The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox |
The Sad and Perilous
Happenings in the Middle East Today 10/11/2023 |
The horrors of war and the potential for evil in humanity are on clear display once again, this time in Israel and Palestine. It is as important to meditate on humanity’s capacity for evil as it is to meditate on our capacity
for goodness and divinization. |
Both derive after all from our unique capacity to give birth. Our powers of creativity and imagination can be put to use “to create or to destroy,” as Dag Hammarskjöld used to say. And today’s news seems all about destroying. |
Mutually assured loss: “Hamas Threatens Hostage Executions as Israel Prepares ‘Mass Offensive.’” The Wall Street Journal |
It appears that Hamas has started the fight but in many ways they are continuing a battle that has been waging for decades and has now gone over the top with ISIS-like killings of innocent victims on social media and television. Then there are the Israeli threats to cut off all basic supplies to Gaza and invade Gaza, one of the poorest and most overcrowded places in the world where many of the citizens are not in league with Hamas’s brutal tactics and the average income is $1200 per year. It sure seems like a lose-lose proposition ahead for all parties and especially innocent citizens on both sides. It brings up profound trauma memories from the past both for Jews and for Palestinians. A veritable pit of sorrow and loss, anguish and
grief. |
How was it possible: MSNBC‘s Alex Witt interviews inter/national security experts John Brennan, James Stavridis, and Ben Rhodes on Israeli intel failure in the Hamas attack. | It is hard to surmise how the highly vaunted Israeli military was not prepared for hostilities like this, since many in the know predicted that the very real battle for the soul of Jewish democracy that has played out on the streets of Israeli cities for many |
months rendered Israel vulnerable and subject to attack. The ailing democracy of Israel, brought on in large part by an out-of-control prime minister trying
to end the balance of the judiciary vis a vis parliament while he is undergoing a trial for corruption, has come home to roost. He and his super right cabinet seem to have put all
their eggs into the basket of their small-minded ideological battles and forgotten the basic tasks of governing which include law, justice, protecting the citizenry, and heeding the peoples’ wishes for maintaining an authentic democracy. And now this. May wiser hearts and minds prevail. |
See Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.
Banner Image: Shockwaves around the world on October 8,
2023. L: Pro-Palestinian protest in Istanbul, Turkey. Photo by VOA on Wikimedia Commons. R: Pro-Israeli protest in Berlin, Germany. Photo by Leonhard Lenz on Wikimedia Commons. |
Queries for Contemplation What are your thoughts and concerns under the new violence being perpetrated in the Middle East? What lessons can be learned amidst the grief and carnage? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field. |
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author
Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics |
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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, 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 and other speakers in the 27th Howard Thurman Convocation and Reception, recognizing the recent designation of The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples as an historical San Francisco landmark, founded by Dr. Howard Thurman and Dr. Alfred Fisk as the nation’s first
interracial, interfaith congregation. Sunday, October 15, 2023, 3:00pm PT. Learn more HERE. Matthew Fox will be featured as the guest speaker at the Creation Spirituality Communities online course, Introduction to Creation Spirituality 6-Week Course, led by Instructor Rev. Mary Reaman. Tuesday, October 17, 4:00 PM 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. Register 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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