The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox |
Sanders on Connecting with Father Sky
& the Holiness of Creation 09/23/2023 |
We are meditating with Scott Russell Sanders on our connection to Father Sky. He recalls a particular moment on emerging from his car one night. |
I climbed out of the car with a greeting on my lips, but the sky hushed me. From the black bowl of space countless fiery lights shone down, each one a sun or a swirl of suns. The whole brilliant host of them enough to strike me dumb. |
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He cites D. H. Lawrence about how our “deepest religious need” is to make “direct contact with the elemental life of the cosmos, mountain-life, cloud-life, thunder-life, air-life, earth-life, sun-life. To come into immediate felt contact, and so derive energy, powers, and a dark sort of joy.” No matter how clever our human works, “they will never satisfy this hunger. Only direct experience of Creation will do.” |
The loving, joyful work of gardening in cooperation with and appreciation for nature. Cornelia’s “Mini-Permaculture Oasis” in Findhorn, Scotland. Huw Richards | And here is where Sanders finds his faith. “Faith in what? In our capacity for decent and loving work, in the healing energy of wildness, in the holiness
of Creation.” He cites Thoreau: “Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity, so that |
not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.” And Sanders tells us what it means to reconnect with Father Sky: That the universe exists at all, that it obeys laws, that those laws have brought forth galaxies and stars and planets and—on one planet at least—life, and out of life, consciousness, and out of consciousness these words, this breath, is a chain of wonders. I dangle from that chain and hold on
tight.* |
A chain of wonders to which we cling and dangle amidst the holi-ness of creation, the vastness and immensity of it, and to which we belong in a most intimate way, and about which we can write and sing and dance and rhapsodize and thank. Father Sky returns. We learn gratitude. |
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* Scott Russell Sanders, Hunting for Hope: A Father’s Journeys (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), pp. 54, 39f.
Adapted from
Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 3, 13f.
Banner Image: The glory of the aurora borealis reflected in a lake, in Portage, Indiana. Photo by McKayla Crump on Unsplash |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
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Queries for Contemplation Do you feel born from a chain of wonders? What follows
from that? Are you holding on tight? |
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental
relationship with nature, to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God |
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______________________________________________________________________________________ UPCOMING EVENTS See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE Join Matthew Fox online as he lectures and responds to questions on his book on Meister Eckhart, A Spirituality Named Compassion. The event is hosted by the Weber Retreat and Conference Center. Thursday, October 12, 2023 , 4:00pm-5:30pm PT. Learn more HERE. 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. Join Matthew Fox for two days of learning and practice as he speaks at the online Stanford Medicine Contemplation by Design Summit, Wednesday and Thursday, November 1-2, 2023. Wed 4:00pm-5:30pm PT – Lecture, Q&A – Grounding & Expanding, Psyche & Cosmos, Friendship with Self, Others, the Universe: Toward a “Cosmic Religion” (Einstein) and Human/Planetary Survival Thu 7:30am-8:15am – Guided Practice – Finding the Divine (the “I am”, the Christ, the Buddha Nature, the Tselem or
Image of God) Within Thu 12:00pm-1:30pm – Workshop – Recovering the Sacred Masculine and the Divine Feminine 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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