The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox |
Words from the Wise on
Compassion
and Justice 10/24/2023 |
Here follows some food for thought and action, for our hearts and minds, about our capacity for compassion. |
From Elie Wiesel: One thing is sure: man today must be obsessed; if he is, there is still hope. If he is
passionate, meaning com-passionate…. there is hope. |
Residents of Gaza describe their families’ experience of living through the Israeli bombardment with no way to escape. PBS NewsHour |
“In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see.” Surely this applies to the television news we watch these days from Gaza, where water, food, and shelter are in short supply and there is no electricity, even for hospitals, while bombs keep falling? When someone suffers, and it is not you, he comes first. His very suffering gives him priority. “To watch over a man who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.” Elie Wiesel, of course, was a concentration camp survivor. |
“What a Gazan Should Do During an Israeli Air Strike” Award-winning author Mosab Abu Toha reads his poem, published in The New York Review of Books, 5/1/2023. | From the prophet Isaiah: The wine is
mourning, the vine is pining away,
all glad hearts are sighing.
The merry tambourines are silent,
the sound of reveling is over,
the merry lyre is
silent. |
There is lamentation in the streets: no wine,
joy is lost,
gladness is banished from the country.
Nothing but rubble in the city. (Is 24:7-9, 11,
12) “Nothing but rubble in the city.” What do 1.3 million Gazans do after this war and its bombings? Where do they live? Who pays to put up buildings and apartments and how long does that take? |
Rabbi Heschel understands justice as awakening to injustice when he defines it as “the active process of remedying or preventing what should arouse the sense of injustice.” Justice is aroused by passionate caring. He continues, “the urgency of justice urges an urgency of aiding and
saving the victims of oppression.” |
“Bombing Kids Is Not Self Defense.” Protestor at a Columbus, OH demonstration, 10/21/2023. Photo by Becker1999 on Flicker. |
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, pp. 277, 270, 289f.
Banner Image: Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal area in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Photo by Naaman Omar on Wikimedia Commons. Queries for Contemplation How do you see these meditations on compassion and justice applying to yourself and your culture and to the events going on in Ukraine and the Middle East today? |
Responses are welcomed. To read the Comments or join in the conversation by adding your own, please click HERE 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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______________________________________________________________________________________ UPCOMING EVENTS See Matthew Fox's full calendar 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. |
Join Matthew Fox as he delivers a Lecture and Q&A: “Towards a New Mythology: New & Ancient Names for God from Mystical Ancestors and Contemporary Science (& Fit for Some Atheists too)” as part of the Unitarian Universalist of Berkeley Lawrence Lecture Series. Friday, November 10, 2023, 7:00pm-8:30pm PT. 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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Inspired by this post? Share your insights on Universeodon, Instagram or Twitter using the hashtag #RevDrMatthewFox and tag Matt with @RevDrMatthewFox FOLLOW MATTHEW FOX: |
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