The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox |
Evaluating the Past Year:
The Bad News
& The Good By Matthew Fox 12/30/2025 Did you miss Matthew Fox on "What is the Real Meaning of Christmas?" Holistic Edge Radio host and producer Enoe Aracely Brown interviewed Matthew Fox yesterday. Listen to the recording here. |
Looking toward a New Year is often a time for evaluating the year we have just undergone. From the point of view of a new presidency, things have not been pretty. Not at all. |
Headlines I have seen just in the last 24 hours include the following: “Trump says broadcast licenses should be terminated…networks are ‘almost 100% Negative’ about him”; “DOGE Failed to deliver on every promise: $323 billion in uncollected taxes due to IRS |
2025 Year in Review: Trump tariffs, Charlie Kirk, Zohran Mamdani, Rob Reiner and more. NBC
News |
downsizing; Social Security offices gutted; Global aid program dismantled, costing hundreds of thousands of lives abroad”; “Trump Administration announces plans to dismantle, defund, and eliminate the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)—the nation’s top climate and weather research center”; “The top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 93%”—and are getting big tax breaks. As I was wondering how to summarize all this darkness in a few daily meditations—since our stated purpose in launching the DM seven years ago was to “pray the news” together—I received a phone call this weekend from a senior citizen and student of creation spirituality. He told me how he was recently re-reading my major book on Evil, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh:
Transforming Evil in Soul & Society, and how full of rich ideas it was, so rich that he wanted to send a copy to some university libraries. This conversation reminded me that in that book, I lay out a template for discussing Evil and its consequences, created from a marriage of the Eastern teachings on the seven
chakras and the Western teachings on the seven capital sins. This might provide us with a bird’s-eye overview of how to evaluate the present administration. |
The Barefoot Artist Official Trailer (2014) – Lily Yeh Documentary. See the full playlist HERE. | So I will begin an evaluation in light of that template of Evil in my next DM, which is this Saturday. For today, I would like to offer some Good News that is very much in line with yesterday’s DM |
on the importance of art as meditation to lift our spirits and deepen our courage so we can face evil with grace and purpose and effective action. I recently received an end-of-the-year newsletter from Lily Yeh and her nonprofit Barefoot Artists organization, which serves poor people in Rwanda, Kenya, China, and the US. The Dandelion Mural Project for migrant workers in China offers a large-scale mosaic mural project and is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Art is central to its identity as a school. In Rwanda, Barefoot Artists has been operating for 18 years and helps families learn to cultivate land, grow home vegetable gardens, and plant fruit-bearing trees, providing
nutritious foods they once gathered in the forest. Barefoot Artists also provides school supplies and uniforms for many children. |
In Nairobi, Lily led workshops for aspiring young artists and helped design a Tree of Life mural that the community painted. As Artist in Residence at Harvard Divinity School, working with Terry Tempest-Williams during a “Grief Week,” Lily led a week-long workshop on grief and
art. |
Participants collaborate on a painting at one of Lily Yeh’s post-Helene workshops at Swannanoa, NC. Photo from the Barefoot Artists Year in Review. Published with permission. |
In January, Lily led a series of workshops following Hurricane Helene. Said the organizer, “Lily’s visit and life’s work has quietly shifted all of us.” Lily worked with inmates at Grateford Prison whose art is now on exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Together, Lily and the prisoners also published a book written by a girl—now a woman—who was a genocide survivor from the 1994 massacre. Lily’s work is a major witness to the power of art to heal. Meditation is not just sitting on a cushion; it is also art that heals, celebrates, and returns joy to lives and communities. Art as meditation is “the way of the prophets,” and Lily’s work is testimony to that. Tax-deductible donations to her work can be made here. |
Banner Image: 2025—the anguish and the healing. (L) A bombed-out building in Gaza, January 2025. Wikimedia Commons. (R) The Alfajiri Street Kids—former street kids—create a Tree of Life as part of a community healing project in one of the oldest slums in Nairobi. From the Barefoot Artists website. Published with permission. |
Queries for Contemplation How are you digesting the good news and the bad news of 2025? Does art as
meditation assist you? And other forms of meditation as well? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, or read other comments and enter into dialogue, please click HERE to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments field. |
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| Counterpoint: A Response to Peter Thiel’s Antichrist An Important Conversation with Matthew Fox and Gil Duran Did you miss this two-session series with its powerful counter-narrative rooted in wisdom, justice, and |
authentic spirituality? This is your
chance to add it to your library of classics to be watched, re-watched, and contemplated. Fox explores the archetype of Christ and Antichrist as it plays out in our world today but also in artists of old. He draws from the teachings of Jesus and Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Carl Jung, and other mystics and visionaries, illuminating the stark contrast between life-giving and life-destroying spiritual energies. Purchase HERE. |
UPCOMING EVENTS See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE |
Join Matthew Fox in a free 4-session Online Lecture/Discussion/Q&A event, “Creation Spirituality and the Celebrating & Healing of Mother Earth & Ourselves,” co-presented by the Episcopal Diocese of Wisconsin and Matthew Fox Legacy Project. Wednesdays, January 14, 21,28, February 4, 2026, 4:00pm-5:30pm
PT January 14 - Creation as an Original Blessing and the Springboard of Awe and Wonder January 21 - Sacred Mother Earth: The Holiness of Creation and Recovering the Cosmic Christ January 28 - The Cosmic Mass, and the Stations of the Cosmic Christ: Reinvigorating Liturgy and Rituals February 4 - Jesus as a Teacher of Democracy and the Renewal of Education and Values through the “10 Cs” 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 HERE, Meeting ID: 886 6530 2478 Learn more at www.orderofthesacredearth.org |
Awakening the Divine Human: An Immersion in the Living Wisdom of Creation Spirituality …a week-long retreat in Sardinia, Italy, May 25-30, 2026 Join us on the sacred
island of Sardinia for a deeply immersive 6-day retreat rooted in the teachings of Matthew Fox, C.G. Jung, and the ancient wisdom of the land. Set along the turquoise shores and among the Neolithic sites of this timeless Mediterranean island, this retreat invites you into a transformative journey of reconnection—with Earth, Self, Gender, and the Divine. Learn more HERE. |
Creation Spirituality Conversations |
Join Matthew Fox in a 6-Class Course: The Great Christian Mystics, exploring some of the richest and most inspiring mystic-prophets in the Christian lineage, including Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Thomas Aquinas,
and Meister Eckhart. Course includes six modules of pre-recorded lessons. Sign up HERE. |
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