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Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox 

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1/27/2025

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. 

Courage is required for a spiritual life.

Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, speaks to all of us when he challenges all living today to stand up and take on the responsibility the times are calling for:

Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind. Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger? Know that you yourself are essential to this world. 

Portrait of Lakota Chief Arvol Looking Horse. Photo by Balkowitsch. Wikimedia Commons.

Understand both the blessing and the burden of that. You yourself are desperately needed to save the soul of this world. Did you think you were put here for something less?

If all of us have been put here for something great—like “deciding the future of humankind”—we are going to need courage and conscience which are common to spiritual warriors. The Biblical tradition links hands with Chief Arvol in that regard.   

“Black Lives Matter” was not purely an American resistance movement: Similar protests erupted around the world in 2020, in solidarity with the USA and in protests against police brutality in their own countries. Video by DW News. 

Consider how Chief Arvol’s urgent advice complements this teaching from St. Thomas Aquinas. He reminds us that the virtue of magnanimity urges us to do great things and to “brave great dangers for great things, for instance the common welfare, justice, divine worship, and so forth.”

Do we “brave great dangers” for the sake of the common good? 

Aquinas cites the prophet Jeremiah who said, “The Lord is with me like a brave warrior.” The prophet needs protecting against enemies both internal and external, he tells us, and he outlines the elements of spiritual

warriorhood when he names three elements that saints need for making peace: 

First, the strength of divine power. Psalm 125 says: ‘Those who believe in the Lord are like Mount Sion which will never be shaken....’

Second, the purity of one’s own conscience, as in Proverbs 3: ‘You will walk confidently along your way and your foot will not stumble.’

Third, the removal of hostile evil, as in John 16: ‘Be confident, I have overcome the world.’ 

A small, unarmored boy with the heart of a lion: David with the head of Goliath at his feet. Bronze by Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-88). Wikimedia Commons.     

Strength, Conscience and Confidence: These are hallmarks of the prophet. We all need them. We can all support one another in the struggle. That is what solidarity means after all. 

Adapted from Matthew Fox, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp. 408f. 

And Fox, Trump and The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, pp. 57-80. 

And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society. 

And Fox, “Spiritual Warriorhood,” in Fox, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Faith Traditions, pp. 413f and pp. 377-422. 

And Fox, “Spiritual Warriors” in Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 77-104.

 
Banner image: Protesters in an unknown location face off against riot police. Photo by Samoel Safaie. Wikimedia Commons.

For a list of organizations helping those affected by the devastating LA wildfires, please see this article from the LA Times 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 with Chief Arvol Looking Horse that you are here to personally decide the future of humankind—and nothing less? What follows from that?

Recommended Reading

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

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science.  A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics

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

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

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.

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.

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, 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    

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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