The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers |
Week of 8/7-12/2023:
Exploring the Via Creativa 8/13/2023
By Daily Meditation Team |
August 7,
2023. Welcome to the Via Creativa!!!
In Essential Writings, we read the following quotation from Matthew Fox: All four paths of creation spirituality find their apex in Path Three, the Via Creativa. Paths One and Two lead up to it (we create out of what we have beheld of light and darkness) and Path Four flows out of the Via Creativa…. In Original Blessing, he says:The creation tradition criticizes
asceticism as not being the correct way to carry on God’s creative energy, for what evidence do we possess, after all, that God is herself ascetic? Rather the evidence we have from creation’s beauty and richness, is that our God is a God in love with beauty, with delight and the sharing of it.
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August 8, 2023. Myths of Artistic Angst and More
Matthew addresses this theme of the “tortured artist:” Recent Western history has denigrated the artist, and created
myths of alienation and isolation—myths about the ‘beatnik’ artist, the alcoholic artist, the ‘madman’ artist. Many of these myths indeed become self-fulfilling prophecies, for artists cannot survive without a living cosmology and few were able to find one in society itself. He further tells us: Creation spirituality does not just theorize about our being co-creators and fellow artists with God, it insists that to enter into art as meditation is the primary prayer form for healthy
adults. |
“The Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh (1889), was painted during the artist’s stay in an asylum and showed his view of the cosmos as a living, dynamic place. Wikimedia Commons. August 9, 2023. Creation Spirituality Honors Native Peoples and Creativity
Rick Reich-Kuykendall, who is stepping in for Matthew during his sabbatical, tells us that one of the reasons
Matthew was first silenced, then dismissed from the Dominican Order, was that, besides being a feminist, calling God ‘Mother,’ and de-emphasizing original sin, he worked too closely with Native Americans. Case in point: among his faculty, at various times, were Buck Ghosthorse and Native American Elder Jose Hobday. About the place of Native Americans in the Creation Spirituality tradition, Matthew writes: Creation Spirituality, because it honors the ancient rituals of
native peoples and listens to their wisdom, because it teaches participants to rediscover the empowerment that comes from ritual, and because it places ritual in a cosmological context, has much to offer us helping religion move beyond verbosity to living ritual. |
August 10, 2023. The Personal Arts, Art-As-Meditation, Cosmology, and Ritual
In this meditation, we explore the various nuances of creativity: personal arts, art as
a meditation, and the meaning of ritual. About art-as-meditation, Matthew says: Art as meditation is the primary form of prayer in the creation-centered tradition, and to practice it and undergo it opens the door to the praxis of deep ecumenism. He also reminds us that art is for the sake of healing.The new cosmology reminds us that instead of art being for art’s sake, art is for creativity’s sake, that is for the sake of evolving and for healing people and the Earth. He also
reminds us that "Ritual is not performance art, it is participatory prayer." |
In this 2002 interview with recently deceased Sinead O’Connor, she speaks about how song is, for her, like prayer, and that it can be a link to God or the Holy Spirit or Jah. BBC Archive August 11, 2023. Art as a Spiritual Process
In this meditation, we explore Matthew’s thoughts as revealed in his book, Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet. He tells us: I often ‘get lost’ and get calmed while writing or while
preparing a lecture, or while lecturing. I have deep spiritual experiences while working. This is art as meditation also. He further explains: Art as meditation is simply entering into the artistic process, not to produce a work of art but to be with the process. Finally, The artist has realized that the alternative to creativity is worse than death. It is boredom. A death of the Spirit. A soul-death. A concealment of one’s truth. Hell. |
August 12, 2023. Beauty Lies at the Heart of the Spiritual Journey
In Essential Writings, Matthew says, “Beauty, and our role in co-creating it, lies at the heart of the spiritual journey.” Matthew also writes about spirituality and homosexuality. He teaches: The universal
urge for diversity does not extend to everything else except sexuality. It extends across the board, to everything, including homosexual and transgendered persons. Also, The Black Madonna, the Great Mother, is not homophobic. She welcomes the diversity of sexual preferences that are also part of creation, human and more-than-human. |
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 | |
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 | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar
HERE |
Join Matthew Fox and Brian Swimme in a new 7-week online course hosted by The Shift Network: "Science, Spirituality & the Noosphere: Deepen the Meaning of Your Life & the Power You Hold to Create Fulfillment & Happiness," beginning August 8. Register HERE until 8/22 and receive access to all recorded classes, plus receive access to a free introductory video. |
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 |
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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