture, he overthrew a quasi “Christian” empire nonviolently. |
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations, p. 248. Banner Image: Mahatma Gandhi, as part of the Indian independence movement, encouraged people to wear clothes made of homespun cotton yarn rather than turning over India’s cotton crops to the British. Wikimedia
Commons. |
Queries for Contemplation What other examples of nonviolent resistance can you name besides those mentioned here? How does that and Gandhi’s example and teachings fill you with hope and deepen your own courage? |
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Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations As Matthew Fox notes, when an aging Albert Einstein was asked if he had any regrets, he replied, “I wish I had read more of the mystics earlier in my life.” The 365 writings in Christian Mystics represent a wide-ranging sampling of these readings for
modern-day seekers of all faiths — or no faith. The visionaries quoted range from Julian of Norwich to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Thomas Merton to Dorothee Soelle and Thomas Berry. “Our world is in crisis, and we need road maps that can ground us I wisdom, inspire us to action, and help us gather our talents in service of
compassion and justice. This revolutionary book does just that. Matthew Fox takes some of the most profound spiritual teachings of the West and translates them into practical daily mediations. Study and practice these teachings. Take what’s in this book and teach it to the youth because the new generation cannot afford to suffer the spirit and ethical illiteracy of the past.” — Adam Bucko, spiritual activist and co-founder of the Reciprocity Foundation for Homeless
Youth | |
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 as he discusses “The A.W.E. Project – Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human” in an online Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat, Thursday, June 15, 4:00-6:00 pm
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: https://parliamentofreligions.org/ |
Creation Spirituality Conversations |
Tikkun Magazine releases a new Interview of Matthew Fox by Andrew Harvey regarding Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality (Orbis, 2022) edited by Charles Burack. Read the interview HERE. | |
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