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Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox 

09/25/2024

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I am pleased that my sister from Chicago and niece and a step-daughter of Tom’s will be in attendance along with his wife and Icelandic family.

Also, at least one DM reader, having learned of my mother and family, has asked that I say a word about my father which I am happy to do. 

George T. Fox was an Irishman whose family originally settled in Edmonton, Canada. As a young 

Tom Fox with his wife Anna Jóelsdóttir at a favorite Reykjavik restaurant. Photo courtesy of Matthew Fox.

boy, he was not sent to school but instead worked the family farm. When his aunts visited, they objected and urged the family to move to the south side of Chicago where my father grew up and attended St. Rita’s Augustinian high school. 

There he excelled at sports and especially football and received a football scholarship to attend Villanova University (also Augustinian led) where he starred. When his coach, Harry Struldrehr, one of the famed “four horsemen” of Notre Dame mythology, was hired to coach at the University of Wisconsin, he told my father he had a job with him on graduating from college. So, my mother, dad and their first born, Tom, moved to Madison, Wisconsin where we all grew up. 

Matthew’s father George Fox as a football player. Photo courtesy of Matthew Fox.

When I was ordained a priest, I received a letter from a high school classmate of my father who said, “your father was the most g.d. angry person I've ever known. He must have married a helluva woman to have tamed him enough to have a priest in the family.”  It is true that

Dad’s childhood was tough—his father got polio in his late 20s and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Money was very scarce, and Dad remembered signs saying “job available, Irish do not apply.”

After ten years at the U of W, my father left coaching and entered a painting and contracting business. He worked very long hours and was successful (he had painted houses to help supplement his scholarship money at Villanova where he also helped support his family back home).

Dad was a very practicing Catholic and always remained grateful to the Augustinians for keeping him on a right track as a young man. They played, I think, a fatherly role to him that was missing at home. He had a great sense of integrity and once told me he was glad that he was in business when he was because it had become so corrupt when he was older and retired.  

Dad was Republican and we kids used to joke that my parents did not have to vote because their 

George Fox as a football coach. Photo courtesy of Matthew Fox.

votes cancelled each other's out (Dad voted for Nixon in 1960 and Mom voted for Kennedy, for example). After Watergate happened, my father became very reticent about Nixon and the Republican party.

Dad had a strong sense of justice (as did my mother). When my older sister was dying, she reminded me of the day he and mom called a family meeting and Dad said: “I don’t make enough money to send all you kids to college so here’s the deal. You boys must find scholarships—they are easier to get for boys (this was the 1950s after all). I will pay for the girls to go to college.”  Tom got a scholarship to Princeton; Nat to West Point; the Dominican Order paid for my education; and Mike got a football scholarship first to Villanova and then to the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.

Matthew Fox with his father. Photo courtesy of Matthew Fox. 

My mother told me this story when I was in my late 20s: She said that Dad always admired physical courage but that I taught him moral courage when I got polio at 13 years of age and he was blown away how calmly I took the news. (No doubt his experience with his father’s polio made a lasting impression on him.) It is true that my teenage years with my father were very mutually respectful.  

Saying good bye to him when he was dying, and just a month before I was silenced for a year by the Vatican, I said to him, “I bet you wish I had been just an ordinary parish priest, don’t you?” and he squeezed my hand tightly and said, “yes I do.” To which I replied: “Well, I couldn’t have been the kind of priest I am without the courage you taught me.”

Three days later, the nurse was getting him dressed to go to a cancer clinic to die. She said to him, “I hear you are going to a beautiful place today.” And he said, “Yes I am.” Then his head fell on his chest, and he died on the spot.

See Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest.

Banner Image: The Reykjavík cemetery where Tom Fox’s ashes will be laid to rest. Photo courtesy of Matthew Fox.

Statement of Solidarity with Israel/Palestine.

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Queries for Contemplation

Are there stories here that trigger stories of your own father or family memories that are meaningful to you?

Recommended Reading

Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest (Revised/Updated Edition)

Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. Five new chapters in this revised and updated edition bring added perspective in light of the author’s continued journey, and his reflections on the current changes taking place in church, society and the environment.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible spiritual revolutionary enlivens the mind and emboldens the heart — must reading for anyone interested in courage, creativity, and the future of religion.”
—Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election

Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE. 
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE. 
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.

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.

"Matthew Fox does it again, here for our young ones, who so need a positive, cosmic vision to thrive, or even survive, in a sad time." - Father Richard Rohr, Author of The Universal Christ

"Matthew Fox offers a resounding affirmation of what our souls have always suspected: we are made for joy."  - Mirabai Starr, Author of God of Love and Wild Mercy

UPCOMING EVENTS

See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE

MONTHLY: Join Matthew Fox, Mariko Middleton, and Skylar Wilson of the Order of the Sacred Earth in a free virtual meeting for connection and networking with other mystic warriors. Last Tuesday of every month, 4:00-5:00pm PT. 
Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88665302478  
Meeting ID: 886 6530 2478

Learn more at www.orderofthesacredearth.org

Join Matthew Fox and others in a panel discussion on “Mysticism, Spirituality and Psychedelics” at the Portland 2024 Psychedelic Symposium: Illuminating Visions, a hybrid virtual/on-site event. Panel discussion (online): Friday, October 4, 10:30 am - 12:00 noon PT; Symposium (on-site): Friday, October 4 - Sunday, October 6.

Register HERE. 

Creation Spirituality Conversations

Bannon, former Trump advisor and former Executive Chairman at Breitbart News. He explains how Cardinal Burke and other neofascists in the Catholic Church opposed the Second Vatican Council, which sought to update the Catholic Church. He then explains how both Leonard Leo (co-chairman of the Federalist Society board of directors, who drew up lists of potential conservative judges who were then appointed to the Supreme Court) and Kevin Roberts from the Heritage Foundation, share a right-wing Catholic ideology.

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