The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox |
By Gianluigi Gugliermetto 2/05/2026 |
Having clarified that you are not referring to mystery novels, but still being a theologian who talks about mystery, you are most likely going to be dismissed as somebody who does not have an answer to the question that has been posed. |
the quality of presence that is required. In that book, Matthew berated those religious people who treat problems as mysterious entities; that is, instead of using their God-given
rational faculties to solve the problems that life presents to them, they prefer living in a fanciful religious world, attributing success or failure to religious entities. On the other hand, so many people seem more and more unable to welcome into their lives the mysteries that are presented to them: the marvel of being alive, the portal of “Sister Death,” the presence of another person or animal in one’s life, to name the most obvious. Living life, death, and relationships as mysteries means living poetically, and that is what makes us truly human. Combined, of course, with a healthy rationality. God, then, is the mystery of mysteries, not in the sense that God is an especially complicated problem to resolve, but as an encompassing horizon or embrace of our experience of mystery. |
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| In his book Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God… Including the Unnameable God, Matthew states: What is mystery is very shy around words and namings. Mystery does not
want to be named. It wishes to remain hidden. The uniqueness of the Divine, the immensity of the Divine, renders it a great mystery that may well be without any name. Here is |
how Meister Eckhart put it: “The mystery of the darkness of the eternal Godhead is unknown and never was known and never will be known. God dwells therein, unknown to the Godself.”* But such uniqueness and immensity are not something that we cannot experience. It is not simply a
limit-concept that we can think of, but never grasp. Because it is not conceptual, the Great Mystery beckons us, approaches us, even instructs us. It does not do that with words or notions, but it is no less real or effectual. |
Last night, while leading a group on early Christianity and mystery religions, I came up with a metaphor for explaining what the experience of the Pauline 1st-century Christians might have been. Being baptized and thus being “dressed with Christ” is like cherries plunged into chocolate: they keep their |
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juicy body while being covered with a lather of equally tasty substance, which overall enhances them. “Christ,” therefore, is the holy water, the divine mystery which envelops the believer as a golden leaf. There is no “understanding” of this, but there is the possibility of experiencing it. One
does not need baptism or subscribing to any dogmas, but one does need awareness of the mystery. Without such an awareness, without the capacity of being present before the mystery, even welcoming the mystery, everything becomes a problem. And when problems are too many or too big to solve, we simply crash. |
*Quote from Matthew Fox, Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God… Including the Unnameable God, page 127.
Banner Image: Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven. “Paradiso,” Canto XXXI in the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri; illustration by Gustave Doré, 1892. Wikimedia Commons. |
Queries for Contemplation What is your experience of the divine mystery? Are there ways to invite
people to experience God without dogmas or religious ties? How would that change society? |
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. Books and More by Matthew and Friends! Be sure to check out Matthew's new store at MatthewFox.org, now offering books, recorded courses old and new, and special events... and don't miss our growing collection of books endorsed by Matthew on Bookshop.org! CREATION SPIRITUALITY CONVERSATIONS |
Podcaster Jon Wilson speaks with Matthew Fox about Creation Spirituality: how Matthew became a Dominican priest; his studies in Paris, Original Blessing versus the Fall-Redemption tradition; the Four Paths; mystics Meister Eckhart, Carl Jung, and Otto Rank; Eros, ritual and how ‘this is
wisdom to love life’. Listen HERE. |
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