The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers |
Celebrating Our—and the Universe’s–Powers of
Creativity |
09/12/2023 _______________________________________________ |
Yesterday we meditated on our divinization expressing itself in creativity and birthing. Other people striving to be more human have waxed eloquent about the same realities. |
Dorothy Day put it this way: God is our Creator. God made us in His image and likeness. Therefore we are creators….The joy of creativeness should be ours. |
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Is the joy of creativeness ours? Are we teaching this in school? In churches, synagogues, mosques, and media? Dag Hammarskjold, the second secretary general of
the United Nations and a mystic in his own right and who was very attuned to and knowledgeable of Meister Eckhart, asks this question: “Do you create or do you destroy?” Embedded in the question is the truth that our creativity can be put to good use or malicious use. How are we doing? |
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer trailer traces the moral dilemmas before and after the creation of the atomic bomb. SWFT | Albert Einstein proposed that “the greatest formal talent is worthless if it does not serve a creativity which is capable of shaping a cosmos.” Are we helping shape a cosmos? Is that what good parenting is |
about? Good teaching? Healthy politics and healthy media? Healthy theater and art and movies? Healthy citizenship?
Hildegard of Bingen celebrated how “Divinity is aimed at humanity” and then she went about demonstrating it through amazing creative works including music and visions put into poetry and
paintings, mandalas and books and even cooking recipes. |
Hans Denck, a 16th-century reformer in Germany who worked with peasants and farmers and not so much the literate classes, says: The Word was in people for this purpose that it might divinize them….The Word had to become man in Jesus
for this reason, that people both in spirit and in the flesh, from within and without, behind and |
“Viriditas” (Greening). Instrumentalist Elizabeth Gaver accompanies mezzo-soprano Agnethe Christensen in a series of Hildegard of Bingen’s songs praising the Divine life force in creation. |
before,
and all places might have testimony (of this goal of divinization.). _______________________________________________ |
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Original
Blessing, pp. 178f. See also Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet. Banner Image: “Hubble Sees the Force Awakening in a Newborn Star — In the center of the image, partially obscured by a dark, Jedi-like cloak of dust, a newborn star shoots twin jets of superheated gas out from its rotation axis into space at more than 100,000 miles per hour as a sort of birth announcement to the universe. ” Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI _______________________________________________ |
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| To view today's video, please click the image. You will be taken to today's post on the Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox website, where you can
see the meditation in a larger version and also view and post your Comments. In the sharing that follows, a kind of community is developing around the DM.
If you can't reach today's post on the website directly, click HERE.
If you can't reach Matthew's video on the website, try his Vimeo channel HERE.
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_______________________________________________ Queries for Contemplation Which statements here speak most deeply to your own experience? Why do you think that is so? _______________________________________________ |
Responses are
welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
to go to our
website and scroll down to the Comments field. _______________________________________________ |
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 |
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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 |
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_______________________________________________ Upcoming Events See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE |
Join Matthew
Fox as he discusses “The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine” in an Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat, Thursday, September 14, 4:00-6:00 pm PT. To register, click HERE. _______________________________________________ |
Join Matthew
Fox and a speaker’s panel for brief Creation Spirituality presentations, music, songs, prayer, and refreshments in a free online and on-site Celebration of Matthew Fox's donation of papers to the University of Colorado, Boulder. University of Colorado Boulder Libraries – Center for British & Irish Studies – 5th Floor Thursday, September 21, 4:00pm-6:00pm PT RSVP HERE
for on-site attendance only. Virtual attendance link will be forthcoming. _______________________________________________ |
Join Matthew
Fox as he discusses “A New Reformation: Creation Spirituality and the Transformation of Christianity” in an Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat, Thursday, October 19, 4:00-6:00 pm PT. To register, click HERE. _______________________________________________
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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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