The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox |
Watch for Matthew Fox's video meditation -- now appearing every Monday! |
Two Days of Celebration this Week: Juneteenth & Summer Solstice 06/20/2024 |
This week we celebrate two days of celebration—Juneteenth and the Summer Solstice. |
The Feast Day of Juneteenth honors the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, and resilience in the face of 400 years of enslavement and ongoing oppression of Black people. Slaves ripped from their land, culture and religion; the Middle Passage; hundreds |
|
of years of slavery; the Civil War; Jim Crow; no voting rights; segregation; ongoing racism. We are reminded also of 500 years of ethnic and cultural genocide toward Indigenous peoples. Within 50 years of Columbus’ landing, the indigenous populations in America dropped
from c. 80 million to 10 million. Today, only 1.6 million Native Americans live in the U.S., according to the 2010 census. A wise African American teacher, Broderick Rodell, says that slavery traumatized ALL of us–blacks and whites. “Black Lives Matter” represents a new and healing story. “Native Lives Matter”
also. |
How is Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome different from PTSD? Dr. Joy DeGruy explains how trauma can be passed on generation after generation. AJ+ | Healing medicine can be found in Genesis 1, which celebrates the
goodness of existence; life; the world; earth; ourselves. “Original Goodness” or Original Blessing. The Earth, cosmos and ourselves are “very good.” (Genesis 1) A return to goodness inspires a worldview worth living for. |
When people are in trauma, they don’t think real straight. We do strange things, like making nuclear weapons to destroy the world and one another–and keep making them. We pretend climate change is not happening; or science does not matter. Or choose new idols, strange gods and addictions such as power, money, drugs, alcohol, work, sex, religion, capitalism, etc. The Feast Day of Summer Solstice reminds us of our place in the universe, for our North Pole has its maximum tilt toward the sun on this solstice. We are invited at this season to reconnect psyche to cosmos. The new creation story from science reminds us that we are born of 13.8 billion years of cosmic labor; we have been invited to a very special
place that we call Earth, our home. |
This awareness empowers us to face the truth of our culture and how its religion and education have often separated our psyche from the cosmos; humans from Earth; spirit from matter; soul from body. Indeed, James Joyce described |
Celebrating creation, destroying creation: Disney’s Tree of Life, a 2000+-year-old baobab imported from Africa, dies and is replaced. Mousetrapnews. |
one
of his characters as living “a short distance from his body.” Trauma often separates people from their bodies. Climate change and climate destruction are part of this same trauma, our forgetfulness of Mother Earth and narcissistic preoccupation with our own human agenda. |
See Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
and Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
and Fox, Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
and Fox, In the Beginning There Was Joy: A Cosmic Celebration for Kids of All Ages
Banner Image: Juneteenth Emancipation Day Celebration, June 19, 1900, Texas. Wikimedia Commons |
|
See Matthew's original YouTube reflection on this topic HERE
(scroll to the bottom of the essay).
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. |
Queries for Contemplation |
How do you recognize the trauma of slavery and of native genocide at work still in our culture and our souls? How does the Solstice awaken you to your place and our place in the universe? Be with that connection, let it speak to you. |
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 |
|
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation
Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
|
|
Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Selected with an Introduction by Charles Burack
To encapsulate the life and work
of Matthew Fox would be a daunting task for any save his colleague Dr. Charles Burack, who had the full cooperation of his subject. Fox has devoted 50 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His more than 40 books, translated into 78 languages, are inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and have awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. Essential Writings begins by exploring the influences on Fox’s life and spirituality, then presents selections from all Fox’s major works in 10 sections.
“The critical insights, the creative connections, the centrality of Matthew Fox’s writings and teaching are second to none for the radical renewal of Christianity.” ~~ Richard Rohr, OFM. |
|
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 |
|
UPCOMING EVENTS See Matthew Fox's full calendar
HERE |
Join Matthew Fox in a new, live, 7-week video course hosted by the Shift Network, Cultivating Compassion in Spirituality: What Meister Eckhart & Other World Mystics Can Teach Us About Navigating Collective Turmoil. Tuesdays, May 7 – June 25, 5:00pm - 6:30pm PT. Register HERE. |
Join Matthew Fox and 11 other speakers for a 6-week course on Cosmic Water: The Radical Roots of Mystical Christianity hosted by Advaya.Life (Matthew speaks on June 18). Tuesdays, May 28 - Thursday, July 4, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PDT Register HERE (for 10% discount use code
FOX-WOW) |
|
Creation Spirituality Conversations |
Matthew Fox speaks on "Preserving Things in the Good" at the Unity of Walnut Creek Earth Day worship service held on April 21, 2024. |
|
Inspired by this post? Share your insights on Universeodon, Instagram or Twitter using the hashtag #RevDrMatthewFox and tag Matt with @RevDrMatthewFox FOLLOW MATTHEW FOX: |
|
|
|
