The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers Daily Meditations
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![]() Love & Justice, J.D. Vance vs.
Pope Francis
2/14/2025 |
As the results of the election ripple out, learn the deeper stakes involved. Get your copy of Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election today! Choose your format in the book block below. |
A criticism has arisen among a few responders to the DM that I should not use the language of “spiritual warriorship” because it has the word “war” in it. |
To eliminate that word would be to erase a lot of spiritual teaching over the years deriving from indigenous, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian Scriptures and teachings. I think I have demonstrated in various DMs over the past two months how that language is explained in
all those traditions. For example, that a four-year training was necessary to convert a soldier to a warrior. |
Chief Golden Light Eagle of the Ihunktowan Dakota Nation speaks on “What It Takes To Be a Great Warrior” |
I think the greater danger is found in overusing the word “love” and underusing the word “justice” and separating the two. Latin American theologian Jose Miranda has warned us that One of the most disastrous errors in the history of Christianity is to have tried—under the
influence of Greek definitions—to differentiate between love and justice. |
“Love and Justice” – Stirring women’s anthem sung by 400 women of Victoria, Australia to mark the centenary of suffrage. Harry Williamson | Splitting love from justice invites sentimentalism and Carl
Jung warns us that if you scratch a sentimentalist you get violence. Violence and sentimentalism are convex and concave of the same surface. Sociologist Anne Douglas, in her major study on sentimentalism, The Feminization of American |
American Culture, concludes that sentimentalism is “rancid political consciousness” that always leaves justice out. Love and justice travel together. Justice keeps love from being syrupy and cheap; love keeps justice personal and direct. I talk about “erotic justice.” Thus Meister
Eckhart declares that “compassion means justice.” Elie Wiesel, writing from the same tradition as Jesus, put it this way: In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, he
comes first. His very suffering allows him or her priority….To watch over a person who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God. |
This issue came out in the open recently when vice president and recent convert to Catholicism, J.D. Vance, entered into a public skirmish with Pope Francis when he tried to defend the current administration’s policies of handling immigrants and of dismantling the USAID program to assist the poorest nations in the world. |
“Holy Family of the Streets.” Image by iconographer Kelly Latimore; used with permission. |
This effort is being spearheaded by the richest man in the world who paid $280 billion to get the current president elected and who has handed him the keys to dismantling the government. J.D. Vance cited Thomas Aquinas (wrongly) that said that an “order of love” says we should love family first and strangers only much later. In fact, Aquinas stresses how justice “directs all the virtues to the common good” and how “God is both Justice and
Compassion.” Vance wipes clean Jesus’ numerous parables such as the Good Samaritan and Matthew 25, etc. that invite our better selves to reach out to strangers who are in fact our neighbor. And to love our neighbor—whoever they are—as ourselves. Jesus extended the meaning of family far beyond the literal meaning
of the word. “Who is my mother? Everyone who hears the word of God and keeps it.” |
See Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, pp. 286f, 288-292.
And Fox, “On Desentimentalizing Spirituality,” in Fox, Wrestling with the Prophets, pp. 297-316.
And Fox, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality,
pp. 404-412.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
And Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine.
And
Fox, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Faith Traditions.
Banner Image: JD Vance campaigns at a People’s Convention (photo by Gage Skidmore, Flickr); Pope Francis connects with the poor of Brazil (Wikimedia). | For a list of organizations helping those affected by the devastating LA wildfires, please see this article from ABCNews HERE and the evolving AltadenaStrong hub page HERE. |
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 |
Do you agree that it is a “disastrous” turn of events when we separate love from justice? And that sentimentalism is the result and feeds injustice? And that spiritual strength is something we need to cultivate and demand of our spiritual traditions who call it spiritual warriorhood?
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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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Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life
In one of his foundational works, Fox engages with some of history’s
greatest mystics, philosophers, and prophets in profound and hard-hitting essays on such varied topics as Eco-Spirituality, AIDS, homosexuality, spiritual feminism, environmental revolution, Native American spirituality, Christian mysticism, Art and Spirituality, Art as Meditation, Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism and more.
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Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox renders Thomas Aquinas accessible by interviewing him and thus descholasticizing him. He also translated many of his works such as Biblical commentaries never before in English (or Italian or German of French). He gives Aquinas a forum so that he can be heard in our
own time. He presents Thomas Aquinas entirely in his own words, but in a form designed to allow late 20th-century minds and hearts to hear him in a fresh way.
“The teaching of Aquinas comes through will a fullness and an insight that has never been present in English before and [with] a vital message for the world today.” ~ Fr. Bede Griffiths (Afterword).
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake |
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A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew
Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our
deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
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The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors,
or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that
shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God |
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One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths
Matthew Fox calls on all the world traditions for their wisdom and their inspiration in a work that is far more
than a list of theological position papers but a new way to pray—to meditate in a global spiritual context on the wisdom all our traditions share. Fox chooses 18 themes that are foundational to any spirituality and demonstrates how all the world spiritual traditions offer wisdom about each.“Reading One River, Many Wells is like entering the rich silence of a masterfully directed retreat. As you read this text, you reflect, you pray, you embrace Divinity. Truly no words can fully
express my respect and awe for this magnificent contribution to contemporary spirituality.” –Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit |
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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. |
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The Return of Father Sky: A Cosmic Mystery for Kids of All Ages
The second book in the Father Fox’s Fantastical Fables series, The Return of Father Sky helps boys and girls to celebrate a new
relationship with the masculine by way of Father Sky, whose return excites joy and wonder and possibility that enlarge the soul to welcome others and all creation. Written in a rhyming Dr. Seuss-like style, this full-color, beautifully illustrated book, written by world- renowned theologian Matthew Fox weaves together modern science and classic spirituality in a whimsical, entertaining format to illustrate important truths to readers aged 4 and up. 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. |
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UPCOMING EVENTS See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE |
Join Matthew Fox as he discusses his book, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice, in an online Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat. Thursday, February 20, 4:00pm-5:30pm PT. Register HERE. Join Matthew Fox as he discusses his book, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth, in an online Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat. Thursday, March 20, 4:00pm-5:30pm PT. Register HERE. MONTHLY: Join Matthew Fox 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 |
Creation Spirituality Conversations |
Hear a conversation between Matthew and Ana Otero of The Desert Rose Mystery School in "Mystical Pathways. A Sacred Talk with Matthew Fox, founder of the Creation Spirituality Movement." |
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Inspired by this post? Share your insights on BlueSky, Instagram, Universeodon, or Facebook using the hashtag #RevDrMatthewFox and tag Matt with @RevDrMatthewFox FOLLOW MATTHEW FOX: |
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