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Ash Wednesday Meets Valentine’s Day: Lessons from Kabir & Sr. Dot

02/14/2024

Today is both Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day.  An interesting combination.  

On the one hand, we are reminded of our mortality; and on the other, we are reminded of our powers of love. 

Kabir, the fifteenth century mystic from India, has written a poem that speaks of love and death, eros and thanatos:

Love and loss: Dyptik Company, Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival, Palestine. Photo by Ahmad Ohdeh on Unsplash

Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think… and think… while you are alive.
What you call ‘salvation’ belongs to the time before death.
If you don’t break your ropes while you are alive,
Do you think
ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten—
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next you will have the face
      of satisfied desire.*

“Women Dancing around a Bonfire” by Sister Dorothy Stang, SNDN. Contributed by Matthew Fox.

Sister Dorothy was a person who “jumped into life while she was alive” and “made love with the divine now” by following a path of compassion and justice for the poor.

Didn’t Jesus say: “I have come that you may have life and have it in abundance”? 

Sister Dot’s brother David wrote me a letter on her Feast Day that I share here.

In December of 2004 I received a phone call from Dot. She said, ”Dave, I’m going to receive a Human Rights Award from the National Organization of Brazilian Lawyers, would you come down and receive it with me? I want the family to know what I’m doing down here.” I immediately said yes. I invited Marguerite [his wife] and she said yes.

We arrived in the middle of December 2004. We stayed with Dot in a Hotel in a rough area of Belem in one room. In the middle of the night, I heard Dot in the bathroom washing her underwear and then hanging it on the bar of the shower room. The next 

A close friend of Dorothy Stang talks about her life and legacy on the 10th anniversary of her martyrdom 

morning Dot got up early went for a swim and then put on the underwear she washed the night before. Dot always lived very simply.  

To be continued.

*Robert Bly, The Kabir Book: Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir: Versions by Robert Bly (Boston: Beacon, 1991).

See Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, pp. 59, 89, 92, 103-107.

Banner Image: “Heart Cloud.” Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Statement of Solidarity with Israel/Palestine.

Queries for Contemplation

Have you learned to “jump into life while you are alive” and that “salvation belongs to the time before death”?

Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, or read other comments and enter into dialog, please click HERE to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field.

Recommended Reading

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

In the Beginning There Was Joy: A Cosmic Celebration for Kids of All Ages

The first book in the Father Fox’s Fantastical Fables series tells the story of the big bang and how humans fit into the awesome, fantastical, cosmic picture! With artwork curated from illustrators around the world, this book expresses the joy and wonder of all peoples and cultures, planting seeds of respect, cooperation and hope to work together for the healing of our planet.

"This delicious book for children of all ages celebrates joy as the essential truth of reality." - 

Andrew Harvey, Author of The Hope and Radical Regeneration

"I absolutely LOVED reading this beautiful, creative, stirring story—a charming, whimsical, powerful, parable." - Robert Holden, Author of Happiness NOW! and Higher Purpose

Receive a 20% discount when you buy this and one other book from Matthew Fox’s store! Use Promo Code 20% at checkout.

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Creation Spirituality Conversations

Matthew Fox speaks on "What the Mystics Tell Us About Dying" at the 2024 Symposium on Death and Bereavement Studies. To listen, click the video thumbnail at right. 

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