Relating Creation Spirituality to Lutheranism
Doctorial dissertation by Marilyn E. Jackson


III. ORIGINAL BLESSING: A SUMMARY OF MATTHEW FOX’S "PRIMER OF CREATION SPIRITUALITY

To me, Matthew Fox ‘s classic and central work on creation spirituality is Original Blessing, though he has written numerous excellent books before and after that. I have summarized this book here in 80 pages as a shorter introduction to his work, to give those who don’t know about it a glimpse and insight into what I consider some brilliant thinking and playing with ideas.

First Path: VIA POSITIVA (VP)~Befriending Creation

VP 1: Dabhar/Creative Energy (Word) of God

Dabhar, which is Hebrew for the Biblical term "word," is defined here to mean creative energy. Fox writes that "Dabhar" does not mean what we now mean by "word" (Fox, Original Blessing (OB) 1983, 36). When the printing press was invented, most people in Western civilization were illiterate and "preaching the word" of God was more a description of an action than a noun. Today our culture is inundated with the written word. To regain our spirituality we need to find the original meaning of "dabhar," which is closer to "divine creative energy." Fox states, that the "great event" of creation-centered spiritual tradition is not the Fall but the Dabhar, the "creative energy" or "word" of God (OB, 44).

VP 2: Creation as Blessing and the Recovery of the Art of Savoring Pleasure

Fox writes that blessing permeates the story of Israel and Dabhar (the word) and all of creation from the very beginning. "We can say" that "blessing preceded creation too, for blessing was its purpose....there is no doubt that original blessing underlies all being, all creation, all time, all space, all unfolding and evolving of what is (OB, 46).

Fox quotes a Biblical theologian who wrote that "there are two basic ways by which the God of the Bible deals with humankind: by deliverance and by blessing.... Blessing - much less original blessing—has not been preached or taught in Christian spirituality for centuries" (OB, 44). In this section, Fox takes on the concept of "original sin" and states that the concept is not alien to Jewish tradition, according to Elie Wiesel. (OB, 47) According to Herbert Haag, former president of the Catholic Bible Association of Germany and author of Is Original Sin in Scripture?,

the idea that Adam’s descendants are automatically sinners because of the sin of their ancestor, and that they are already sinners when they enter the world, is foreign to Holy Scripture (OB, 47).

Fox continues,

We enter a broken and torn and sinful world—that is for sure. But we do not enter as blotches on existence, as sinful creatures, we burst into the world as ‘original blessings.’

He quotes Haag again,

No man enters the world a sinner. As the creature and image of God he is from his first hour surrounded by God’s...love. He is not at birth...an enemy of God and a child of God’s wrath. A man becomes a sinner only through his own individual and responsible action.

Fox says that Eastern Orthodox Christianity is also "very suspicious of Western Christianity’s

sliding into what can be called a doctrine of ‘original guilt.’ As Timothy Ware puts it,

Most Orthodox theologians reject the idea of ‘original guilt,’ put forward by Augustine and still accepted (albeit in a mitigated form) by the Roman Catholic Church. Men automatically inherit Adam’s corruption and mortality, but not his guilt: they are only guilty in so far as by their own free choice they imitate Adam" (OB, 48).

Fox writes that original sin is a concept Augustine developed late in his life and, "to his credit, it was not all that significant in his theology either." Iranaeus, a theologian who preceded Augustine by 250 years, did not believe in Original Sin in the proper sense of the word. The inherited defect of the human race is represented as a grievous disability, but not as involving man in guilt or constituting him the object of God’s wrath" (OB, 48).

Haag comments that Augustine’s "interpretation, together with the whole weight of this personal confession of faith, entered into the history of Latin theology, and it lies at the basis of the Council of Trent’s decree on original sin’"(OB, 49).

The Council of Trent was a Roman Catholic meeting in northern Italy in the mid 16th century to respond to the Reformation with some reforms as well as to affirm Catholic belief (Rogers). Fox writes a response to Council of Trent’s conclusions:

1) Original blessing is far more ancient and more biblical a doctrine and ought to be the starting point for spirituality and the council did not deny this.

2) The Council of Trent never said what original sin means, which leaves discussion wide open among theologians. The creation-centered tradition does not deny the concept that sin is among us. Fox states that sin has to do with dualism, separation and relationships that become fractured and fissured or with a subject/object nature. He points out that sin exists in Eastern spiritual philosophy as well. Mahatma Gandhi held to the Buddhist and Jain view that all sins are modifications of himsa, the basic sin which in the ultimate analysis is the sin of separateness or attavada. "According to a Jain maxim, he who conquers this sin conquers all others" (OB, 49).

3) Augustine mixed his doctrine of original sin up with his peculiar notions about sexuality....for him all begetting of children and all lovemaking were at least venially sinful because one ‘lost control.’ Gnosticism also defined original sin as human sensuality. Biblical spirituality cannot tolerate this put-down of the blessing that sexuality and lovemaking are by veiled references to original sin. The sooner the churches put distance between themselves and Augustine’s bad scriptural exegesis and translation and (his) put down of women and of sexuality, the sooner original sin will find its proper and very minor role in theology.

4) "whatever is said of original sin, it is far less hallowed and original than are love and desire, the Creator’s for creation and our parents’ for one another. Our origin in the love of our parents and in their love-making and the celebration of creation at our birth, are far, far more primeval and original in every sense of that word....

5) A word about doctrine. Doctrine is not the basis of faith or its starting point. Creation is the basis of trust, which is the biblical meaning of faith. Doctrine serves as a parameter, much like the sidelines in a soccer game, within which believers play out their faith. An experiential living out of faith births insight which later generations sometimes summarize as doctrine. When doctrine becomes a starting point for faith, I fear faith is already dead. Faith concerns action and trust and the best that right and left brain can bring together. Doctrine, which is left-brained, has a limited but useful role to play.

6) Since doctrine is for people and not the other way around, Fox asks,

How much pain and sin have come about because of an exaggerated emphasis on the doctrine of original sin? What trust is lost in oneself, in one’s body, in the cosmos, when children are instructed that they came into the world as blotches on God’s creation? As William Eckhart has demonstrated in his substantial study on the psychology of compassion, he never found a compassionate adult who did not have a radical trust in human nature. Does this help explain why compassion has played so puny a part in Christian theology and spirituality of late—because original sin has played so dramatic a part?... (OB, 50)

He goes on to point out that the doctrine of original sin is a weapon for controlling the anawim, a word he used for those who are oppressed. He quotes a woman as saying, "I have always wondered what I was being redeemed from. But I was afraid to ask" (OB, 51) Fox goes on: "The haunting insecurity we can all feel from time to time in the face of existence is not put to rest, is not overcome by faith/trust, when there is this mysterious sin from our past that haunts us but about which ‘we are afraid to ask.’" He refers to Ashley Montagu who believes that the evidence is in that traditional societies have been nonaggressive and cooperative without believing in "original sin." Montagu quotes Professor Herbert Muller who believes that the conviction "that ‘man’s’ birthright is sin has encouraged an unrealistic acceptance of remediable social evils, or even a callousness about human suffering" which "helps to explain the easy acceptance of slavery and serfdom...." (OB, 51)

Fox quotes Paul Ricoeur who states that "the harm that has been done to souls, during the centuries of Christianity, first by the literal interpretation of the story of Adam, and then by the confusion of this myth, treated as history...will never adequately be told" (Ibid.).

Matthew Fox goes on to state that the churches are moving subtly away from Augustine’s original sin hypothesis and are renewing a theology of baptism which orients the sacrament properly as a celebration of new life in Christian community versus an occasion for removing sin. He feels churches still need to embrace a more primitive doctrine of original blessing which will make us more compassionate as a result (Ibid.).

VP 3: Humility as Earthiness

To show that all Christians have not hated our bodies and the earth, Matthew Fox quotes from some philosophers from the Middle Ages, as well as by more current philosophers. Of the Christians, Julian of Norwich wrote, "Our sensuality is grounded in Nature, in Compassion and in Grace. In our sensuality, God is. God is the means whereby our Substance and our Sensuality are kept together so as never to be apart." Mechtild of Magdeburg wrote, "Do not disdain your body. For the soul is just as safe in its body as in the Kingdom of Heaven." Meister Eckhart wrote, "The soul loves the body."

The "fall redemption" legacy produced the following prayer by spiritual theologian, Tanquerry: "May I know Thee, O Lord, that I may love Thee; May I know myself, that I may despise myself." This definition, according to Fox, made its way into Webster’s dictionary, where humility means "not assertive" and "insignificant."

He points out that Meister Eckhart says the word "humility" comes from the word ‘humus’ which means earth. So to be humble, in the creation centered tradition, means to be in touch with the earth. He quotes a source named Berdyaev who said, "Decadent humility keeps humanity in a condition of repression and oppression, chaining its creative power" (OB, 59).

Fox quotes Edna Hong on the subject,

The senses you created in us are on the side of spirit. Lord, creation-callousness is not separate from Kingdom-callousness! Blunting, dulling and deadening the senses of Child, killing the sentient Child, is not only a sin against nature—It is a sin against the Kingdom!

Another quote from Julian of Norwich:

For God does not despise what he has made, nor does he disdain to serve us in the simplest natural functions of our body, for love of the soul which he created in his own likeness. For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh is clad in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the chest, so are we, soul and body, clad and enclosed in the goodness of God (OB, 64).

Hildegard of Bingen, another medieval Christian wrote:

Holy persons draw to themselves all that is earthly.... The earth is at the same time mother...of all that is natural, mother of all that is human...for contained in her are the seeds of all (OB, 57).

VP 4: Cosmic Consciousness

Throughout the Via Positiva Christian feelings and relationships with nature and sexuality are reexamined by the Creation Centered tradition and expanded to include the whole cosmos. Cosmic consciousness means to be aware of the vast universe, which is a macrocosm. Another dimension of the Cosmos is a microcosm, such as a tiny intricate molecule. In the Cosmos, everything is interconnected by spirituality.

Fox quotes many western thinkers on cosmic spirituality. He quotes Mahatma Gandhi as saying, "Earth and heaven are in us" (OB, 68). He quotes a French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, who drew together Greek and Chinese philosophy:

The true function of the sage is surely the function of linking together, of bringing into harmony. I am not thinking only or even chiefly of the Greeks, but of classical China, of the China of Lao Tse, and what here strikes me in a really marvelous light is that the sage is truly linked with the universe. The texts are unmistakable and revealing: the order to be established in life—whether of the individual or of the city or of the empire—is in no way separable from the cosmic order (OB, 73).

Fox quotes Starhawk, a woman leader in the movement to reclaim ancient religions which celebrated a female spiritual energy or Goddess:

In the craft, we do not believe in the Goddess-we connect with Her; through the moon, the stars, the ocean, the earth, through trees, animals, through other human beings, through ourselves. She is here. She is within us all. She is the full circle: earth, air, fire, water, and essence—body, mind, spirit, emotions, change (Ibid.).

Thus ritual, Fox continues,

In the Wikke tradition takes place invariably in circles and spirals to mirror the cosmos, which is also curved. When Native Americans gather to worship they too gather in circles and believe that each time ritual is celebrated in this way the center of the cosmos is found in the center point of the worshiping circle. Native Americans could not imagine worshiping without a cosmos (Ibid.).

From coast to coast, desert to woodland," Native Americans "perceive themselves to be an integral part of the Creation. Native languages talk of the Creation in family terms such as "Mother Earth," "Grandmother Moon," "The Grandfather winds" (OB, 66).

Fox writes that the Hebrew scriptures celebrate the cosmos wherein the creator "sees to the ends of the earth, and observes all that lies under heaven" (Job 28:24) (OB, 74).

The spirit of the Lord indeed fills the whole world, and that which holds all things together knows every sound that is uttered to be—for this God created all" (Wisdom 1:7, 14) (OB, 75).

Fox continues, "when the Jews worshiped in the temple of Jerusalem, they believed that the temple represented the center of the universe. In the New Testament and the earliest hymns of the Christian community and in medieval, creation-centered spirituality, the cosmos is present" (Ibid.).

Another New Testament quote:

In Ephesians 1:3-23, Paul sings of how with Christ "everything in the heavens and everything on earth" comes together (v. 10) and how Christ "fills the whole creation" (v. 23). In Colossians the hymn calls Christ "the first-born of all creation in whom were created all things in heaven and on earth." And through him Christians celebrate the reconciliation of all things,...everything in heaven and everything on earth" (OB, 73-74).

These passages refer to what Matthew Fox calls, the "Cosmic Christ" (OB, 74). Jesus Christ is the Christian fulfillment of ancient Jewish prophecy of a Messiah who it was predicted would come and save humankind. Jesus Christ, according to Christians, was God’s incarnation or becoming human on earth. The Cosmic Christ comes to be with all of creation, not just humans and this is what Cosmic describes. Matthew Fox has compared this with Buddha and elements of other religions where a messenger shows humans and all of creation how to live in a Godlike manner (Fox, Cosmic Christ 1988, 231-231.) He uses the term Cosmic Christ broadly to mean one who teaches us to live among all that has been created.

Basically, Fox feels that Christianity today is anthropocentric and narrowly concerned with human existence, and not about mother earth or the universe. He says the fall/redemption model is too introspective. Lutheran theologian Krister Stendahl has apparently written "a classic article" about how Augustine’s "introspective conscious" distorted the reading of the Bible in the West (OB, 76).

VP 5: Trust

Fox writes that an unfortunate psychological consequence of the fall/redemption spiritual tradition is that it does not engender trust. It teaches fear of damnation, nature, oneself, others and the cosmos. He writes that the New Testament word most often used by Jesus for faith means ‘trust’ in the original Greek. Fox again interprets a Christian concept based on a different definition that was used long ago which he asserts is more accurate. A spirituality of trust provides nurturance, a sustaining force everyone needs for life and growth. We need to trust God and Creation but also know that we are entrusted by our Creator.

Matthew Fox quotes Mahatma Gandhi as saying, "Where there is fear, there is no religion," and "What is gained through fear lasts only while the fear lasts" (OB, 82). Fear teaches distrust of one’s own existence, originality and basic worth. Fox continues:

...religion built on fear must keep preaching its own fears in order to keep the religion going—such a religion will flee further and further from society, from the cosmos, from anything that is non-introspective. This...helps to explain why many people leave religion in the West: because they are growing up and growing out of fear and into trust, and very often they do not find Western religion adequate to their adult spiritual needs. What if, however, religion was not meant to be built on psychologies of fear but on their opposite—on psychologies of trust and of ever-growing expansion of the human person (OB, 82)?

To transpose the word "faith" with the word, "trust," brings a different kind of feeling and experience. I remember having difficulty understanding what faith meant as a child. My grandfather who was a minister gave me a book about faith once, and I read it, but was still a little confused. Trust is easier to understand, I think. Walter n, in his essay, "The Trusted Creature," traces the growth of King David’s life of faith as a growth in trust. Fox writes:

The ‘new David,’ n points out, ‘has to break the categories’ of the pieties of his ancestors in order ‘that his actual person and work can be discerned.’ The result of David’s gradual learning to trust his own uniqueness and the uniqueness of the times in which he lived is that his monarchy will come to represent ‘a radical innovation which will not be subsumed under the already existing structures.’ David in fact brings about ‘a new perspective toward human history, human responsibility, human caring, human deciding and the human use of power.’ Like Jesus, David will ‘overturn conventional notions of what is sacred’ (OB, 83).

The biggest struggle for David, Fox continues, is to realize that he is also trusted by God and that he and humanity are entrusted by the Creator with Creation. God "’trusts his people to do what must be done for the sake of his whole community.’ The Yahwist account of creation in Genesis 2 is also about God entrusting humankind with the garden (2:15)" (OB, 84).

VP 6: Panentheism

Pan-en-theism means to experience spirituality through nature. This, as Christian theologians commonly do, is distinguished from pantheism, which worships nature as the divine. Panentheism means God is found in nature whereas pantheism means nature is worshiped as being God. Panentheism means God is in and among humans, as well. Fox writes, "C.G. Jung has written that there are two ways to lose your soul. One ...is to worship a god outside you...." The idea that God is "out there" divorces God and humanity and reduces religion to a "childish state of pleasing or pleading with a God ‘out there.’" Theisms, which set up a model or paradigm of people here and God out there, are about subject/object relationships to God (OB, 89).

There is a kind of panentheist belief in Christianity about Jesus, about his presence on earth as a human being and about his presence among us after his death. Jesus is called Emmanuel, which means, "God is with us."(Matt. 1:23, Isa. 7:4) Christians talk about being "one in Christ." Christ, Paul says, is everything and is in everything (Col. 3:11) (OB, 92).

Panentheism is a mature doctrine about the presence and deep "with-ness" of God. Fox describes that people often tell him they don’t pray like they used to or like they do in church. Fox suggests that a more mature worship is bound to be different. "Worship, if not altered, will kill the soul, as Jung suggests." As we integrate the early lessons of spirituality we grow into a more adult and "authentically mystical prayer life, one where we truly enter in the deep with-ness of God," who is in all (OB, 92).

VP 7: Royal Personhood

By Royal Personhood, Matthew Fox refers to the Dignity as well as Responsibility of the individual as compared to the regal role of kings or queens. I remember learning this theme at ICCS. We had broken up into small groups within the class and took turns treating each person in the group as a royal person. There was a sense of specialness about each person, but not the sense they were allowed to have power over others. It was fun and confirmed a sense of the importance of the individual, but was not about misuse of power. Though Americans have gotten rid of the king and queen concept, Israel had a unique understanding of royalty, Fox writes. As the kingdom of God is a central theme of Jesus’ teachings, it is important to pay attention to the meaning of this kind of royalty from its source.

Fox writes that the first meaning of king for Israel is that God is King. This first means that God journeys with and leads his people as in the phrase, Emmanuel, meaning "God with us." Then it means that God is Creator and Creator and King are often referred to as parallel terms. Psalm 149:2 says, "Let Israel be glad in their maker. Let children of Zion rejoice in their king." Fox goes on to say, "The enthronement psalms celebrate the fact that when Yahweh is King the entire cosmos is in order. ‘Is Yahweh with us?’" is the question the people ask in times of chaos. The answer is "Yes, Yahweh is King and the whole world—not just the temple—is God’s throne, and order and creation are thriving." Psalm 95:3-5 uses "cosmic" language, referring to the wonders of creation, to describe Yahweh as king:

Yahweh is a great God, a greater King than all other gods;

from depths of earth to mountain top

everything comes under his rule; the sea belongs to him, he made it,

so does the land, he shaped this too (OB, 95).

(Ps. 93: 1,2)...You have made the world firm, unshakeable;

Your throne has stood since then,

You existed from the beginning.

In addition, Yahweh’s being king means that creation is preserved and sustained. "Justice preserves creation and makes it thrive and blossom in ever-fertile ways." Yahweh is King, Creator and "Justice-Maker."

Let all the rivers clap their hands and the mountains shout for joy,

at the presence of Yahweh, for he comes to judge the earth,

to judge the world with righteousness and the nations with strict justice. (Ps. 98:8,9) (OB, 96)

A second stage of Israel’s understanding of kingship, according to Fox, is its reflection on the king of Israel. This human king is meant to be imbued with the spirit of the divine king to be with and lead the people with the spirit of justice. David is quoted to have said:

The spirit of Yahweh speaks through me, his word is on my tongue. The God of Jacob has spoken, the Rock of Israel has said to me: He who rules men with justice, who rules in the fear of God, is like morning light at sunrise on a cloudless morning making the grass of the earth sparkle after rain (2 Sam. 23:2-4).

"God, Creator and King has entrusted to humans the needs of the creation and its preservation," Fox continues. "As B. Anderson puts it, ‘God has given man responsibility for the world. In a limited sense, he is intended to be a king who, in the ceaseless conflict of history, helps to sustain the creation in the face of the menacing powers of chaos.’"

Fox goes on to say that it was the work of the prophets to constantly confront the kings when they failed at carrying on creation by way of preservation and justice-making (OB, 97).

Israel prayed hard for its kings, Fox writes, and quotes Psalm 72:1,2,4,12-14:

God, give your own justice to the king, your own righteousness to the royal son, so that he may rule your people rightly and your poor with justice. He will defend the poorest, he will save the children of those in need, and crush their oppressors. He will free the poor man who calls to him, and those who need help, he will have pity on the poor and feeble, and save the lives of those in need, he will redeem their lives from exploitation and outrage, their lives will be precious in his sight (98).

A third meaning of kingship in Israel is the traditional belief in the messiah. The messiah would be a king who would embody the divine reign of justice and care for creation. The king would possess the "spirit of Yahweh" which births all creation. Also, springing from the line of David, the messiah to come would possess the prophetic spirit of justice and wisdom (OB, 98).

Christians believe that Jesus Christ is this Messiah and fulfills this royal personhood described in Hebrew scripture. "Christ is with the people; he judges, he calls for love and justice, he even sits at God’s right hand." Fox writes that, above all, Christ calls and invites all people to be royal persons. "He calls them to their dignity as images of God," as foretold in Psalm 8:6, 7:

You have made humans a little less than God, and you have crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands putting all things under their feet (OB, 99).

Royal personhood means people are called to their own dignity as well as responsibility. The poor and sinners who gained their dignity would have a starting place for release from their captivity. This is expressed in the following passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Blessed are the poor because yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now because you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now because you shall laugh (Luke 6:20,21) (OB, 99-100).

Fox writes about the responsibility for justice-making and preserving creation that accompanies this gift of dignity.

On the part of the poor, this means being actively involved in asserting one’s dignity, which means one’s rights, and of letting go of oppressive self-images that others have handed on.... On the part of those who are comfortable, this means letting go and siding with the afflicted…. (OB, 100).

Fox quotes Matthew 5.13-16 in relation to the responsibility of royal personhood:

You are the salt of the earth. But if salt becomes tasteless, who can make it salty again? It is good for nothing, and can only be thrown out to be trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hilltop cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp to put it under a tub; they put it on a lamp-stand where it shines for everyone in the house....

Jesus who spoke in parables must have been very attuned to the parallels in language. Fox writes that Hebrew, the word for salt, melach, sounds almost identical to the word for king, melek, and the word meaning "to ascend the throne and reign," malak (OB, 101).

Jesus declares that the kingdom of God is "not here or there" but among you." Fox writes that this emphasizes the cosmic and panentheistic nature of royal personhood. God’s kingdom is not parochial or nationalistic but concerns creation itself. Fox refers to the Swedish theologian, Krister Stendahl, who emphasizes that when Jesus uses the word "kingdom" he means "creation….Jesus’ sense of kingdom does not signify a ‘rule in the heart’ but a concrete effort to make right, to make just, to mend creation when it becomes broken by injustices and human violence" (Ibid).

The fall/redemption tradition confuses the kingdom of God with the church. A theologian, Alfred Loisy, expressed this frustration, "Jesus came preaching the kingdom and what we got was the churches—what a letdown!" Fox concedes that churches do have their role to build up this "kingdom/queendom. However, "a royal person theology is vaster than the churches." As Meister Eckhart wrote, "The kingdom of God is no small thing." Fox writes that churches need to let go of their preoccupation of being churches and enter more fully into a royal personhood spirituality to become signs of the kingdom and fulfill their prophecies and most well known prayer, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (OB, 101-102).

VP 8: Realized Eschatology

Fox has described God’s presence among humans and the created world in terms of royalty, the theme of "royal personhood" as well as through development of "panentheism." Later in this paper he expands the most known way for Christians to understand "God-with-us" as Jesus Christ, but expands that to mean God present through Christ in many forms in a cosmic and universal dimension.

Realized Eschatology is the sense of time that sees the Kingdom of God as being in a process of becoming, in and through the created, material world. My senior thesis for my religion major in college was on the different interpretations of the coming of God’s Kingdom. What I remember is that theories range from beliefs that God’s Kingdom will come at the end of the world or in heaven—to in our lifetime—to in a limited way in our present lifetimes and more fully at the end of the world and in heaven.

Fox writes that a spiritual awakening is not only about a new and charged experience of sacred space and an experience of God among us, the panentheistic quality, but about a ‘newly charged experience of time." Clearly, the kingdom/queendom of God/dess is not fully manifest. As Fox writes, "How the innocent still suffer, how the wicked prosper still and get very light jail sentences if any, and how little seems to have changed since Job lamented this unjust state of affairs." Theologians call this kind of lamentation, "unrealized eschatology." The experience that the fullness of God’s time, seems far off; the time when "justice will flow like a river" and "the lion will lie down with the lamb" (OB, 104).

The fall/redemption tradition deals with this by "assuring believers that ‘eternal life" is something that happens for the most part after death." This life is a proving ground, a testing time, but the real union of God and humanity happens after death or in the future with a glorious second coming of Jesus. Some more extreme fundamentalists "talk about the ‘rapture’ with glee—meaning the second coming of Jesus would be hastened by a calamity like a nuclear war." This inserts a stark dualism into theological time-talk. "The dualism between this life and the next becomes a dualism between a time in heaven and a time on earth" (OB, 104-105).

Another feature of the fall/ redemption tradition’s theory is that when time is not oriented into the distant unreachable future it puts most divine action in the distant past. "Creation is less an ongoing thing than a six-day event ‘in the past,’ whether this is thousands or billions of years ago is not the point here. Salvation, Fox writes, "is put in the past in the nativity at Bethlehem and in the crucifixion of Jesus at Golgotha. And even human sin, the ‘original sin,’ basically took place in the past" (OB, 105).

The Creation Centered tradition within Christianity talks about Christ being present in our lives now. Meister Eckhart preached, "What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the Son of God 1,400 years ago and I don’t give birth to God’s Son in my person and my culture and my times?" The ritual communion meal in the Christian service with the saying "Do this in memory of me," brings the memory of Jesus’ presence into our lives at that time. (OB, 106).

The creation-centered spiritual tradition "rejects the dualism of heaven/earth and works and prays, as Jesus did, that the divine "’kingdom/queendom of God come on earth as it is in heaven.’ While not denying unrealized eschatology or covering its eyes to the injustice and sin and sadness in this life, its response is not to flee the present for either a more heavenly future or a more miraculous past." It is the belief that Now is a sacred moment in time, with potential for divine activity in our own experiences. This nowness offers hope as many try to escape the present by drugs or alcohol or going shopping and perpetuating unleashed consumerism which wreaks havoc on our environment.

VP 9: Holiness as Cosmic Hospitality

Here, Matthew Fox defines Holiness as Wholeness and Compassion and then as Cosmic Hospitality. The fall/redemption philosophy defines holiness as perfection. Fox quotes a Father Tanquerry who said, "Our Lord Proposes to us as the idea of holiness the very perfection of Our Heavenly Father: ‘Be ye therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect’" (OB, 110). The latter quote from Matthew’s Gospel (5:48)

simply ‘does not refer to moral perfection’ and ‘does not have here the later Greek meaning of being totally free of imperfection.’ The Greek word that has been misleadingly translated as ‘be you perfect’ is teleioi, which means, ‘be full-grown, be adult, be complete and whole’ (OB, 111).

The myth that original sin disrupted the "perfect" state of the fall from grace is an example of the quest for holiness as perfection that is a quest for a past event as well. Fox writes,

Once again we are face to face with a world view that ignores what we know of evolutionary history, that flees from nature, and that makes too big a thing of the past. The fullness we seek and the ripening into fuller, compassionate people that we desire draws us into the future much more than into a past that most probably never existed (Ibid.).

A parallel to the saying about perfection in Matthew can be found in Luke as well. Luke writes, "’Be you compassionate as your Creator in heaven is compassionate.’(Luke 6:36) In a static cosmos, perfection takes on static connotations, and so does holiness. In an ongoing cosmos..." with, the ever-creative spirit of God (Dabhar), "our goal is to expand, to ‘ripen,’ as St. Iranaeus would say, to grow into fullness" (OB, 111-112). If it is true that holiness in the scriptures is compassion, and Fox writes, "the Israelites believed compassion to be the most divine of all energies—then our deepest ripening and growing happens in our growth into compassion." Speaking in terms of the four paths Matthew Fox writes about in Original Blessing, "we ripen from Via Positiva through Via Negative through Via Creative to Via Transformativa," this latter path being characterized by compassion (OB, 112).

Fox draws parallels from the definition of holiness as perfection to the culture of consumerism. "Consider the female models who are labeled "10," whom the camera presents to us only a perfect; the same unreality is portrayed in male models attempting to sell us some goods. Consumerism...plays on our inferiority complexes, on the fear or guilt or inhibitions we possess from not being perfect." The idea that perfection is the meaning for salvation is also the idea of the gnostics, Fox writes. The "best way to undercut such potent appeals to our weakest sides is to let go of the quest for perfection and to sink more deeply into a spiritual value system that cherishes what is and considers isness holy" (Ibid.).

Fox then goes on to define holiness as Cosmic Hospitality. "The Creator God is a gracious, an abundant, and a generous host/hostess. She has spread out for our delight a banquet that was twenty billion years in the making....The banquet works for our benefit if we behave toward it as reverent guests" (OB, 112-113). The Christian ceremony of Holy Communion, Fox writes, is an opportunity to eat cosmic bread and blood and to say "thank you" for the banquet of our lives. Jesus offers fellowship at the table for all.

Fox quotes Isaiah 55:1: "Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty; though you have no money, come! Buy corn without money, and eat, and, at no costs, wine and milk" (OB, 108). From Proverbs 9:1,2,4-6 he quotes: "Wisdom has built herself a house, she has slaughtered her beats, prepared her wine, she has set her table. To the fool she says, ‘Come and eat my bread, drink, my wine I have prepared! Leave your folly and you will live, walk in the ways of perception’" (OB 109).

The flip side of hosting is to be a guest. Hospitality is about a relationship. Christians believe that God has become guest in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. "God went to great lengths to reveal that true holiness is hosting (creating) and guesting (receiving gratefully)," Fox writes (OB 116). There is a thanking and praising that goes on in the Psalms (150:1, 3), "Praise God in his temple on earth, praise her in her temple in heaven, praise him with blasts of the trumpet" (OB 116). Fox quotes Meister Eckhart as saying, "If the only prayer you say in your whole life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice" (OB 109).

Guesting implies sharing among guests as well and spreading the bounty around. In today’s ecological crises, "we are becoming more and more aware that humanity has not been a good guest on this earth.... We have some severe disciplining to undergo if we are to recover the art of savoring, which is what guesting is about." Fox writes that we must be compassionate and share in hosting all beings. "I welcome all the creatures of the world with grace, shouts Hildegard" of Bingen (OB 116).

VP 10: Sin, Salvation…Creation and Incarnation

Christian concepts of sin and salvation and Christ, are viewed here in the context of Via Positiva. Basically, sin seems to be whatever goes against the first nine themes. Sin against creation does harm to its balance and harmoniousness, "turning what is beautiful into what is ugly...ecological damage is a sin against the Via Positiva and, as both Hildegard and the wisdom theologians point out, such sin is a break, a rupture, in creation itself," the most basic injustice by humanity to "its own source, the earth." As Hildegard of Bingen who lived in the 12th Century, who Matthew Fox frequently quotes, wrote

Now in the people that were meant to be green, there is no more life of any kind. There is only shriveled barrenness. The winds are burdened by the utterly awful stink of evil, selfish goings-on. Thunderstorms menace. The air belches out the filthy uncleanliness of the peoples (OB 119).

Hildegard also wrote, "The earth should not be injured! The earth should not be destroyed! There is no trivializing of sin here," Fox writes. Sin against the natural environment dominates with a subject object dualistic mentality that manipulates and controls others living beings. The "egological" is put ahead of the "ecological." It is sin by omission of the cosmos. Fox goes on to name other sins, including sin against eros, pleasure and love of life and a preference for Thanatos, or preoccupation with death. Another is the failure to trust; also failure to grow into royal personhood. Lack of holiness as wholeness and lack of hospitality would be others (Ibid.).

Interestingly, it is hard to find mention of conventional morality such as the ten commandments here. Fox expands our view of sin to include some issues Christianity especially has seldom named by the central doctrine of what is commonly expressed as Christian belief.

Salvation includes the ability to marvel at and savour Creation. Salvation is about healing, ?just as the cosmos itself can be ruptured and torn apart by injustice, so too it can be healed by all human efforts to bring justice, which is balance, back to human relationships to earth, air, fire, water, and one another? (By naming the latter four elements, Fox includes and reclaims some indigenous pre-Christian symbols, which he has learned from his dialoguing and sharing ritual with Native Americans as well as those who claim and reclaim non and pre-Christian religions from other parts of the globe (OB, 121).

The process of healing our lives to live in wholeness and to return to our origins of community with the natural world also brings Eros as salvific force which is a return to blessing and play. This love of life is a healing from Thanatos, meaning love of death, which is the ultimate sin against the Via Positiva. A letting go of control is required to embrace and respect the playful life force of Eros. Fox quotes Norman O. Brown who writes, "The question confronting mankind is the abolition of repression—in traditional Christian language, the resurrection of the body....The life instinct, or sexual instinct, demands activity of a kind that, in contrast to our current mode of activity, can only be called play" (OB, 121-122).

In the dictionary I find three definitions for Eros, 1) the god of love or son of Aphrodite. 2) a force for self preservation as opposed to destructive instincts, and 3) sexual drive/libido (Morris 1975). Fox, I believe, uses the definitions for Eros interchangeably between meaning force for life and the sexual connotations that can go with it. This talk of Eros seems to be a radically different focus than traditional Christian moral rules. Though Eros doesn’t necessarily imply loose sex, it seems to bring up a looser connection to the subject. Christianity has typically expressed strong sexual mores to follow, which talk about playful eros seems to put into question. Many feel that eros and love of life and of the earth go together. The preoccupation with being perfectly moral, especially in gray area issues of sexuality which the Christian right is known to emphasize, while not talking at all about the health of the planet which effects the lives and health of all of us. Most people believe in the importance of moral and sexual ethics, but western Christianity has followed the theme of shunning the body so well that Creation Spirituality invites a balance and appreciation for Eros, "the body" and the earth, and sees a connection between these themes with spiritual ones.

Finally Fox comes to the theme of Jesus Christ in this last section of the Via Positiva. Most of his themes have seemed to be new or to have a different twist to what most consider to be traditional Christian themes. They are perhaps an integration of themes from different religions to express what he has developed to be meant by Creation Spirituality. Fox is a theologian and tends to get wordy at times and I doubt all the readers follow every word, though he has done some brilliant interpretation of theology.

About Jesus in reference to the "positive way," Fox says that he comes announcing life, that people may have it "in abundance." Fox compares referenced to "wisdom" in the Hebrew scriptures and Old Testament to passages about Jesus. Wisdom is a concept possibly older than the Hebrew religion, and may have once been a goddess. Fox compares the Cosmic Christ to this Wisdom tradition in his book, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. "In the Hebrew scriptures, personified wisdom talks of being a vine taken root in a privileged people."(Sir.24:17-21) Jesus also talks of himself as a vine and source of fertility. "I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty." (John 15:5) Like wisdom that accompanied the Word and the Creator from the beginning of time, Jesus "expounds things hidden since the foundation of the world" (Matt. 13:35) and grew in wisdom as a child (Luke 2:40). Fox writes, "He spoke wisdom, but more than that he played the role of wisdom, the post-prophetic prophecy, the royal person calling all to their royal personhood" (OB 122). Though mocked as the "king of the Jews," Jesus redefines kingship to redistribute it so everyone realizes their own divineness as royal persons with the "dignity and responsibility to the cosmos" that accompany it. "He calls all royal persons to be in him as he is in them," which Fox calls a "christological panentheism" which "puts an end to all theisms once and for all" (OB 123). A perfect host, "The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry" or thirsty (John 6:33,35).

Fox writes, "So great were his love and trust of creation that death itself could have no dominion over him. By death being overcome by resurrected life, "Eros will have the final say. Jesus is a cosmic Christ...fully present to all of creation, drawing heaven and earth together in a celebration of the unity of all things" (OB 124). Jesus is a lover and "pray-er of nature." Mountains, deserts, parks, lakes welcomed him for days at a time as he suffered...." (OB 124). "In his prayer he learns to pray to a Creator God as "Abba" or "Papa," thus personalizing" in a panentheistic way, "as no religion ever had the intimate bond between creature and Creator" (OB 124).

Second Path: VIA NEGATIVA (VN)~Befriending Darkness, Letting Go & Letting Be

Matthew Fox feels that an authentic Via Negativa theme has largely been missing from Western spirituality, and in particular, Christianity, for several centuries. The Via Negativa is the opposite of the Positiva and can to do with letting go of things or quiet meditation or could be associated with negative experiences like sin and separation.

Fox writes that asceticism, the effort to use will power to control one’s feelings, was substituted for the Via Negativa in Catholic spirituality. "Mortifications replaced meditations." Meister Eckhart wrote, centuries ago, that asceticism creates more self-consciousness and reveals a greater ego, rather than a lesser one (OB 129). Fox writes that the "religious acquiescence to "more self-consciousness" and bigger egos in a historical period of rising capitalism, industrial birth, mass armies, and civilian targets in modern warfare" has been rewarded by the secular status quo.

When we don’t make room for the force of the Via Negativa, the prophetic (or I would add, the "critical") voice is silenced. Life becomes superficial, easily manipulated and ultimately, as boring as it is violent. And, he adds, "cheap." While the Via Positiva teaches us the cosmic "breadth" of living, "of our holy relationship to stars and atoms..., the Via Negativa opens us to our divine depths. (130) The implied suppression of the media by the United States current president, who has manipulated the "moral majority" and the silent (and not so silent) masses into a seemingly unnecessary war, is an example of an unhealthy and misdirected Via Negativa.

Fox writes:

When one has suffered deep pain and allowed the pain to be pain, one can visit the Grand Canyon and learn that it has nothing on the human person who is even deeper and more powerfully carved over millions of years by the flowing tides of pain (OB 130).

VN 11: Emptying: Letting Go and Letting Be and Letting Silence be Silence

Fox begins here by talking about the period of time in western Europe called the En-Lightenment, the quest for light versus the dark. A well-known phrase from the Christian mystical tradition is the "dark night of the soul." Western civilization has been greatly influenced by the Enlightenment. The predominant use of the left-brain in Western civilization is also light-oriented. "The invention of the light bulb and electricity and neon lights and handy light switches was a marvelous outgrowth of the Enlightenment’s technological achievements." Television engages eyes and ears in an experience of light that is alluring and demanding. Fox continues, "The religion of Positivism is almost all light. And the sentimental hymns that ignore the dark or reduce it anthropomorphically to human sin and therefore to salvation contribute to the excessive lighting of our world" (OB 134).

As a result, there is a lot of fear of the dark and the absence of light. We are afraid of silence and image-lessness. Fox continues:

We whore after more—more images, more light, more profits, more goodies....For growth of the human person takes place in the dark. Under ground. In subterranean passages. There, where "no image has ever reached into the soul’s foundation," God alone works. A light oriented spirituality is superficial, surface-like, lacking as it does the deep dark roots that nourish and surprise and ground the large tree (OB 135).

Fox states that "the flight from darkness in the modern period of Western culture has been the flight from mortality and the fear of death, of letting go of this life. Otto Rank sees this fear of death as the most basic characteristic of a patriarchal society. It has much to do with our hatred of animals, of the earth, of life in fact." It drives out any Eros or love of life. He quotes from Dreaming the Dark, by Starhawk, who writes that the darkness is what we are afraid of, don’t want to see, qualities of fear, anger, sex, grief, death, which are unknown. The unconscious mind has easier access to the "right brain" which is comfortable with darkness. "The depths of our beings are not all sunlit; to see clearly, we must be willing to dive into the dark, inner abyss and acknowledge the creatures we may find there" (OB 135).

Regarding how to recover the darkness, Fox reminds us that we were conceived in the darkness of our mother’s cozy womb. Much of outer space is dark. Seeds under ground begin in the dark. Mystery is about darkness. "We need to retrieve our rights to mystery and to the darkness in which it is so often immersed and enmeshed" (OB 136).

Fox also talks about the concept of "letting go." Though I haven’t made a major study of eastern religions, Fox seems to be describing what meditation in Eastern religions is all about. Fox writes, "the need for silence that Zen speaks of, that wisdom literature celebrates, that Eckhart praises, and that Merton calls for is not just about oral silence." Silence means letting go of all images, auditory as well as visual, including cognitive and imaginative. When we let go we become aware of a state of being and being still. He quotes Eckhart: "One should love God mindlessly, without mind or mental activities or images or representations. Bare your soul of all mind and stay there without mind" (OB 136-137).

Fox writes that Western religion has misunderstood the Via Negativa as a letting go of images in the movements of Protestantism "where the German term keine bild (no image) was taken to mean ‘Destroy art.’" The real meaning is that we need to let go of all images at times "if we are to birth authentic ones with our lives and work and prayer and art" (OB 138).

Fox talks about the German psychologist Carl Jung, who studied universal symbols and mythology in his work, and commented on the Taoist text, The Secret of the Golden Flower. Jung asks,

What did these people do in order to achieve the development that liberated them? As far as I could see they did nothing but let things happen…. The art of letting things happen, action through non-action, letting go of oneself, as taught by Meister Eckhart, became for me the key opening the door to the way. We must be able to let things happen in the psyche.

Jung continues, that most people know anything of this art and that consciousness is forever interfering, helping, correcting, negating and "never leaving the simple growth of the psychic processes in peace" (OB 138).

Fox concludes that the ground of the soul is dark, thus the human race cannot continue to flee it to embrace the Enlightenment which does not include an "Endarkenment." If we are to overcome our fear of the dark, then spirituality should lead the way, proclaiming the truth and practice of a healthy Via Negativa, a journey which will not consist of manufacturing religious exercises but of "letting go and letting be, of breathing deeply, of trusting the empty spaces and the silences. Of sinking, therefore, and not of climbing" (OB 139).

VN 12: Being Emptied: Letting Pain Be Pain: Kenosis

Fox writes here that pain empties us. In the United States, we have many pain killers and ways to cover up for pain, including drugs, alcohol, soap operas, and shopping, which do not, however, release us from pain. They lead us to acquiesce and let pain run our lives instead of letting "Eros and our love of life run our lives" (OB 141-142).

Facing pain and letting it be pain is not easy. Fox writes that "courage—big-heartedness—is the most essential virtue on the spiritual journey." We cannot run from pain and the only way to let go of pain is by first embracing it as part of the cycle of pleasure and pain, the thorns with the rose, to put it metaphorically.

Fox continues, that fire gives us energy, like the warmth from a fire, a byproduct of a destructive force. Pain helps us to understand other people in pain. It is profoundly social and eminently shareable. "A healthy experience of letting pain be pain is always a schooling in compassion. For when a person has suffered deeply even once and has owned that suffering, that person can never forget and never fail to recognize the pain of others" (OB 143).

Secondly, pain destroys the illusions of false, elitist pleasures and helps ground our understanding in what is essential in life. He tells the story of Molly Rush who protested against the Trident submarine and was arrested. While jailed, she came to notice eighteen varieties of wildflowers in the scrubby prison yard. Fox writes that the "psychological term for how…the Via Negativa can…increase our sense of pleasure at the basics of life is deautomatization." As adults we become automatized to the beauty around us. "Unwished-for pain, provided we pray it or enter into it and do not cover it up and run from it, can often bring that love of life back to us" (OB 144).

A third side way pain enlivens us and gives us energy is that embarking on a journey through pain toughens us up. "It makes us stronger by testing us and demanding discipline of us that we did not know we were capable of." This is not the patriarchal ascetic tradition would lead us to consciously control one’s passions; but in the natural flow of events in our lives, living life fully requires strength to endure pain and suffering. Fox writes that feminists Adrienne Rich and Carol Christ have pointed out that men who discover their gentle sides in our culture too often mistake gentleness for passivity and weakness. Sensitivity, including sensitivity to pain, also demands strength." The strength of endurance and perseverance, that solitude requires, is the strength that vulnerability is about. It does not come from "willing it or gritting our teeth," but from undergoing pain—"unwished-for, unplanned, unheralded pain." Suffering, Fox continues, tests the depth of our love of life and relationship even when and especially because relationships are so often the cause of our suffering (OB 144-145).

Another energy byproduct of suffering is that "letting pain be pain links us with others. All social movements and organization were born of pain. Not privatized pain or pain kept to oneself or the wallowing in one’s own pain, but pain shared" (OB 145). Fox writes that liberation begins where pain is acknowledged and allowed to be pain. From there it becomes shareable and where possible, resolvable (OB 146).

Pain can open us up to be citizens of the universe when we empathize with cosmic pain. When we identify with the pain experienced by nonhuman aspects of the universe, we can participate more fully through this awareness, in sharing the burdens of other creatures. It is human chauvinism that says that only humans suffer pain, and that animals don’t. Of the cosmic Christ, the medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich wrote, "the entire cosmos responded to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ….The sky and the earth failed at the time of Christ’s dying because he too was part of nature" (OB 146).

Fox concludes that suffering need not be the "wages of sin," but is built into the birth process of the entire cosmos. It has to do with sacrifice and yielding, with receiving and birthing forth. It is cosmic not only in dimensions but in time…(and) has accompanied all the birthings of the universe right up to the labor pains of the most recent mother birthing her human child. Some suffering—that which leads to birthing—can be a blessing (OB 146-147).

Fox emphasizes, however, that is important not to glorify, cling to wallow in pain. That would be sado-masochism. The purpose of letting pain be pain is precisely to let go of it. For this to happen, it is essential to begin by naming it (OB 147). Thus it has a role in the spiritual process of life, which, once experienced, can lead us on to new processes which we will discover as we move through studying the four paths which Fox has developed, based on his study of Meister Eckhart’s writings.

VN 13: Sinking into Nothingness and Letting Nothingness be Nothingness.

Nothingness is a theme in mystical religious movements. It is another way of looking at the Via Negativa but similar to the themes of "letting go" and experiencing pain. Nothing is what is left after we let go of everything. We have pain we can think of nothing else. Returning to the place of nothingness is like returning to the place that is before creation. It is refreshing when, a in meditation, we take a break from our lives and let go of our normal routine to sift through our thoughts and become still inside and accepting of the silence that remains. It is from there that new sparks of insight and creativity can emerge.

Gandhi, Fox writes, found power in finding a "zero position." He let go of attachments and was able to focus on his ideals as a result (OB 150). He quotes Mechtild of Magdeburg, a mystic who was part of the Beguines, a working class, lay women’s spiritual movement, in Germany. Mechtild writes on nothingness:

Love the nothing, flee the self. Stand alone, seek help from no one. Let your being be quiet, be free from the bondage of all things. Free those who are bound, give exhortation to the free. Care for the sick, but dwell alone. When you drink the waters of sorrow you shall kindle the fire of love with the match of perseverance—his is the way to dwell in the desert (OB 151).

Fox quotes a beautiful poem by Rilke,

You darkness, that I come from,
I love you more than all the fires that fence in the world,
For the fire makes
A circle of light for everyone,
And then no one outside learns of you.
But the darkness pulls in everything:
Shapes and fires, animals and myself,
How easily it gathers them!—
Powers and people—
And it is possible a great energy is moving near me
I have faith in nights (OB 152).

As we are able to let go of our own preoccupations, it is easier to relate to and try to relieve the pain of others with compassion. Fox also talks about laughter paradoxically being a kind of letting go of ourselves, teaching us that not even our own pain is not to be taken too seriously (OB 152-153).

Fox writes that pain and anger can be so great that the only name for them is no name—nothingness. Pain is a void in us, "the concave surface whose convex is cosmos. A spirituality that opens us to cosmic joy and beauty also renders us vulnerable to an experience of the void. Cosmic nothingness. It helps at such times of ineffable pain to realize that others too suffer from such kinds of pain, that nothingness is very much a shared and shareable experience" (OB 153).

Another metaphor related to nothingness is falling and sinking. "Our falls into nothingness can be and must be trusted…Isn’t this what the seed does as it falls into the ground, eventually to sprout new life (OB 154). Mechtild compared sinking to the sinking of the sun at dusk and the consequent cooling of the day. Sinking into water is also a cooling experience. These images contain a little trace of will power, Fox writes, "but rather of the deep breathing, the deep relaxing and letting go that a healthy Via Negativa is all about" (OB 155).

In the creation-centered spiritual journey, nothingness is an essential part of the deep and fruitful journey, which leads to new creation. Without first letting go and emptying ourselves of thoughts and images, there is not room to sprout new growth. "Our souls grow by subtraction and not be addition, Eckhart warns us…. There is no strengthening of our spirits for the battles that await us in group movements and liberation struggles without acknowledging the ‘zero point’ from where all new creation emerges," as Gandhi professed.

Fox writes,

This affirmation of the dark journey is very different from the fall/redemption approach to the Via negativa, an approach that is filled with will power, with terms like ‘mortification,’ meaning ‘to put to death, and ‘penances’ and even ‘annihilation.’… The distortion of the Via negativa by the fall/redemption tradition parallels not only the loss of cosmos in that tradition,… but also the loss of moral outrage at social sin. It represents that dichotomy that Gandhi decries in Augustine between the political and religious orders of society …

…The Augustinian contrast meant that the political order could never be elevated, but could only be endured….Aquinas, unlike [St.] Augustine, stressed the vital role of the political order as necessary for the attainment of the highest earthly good (OB 155-156).

Fox writes that one of the reasons Western Christian spirituality has been "satisfied to wrap itself almost exclusively in the fall/redemption mantle," is that politically it serves many economic powerful interests of the status quo which neglect the deep personal and social implications of a Via Negativa. This neglects what re-creating a society worthy of our deepest selves would be about and confuses people’s minds over their self-doubts instead of unleashing them with their creative powers. Fox writes that "well-paid electronic preachers" of "guilt and patriotic positivism" are rewarded by the powers-that-be, for remaining silent about the human person’s immense capacity for suffering. They are well paid to refrain from naming that suffering and thus prevent us from moving beyond it.

VN 14: Sin, Salvation and a Theology of the Cross of Jesus Christ

Here Fox points out that though creation spirituality does not begin its theology with sin and salvation, it doesn’t remain silent about it either. The emphasis are not the conventional Christian ones but continue the themes of the Via Negativa covered up until now.

Sin in relation to the themes of the Via Negativa, would include a refusal to "let go" and to admit a need for receptivity. He quotes a story about the process of labor pains for a woman and interprets that the panic she experience increases her own fear is like the history of spirituality in the West, the past few centuries. She fears loss of control when what she needs to do is just relax. The refusal to trust the buoyancy of sinking into water, into darkness, pain, into nothingness is "sinful," Fox writes, because "it stifles our spiritual growth."

A compulsive, competitive, workaholic culture like ours has not rewarded us for relaxing or for developing those skills of mediation, of massage, of quiet and solitude that are so integral to the holy art of relaxing….(OB 159-160).

Clinging is another sin Fox names. By clinging to our egos, to control, to will power, as well as ascetic religious control and sacred images of our sacred selves, we refuse to let it go for deeper and more transcendent experiences. He names addition to consumerism, alcohol, drugs, attending workshops, television and shopping as other types of clinging that we need to let go of. "Letting go is so essential when we learn to realize that it is not letting go of things that is important, but the letting go of attitudes toward things. ‘There where clinging to things ends is where God begins to be,’ notes Meister Eckhart." He writes that the fall/redemption tradition has devalued the spirituality of matter and taught that spiritual depth means letting go of things. Spiritual conversion is deeper, a letting go of the attitude of addiction. This brings a freedom, with receptivity, which is part of the process of the Via Negativa (OB 160).

I recently watched a public television documentary about Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln’s years in the White House. Abraham dealt with the extreme pressures of leading a war and a people to free the slaves by reading the tragedies of Shakespeare and the Bible many times over. An African American woman who was a friend of Mary Todd Lincoln, looked over his shoulder while he was reading once, and saw that he was reading the book of Job. Mary Todd, on the other hand, fell pray to the addictions of shopping as a release for the extreme stresses on their family.

Projection is another sin Fox names. This is when we don’t see our own failings and blame others for what are actually our own issues. He illustrates this by comparing it to the excess killing of animals. Humans see animals as less valued and project fear of our own natures on wild "beasts" (OB 160-161).

I don’t know that he means to say that we should all become vegetarians, but I have learned about indigenous peoples that they actively use prayer with hunting and often had feasts after the hunting where they prayed for the animal spirits. When food is blessed, this may have some roots in the prayer for the spirits of animals, before we humans benefit from their flesh. In a society removed from indigenous ways and out of touch with traditional spiritual practice, we can learn to act in a respectful way toward things that benefit us and the workers and others who live on and tend the land from which we consumers benefit.

Another theme Fox builds upon from earlier chapters is our failing to acknowledge pain and to not cover it up. This builds in us type of strength. He quotes Mahatma Gandhi: "To make any progress we must not make speeches and organize mass meetings but be prepared for mountains of suffering" (OB 157). This is not a stoical strength of gritting our teeth or a macho strength of controlling the situation, but "a vulnerable strength, the strength to absorb, to receive the dark with the light, the pain with the pleasure, a strength to keep on falling. It is a strength born of sensitivity, a refusal to live with insensitivity, with coldness of heart…." (OB 162). He quotes Hebrews 12:7, "Suffering is part of your training. God is treating you as his sons or daughters" (OB 158).

The salvation of the Via Negativa is not from pain but through pain, Fox writes. When we face our fears and enter what appears to be "darkness to befriend it becomes a profoundly healing event." Fox goes on to say that a personal salvation by itself is not truly salvific, but that since we humans are in deep communion with others, it is our very relationships that beg for healing. By acknowledging our pain, "we allow an entrance into the wound to take place," for healing. He writes that some of the Psalms, such as 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143, which have been called "penitential Psalms," by the fall/redemption perspective, are not just about sin and penance, but the full experience of "letting go, of tasting…nothingness, pain and emptying." And about being forgiven, I would add.

Fox says that forgiveness, which is a strong Lutheran emphasis, is another word for letting go which saves us. It is about letting go of guilt, some imagined, some real, as well as fear. There is no healing or salvation without forgiveness which restores us (OB 163). While Israel waited in exile in the desert, they waited for the Yahweh to bring hope, "for the fruitful, creative energy of God that can recycle even despair into possibility, even chaos into creation, and nothingness into something wonderful." He quotes Lamentations 5;15, 19-21:

Joy has vanished from our hearts; our dancing has been turned to mourning….But you, Yahweh, you remain for ever; your throne endures from age to age. You cannot mean to forget us for ever? You cannot mean to abandon us for good? Make us come back to you, Yahweh, and we will come back. Renew our days as in times past (OB 165).

Fox writes that the "sin that is considered the cause of Jerusalem’s downfall might be the sin of not letting go." In our times, he says, salvation would include a recognition of the need to let go of crazy military projections, nuclear madness and of the over control of nation states and unjust economic systems. We need to let go of satisfaction with the way things are for the poor, homeless, starving, ignorant and the sick as well as with the way things are for the too-wealthy, powerful and knowledgeable (OB 166).

There is salvific power in sacrifice, Fox writes. Traditionally this was a burnt offering. It requires a letting go. Sacrifice occurs when people of give of themselves and offer their power as well as belongings for the sake of others. This symbolism is a central one for Christians in Christ’s letting go of himself at the cross. Jesus let go of his humanity to gain his divinity. Fox uses the imagery of pruning, as in John 15:1-6, that temporary pruning hurts and conjures up doubt and fear, but can create strength, richness and depth in the long run. Finally, Fox lets go of the letting go which occurs after the Via Negativa makes room for the Via Creativa.

Third Path: VIA CREATIVA (VC) ~ Befriending Creativity, Befriending Our Divinity

The third path, Creativity is a very earthy, universal process where spirit creates with matter and creates life and the environment humans live in. Creativity is a force that makes something happen or exist where there was nothing before or where nothing existed. Creativity does not follow asceticism, or forced deprivation but it follows a true letting go and nothingness after which something new can breakthrough. The forces in our universe complement each other when allowed to balance each other.

VC 15: Cosmos to Cosmogenesis: Our Divinization as Images of God [&] Co-Creators

A well-known French Dominican priest, Father M.D. Chenu, once lamented to Matthew Fox that theology for the past three centuries has been divorced from the arts and that psychologist Otto Rank felt this loss has increased a neurosis in society and religion. Fox continues to say that "Art has invariably found its roots in religious vision, as was the case in ancient Greek drama, in Chartres cathedral, in black spirituals. A secular society that is devoid of spiritual vision will not produce art but entertainment" and the selling of the artist’s soul (OB 180).

From the Bible, Fox quotes 1st Corinthians, 3:9, "We are fellow workers with God."(180) He quotes from Romans 8:14, 16-17, 19 & 22, which states that everyone moved by the Spirit is a son or daughter of God and heirs and co-heirs with Jesus Christ as well. "The whole creation is eagerly waiting for God to reveal his sons and daughters….From the beginning till now the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth" (OB 179).

In this chapter Fox brings up again the theme of the cosmos, and that we humans participate in the creative activity of the cosmos. However, we latecomers to the universe are "graced with a unique capacity for birth or destruction." Fox writes that out of our experiences of nothingness we can birth almost anything; "the cosmos waits to see what it is we commit our visions to."

We have an inkling of the unbelievable fertility of the universe," of the constant birthings of atoms and molecules, eggs and spermatozoa, cells and living organisms in water and on land in this so-far-unique of all cosmic places, the Earth." The human species "is fecund in its capability to reproduce sexually" but "how much more fertile is one human imagination." Each human is not only capable of giving birth to their images but of executing them as well. Together, humans can share images, "refine them, knead them." Fox asks, what limits are there to the human capacity to birth new images and creations of beauty and surprise… (OB 181)?

Matthew Fox suggests that humankind has been through its childhood and its adolescence and now faces a point of creative maturity. The enlightenment, he suggests, was an adolescence which has brought us now to the brink of nuclear holocaust, staring extinction in the face. Perhaps now we will wake up to our "divine and demonic powers of creativity." So there is another side to creativity to watch out for. He quotes Eckhart, "We are heirs of the fearful creative power of God" (OB 182).

Art is not a genteel thing. Creativity is not tiptoeing through he tulips; it is not a Donny and Marie Osmond entertainment program…. Whether we are talking of the powers to make a Trident submarine or the nuclear missiles that go on it, or the power to create a symphony, or the power to build a table for the living room or to write a poem to a loved one—creativity is so divine that it is awesome" (OB 182).

We need to face creativity and to "learn reverence for it, a deep, divine, ‘fear of the Lord’ reverence." If we don’t, it will destroy us, if not through nuclear war, from fast food stands, polluted food, air and water, sadistic pornography and watered down sentimental news broadcasts. We must choose if our creativity will be for life or death, for people or for profit, for justice or forgetfulness. Fox quotes Hammarskjöld, "Do you create or do you destroy?" We cannot deny the power of creativity or keep it down. "If we are not consciously bent on employing it for life’s sake, it will emerge on its own for the sake of destruction" (Ibid.).

Fox laments that he is the first theologian in the West that he knows of to name the Via Creativa as essential to the spiritual journey. It disturbs him that the Pentagon has more "at stake in birthing than does the Vatican" (OB 183). Though there are some creative movements in spirituality afoot, he feels that the Enlightenment still has the strongest influence on teachers of religion, which hampers their efforts. He writes about the image of God, the Creator, in each human and the inherent ability of each person to be creative. There are different sorts of creativity, from manual labor to musical genius, but one divine energy of creation that "finds unique expression in the human gift for birthing" (OB 185).

Fox writes that theology and western culture have lost sight of the essential democratization of human creativity as well as the pleasure and delight that birthing is all about. "Where art has been allowed to be elitist, culture becomes bored and violent. Where art is recovered as being an essential human activity, ecstasy returns" (OB 186). Matthew Fox recovers art for average people by giving it center stage in spiritual meditation.

VC 16: Art as Meditation

Matthew Fox quotes the poet, William Blake, "Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Govern’d the Nations." He goes on to lament the dominance of the popularity of war and sports in western society (OB 189). Fox feels there is a place in religion to honor the imagination and the artistic process and calls this "art as meditation." He tells about Hildegard of Bingen, who, after a transformation spiritual experience, rose from her sickbed and was inspired to prolifically produce books and works of art in the years to come. He quotes Ingmar Bergman as saying that "art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship," as art becomes sterile without spirituality (OB 191). Not long ago, before industrial and electronic society, art as mediation was almost taken for granted. Part of every day life included cooking, sewing, gardening, playing music, telling stories, and relating to nature. For urban westerners, these are not necessarily so common today. We have to "make a conscious effort to develop the unconscious, the right brain, our mystical lives, by self-expression or art." Fox points out that Gandhi urged the Indian people to elevate "the spinning wheel to significance as an economic necessity, a religious ritual, and a national symbol" (Ibid.).

Fox also calls art as mediation "extroverted" meditation. "Introverted" meditation is what most of us have heard about before, where we sit still and go inward, or when we meditate on the prayers others have already come up with. He describes television and film, as being a type of introverted meditation. We receive "their images—and who "they" are is of vital significance. Too often these days it appears that "they" are multinational corporations whose purpose is mainly to sell us a product wrapped around a news program, a sports event or sitcom. "These images come from outside in, as do all commercials of every kind" (Ibid.).

He quotes Eckhart as saying, "Whatever I want to express in its truest meaning must emerge from within me and pass through an inner form. It cannot come from outside to the inside but must emerge from within." Fox goes on to say that what emerges from within is art, which is inborn within us. Art as meditation is where "the form serves the inner truth and not the other way around." Ritual and worship are meant to be prayerful expressions of people, "liturgy means ‘the work of the people’—that is an outward –flowing expressing of the inner events of the people which find an outlet in a group form" (OB 192).

When I was a student at ICCS, there was a weekly "ritual," planned by different people each time and each week it was a new and creative experience. Fox writes:

"…too many revisions of prayer books…in our day…presume that more ‘relevant’ prayers from outside a group of people will somehow renew worship. What will renew worship and indeed all prayer is the calling forth from the inside of a people whatever they want to express in its truest meaning, as Eckhart puts it" (OB 192).

Churches, according to Fox, need to take art seriously. Not art for art’s sake, for the sake of an end result, but as prayer and meditation. This allows us to let go of art as production, which characterizes capitalism, and to return to art as process, which is a spiritual and creative experience. He quotes Thomas Berry on the art of gardening,

Gardening is an active participation in the deepest mysteries of the universe. By gardening our children learn that they constitute with all growing things a single community of life. They learn to nurture and be nurtured in a universe that is always precarious but ultimately benign. They learn profound reasons for the seasonal rituals of the great religious traditions (OB 192).

Fox writes that the notion that education is about educating the left brain alone is not only obsolete but violent. He feels that the arts must be taught for centering and for discovering the co-creative process, or cosmogenesis, for which we are all responsible. This can breathe life into the whole educational life. From that, it is hard, he points out, to teach adults to let go of judgmental attitudes about their own self-expression. Phrases said to children, like "You can’t draw," "You can’t sing" or "You can’t dance" stay with people their whole lives. Fox writes that modeling with clay in the dark "takes away the temptation to compare one’s work with others." He suggests beginning "art as meditation experiences with a letting-go exercise of breathing in and out in order to let one’s powers be free to give their full attention to the images within that are needing to be born" (OB 193).

Fox also emphasizes the importance of trusting that out of the silence, waiting, openness and emptiness, images will birth forth. He also states that when inviting one another to art as meditation, it is important that the group leader, especially at the beginning, make clear that we all, in this society, need to let go of expressing ourselves almost exclusively in words. He quotes Rainier Maria Rilke as saying that "words are the last resort for expressing what happens deep within oneself."(194) When we let go of words, images, symbols and pictures emerge and can be expressed in drawing, painting, body movement, music, poetry, etc. He notes that storytelling and poetry are a right brain way of expressing words, which express deeper truths and images in a spiritual way, and therefore are types of art.

Fox writes that, symbolically, birthing requires the refusal to be a victim and helps bring about the end of violence. The process of interacting with materials of art allows us to find and express our truths. He quotes Carl Jung who talked about how to let one’s unconscious psyche express itself by writing, drawing, painting or modeling with clay in order to overcome a "veritable cramp of consciousness" caused by a "web of fantasies." These activities must be continued until the cramp in the conscious mind is released and one can let things happen, which is the goal. This creates a new attitude which "accepts the non-rational and the incomprehensible, simply because it is what is happening" (OB 198).

He writes that "to create is always to learn, to begin over, to begin at zero" (OB 198). He quotes Mechtild as saying, "I am forced to write these words regarding which I would have gladly kept silent out of fear of vainglory. But I have learned to fear more the judgment of God should I, God’s little creature, keep silent" (OB 199). Meister Eckhart drives home the importance of sharing what we have to offer:

Human beings ought to communicate and share all the gifts they have received from God. If a person has something that she does not share with others, that person is not good. A person who does not bestow on others spiritual things and the joy that is in them has in fact never been spiritual. People are not to receive and keep gifts for themselves alone, but should share themselves and pour forth everything they possess whether in their bodies or their souls as much as possible (OB 199).

He quotes the Catholic monk, Thomas Merton, who practiced art as meditation, especially during the last several years of his life:

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. The mind that responds to the intellectual and spiritual values that lie hidden in a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, discovers a spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself, takes it out of itself, and makes it present to itself on a level of being that it did not know it could ever achieve (OB 199-200).

Fox closes this section by quoting Apostle Paul who said, "we are God’s work of art." Thus we are related to God as a painting is related to its painter, or a clay pot to a potter, or a book to its author. This implies a very intimate relationship with our creator (OB 200).

VC 17: Faith as Trust of Images: Discipline?—Yes! Asceticism—No!

Fox writes about the importance for people to trust the images which emerge from within themselves and which they can apply to creatively influence to the world around them. People find excuses to mistrust their images, including rationalizations, fears, and internal and external conflicts. To forget and neglect to express our own images, Hildegard of Bingen warned, is to "dry up."(203) There can be pain associated with birthing new images, Fox admits, but it is a salvific and healing pain, he insists. He then boldly suggests that we need to "ride our images" like riding a giant eagle, soaring up and down and wherever they take us. If we make mistakes and fall and hurt ourselves, we should chalk it up to experience and understand that this one of the results of the creative process.

Jesus, after all, rode his images to the cross, to his very death. And beyond this apparent failure, to the empty tomb and to resurrection. Who knows what lies behind and beyond our images until we trust them enough to ride them fully, even into the darkness and into the depths like a seed in the soil (OB 204)?

He feels that our images are a gift and that only by riding them through to the other side, will we have the perspective to really see them for the first time.

We have to make choices, Fox continues, about which images to work with. He writes about the requirement of discipline in creating art and compares aesthetic spirituality with the ascetic spirituality of the fall/redemption tradition. Eckhart wrote that asceticism is of no great importance. To "heap on your passions," the mortifications or self-punishments, practiced by monks of his time, just reveals one’s ego more than ever and creates more instead of less self-consciousness. A better way to deal with one’s passions is to put on them a "bridle of love," which will allow one to travel much further than practicing mortifications would ever do (OB 205). Fox says that a bridle of love is a steering instrument and that we are to steer, not control or abuse, our passions, according to Eckhart. "We are to make them work for us, to discipline them so that they take us where we need to go, as is the case with a bridle on a charging horse."

The creation-centered way is a discipline of love, not of threat, intimidation or control. Discipline requires hard work; one must endure the pains of labor. Fox suggests that one reason asceticism has been so prominent in the last centuries is the mechanistic period in the West. Behind rules of self-abnegation lie a hidden assumption that something good will result from not indulging in pleasure; that by controlling matter we somehow arrive at our divinity. The awful truth, Fox writes, is that in our quest to control matter, we have arrived more at the demonic stage of atomic discovery and release than at anything divine.

Fox quotes feminist Carol Christ who writes that after achieving power and respect, men may come to experience their power as illusory. They may find a need for spiritual experience at this point, though the literature of East and West both indicate that "the male mystic’s quest is arduous and difficult." Perhaps it is unfair to say this about all men, but as Fox goes on to say about women, surely, women and men who have not had social and political power, never have to give up what men who are automatically given status and power have to. In order to develop their spiritual nature, they have less need for asceticism. Asceticism, Fox writes, is a luxury for those with power and not even a consideration for those without power. He writes:

Why? Because their lives already contain enough crosses and pain, sufficient experiences of nothingness and the void, to empty even God of God. The issue for the poor is survival and creativity: how to survive with what minimal gifts one has been left. And how to make something with the simplest of materials and out of the nothingness of one’s existence. Here lies new birth and new creation (OB 207).

VC 18: Dialectical, Trinitarian…Beauty

At first glance, it is not apparent how these themes intrinsically relate together other than they are part of the Via Creativa. Before diving into the chapter, I speculate that the dialectic is about the ability to see the balance between contrasts. Fox shows how two contrasts create a third way, and the Trinity means "three." Beauty, I suspect, is the result. As I read further, I find some answers….

Matthew Fox writes that the basic dynamic of the creation-centered spiritual tradition is dialectical, not dualistic. Dualism creates a way of thinking in an either/or fashion. One can be "either good or bad, male or female, strong or weak, spiritual or sensual, for example." The dialectic is present in our lives in a very basic way, the way we relate to nature. Fox quotes Frederick Turner, who considers the basic spiritual principle of "Western civilization" to be the "enduring opposition of man and nature." Fox writes that panentheism, experiencing God through nature, a theme from the Via Positiva, rejects this dualism. When we see our connectedness to God and nature, how can we see ourselves as just either/or (OB 210).

Fox writes that the separation created by dualism is what the creation-centered tradition considers to be original sin. It seems tricky to reject dualisms without creating another dualism. This author would say that there is a place for separation and distinction and a place for harmony and connectedness; these ways of thinking must go together and not cancel each other out. Fox quotes Nicholas of Cusa who believed that dialectical thinking has its basis in "reconciliation of mind and nature, of intellect and sense." Nicholas opposes dualistic theology that is merely disjunctive, negative and divisive" (OB 211).

Creativity and birthing are dialectical processes, Fox continues. It is a paradox, that life is born out of tension, struggle and difference, and one plus one equals three. "Life is not born by virginal withdrawal but by active coupling." Whether the coupling is of a positive/negative charge giving birth to an electrical current, or oxygen and hydrogen making water, or a musician coupling with an instrument, a sculptor with wood, or a man and woman coupling and conceiving a child, "all love is born of the conflict that dialectical consciousness acknowledges."

Fox says that dualism wants to control conflict and to deny tension and difference. In the denial of conflict, nothing is born or it creates stillbirth. Fox refers to Frederick Turner, author of Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness, who laments that Westerners who took over the Americas, denied the cultures that were here and committed genocide, when perhaps they could have acknowledged and interacted with the people who lived here to create a more harmonious society. Fox writes that when we create art in our personal and collective lives, we learn how to assimilate what is different, what is surprising and what is at first feared. Of this union of seeming opposites, all creation is renewed (OB 211-212).

Humor is a dialectic experience. Puritans were not known for their humor. Catholics aren’t known for their humor either, but Fox tells about Ken Feit, "spiritual fool," who leads a "fool’s mass," and integrates humor with religious experience and teaching. For example, Feit on occasion apparently would eat an animal cracker shaped like a lion and roar immediately afterward, thus teaching acceptance of differences and how we can be transformed by what we take in. Fox writes:

"A dialectical consciousness is a letting go, a paradoxical, a humorous consciousness. Dualism is deadly serious, for it must always be in charge, in control….To refuse to create is profoundly destructive. To reject dialectic for dualism is to reject Chartres cathedral for MX missiles (OB 212).

Going from the Via Positiva to the Via Negativa has already illustrated a dialectic. By admitting both experiences into our spirituality, we have been invited to a third path, the Via Creativa. Here Fox introduces the term, "beauty." Alfred North Whitehead has said, "The contribution to Beauty which can be supplied by Discord---in itself destructive and evil—is the positive feeling of a quick shift of aim from the tameness of outworn perfection to some other ideal with its freshness still upon it." Fox goes on to say that the dialectical process is not a "tame" process. Beauty is not birthed antiseptically or without discord; beauty and terror come together (OB 212-213). Fox writes that beauty is not birthed antiseptically. "There is something awesome, awful, powerful about new creation. Nature and its renewal are not superficial."(213) In traditional Christian language, Fox writes, the Resurrection couldn’t happen without a crucifixion and there is no Easter without a Good Friday.

Whitehead distinguishes between "tragic evil" and "gross evil. When a tragedy has not been completely in vain, it forges a deeper beauty; the "survival power in motive force, by reason of appeal to reserves of Beauty, marks the difference between the tragic evil and the gross evil." Fox writes that "tragic evil" is redemptive and is redeemed by beauty. Evil, however, must become part of our dialectical way of living, but cannot be controlled by dualistic relationships to it. Fox quotes Mechtild of Magdeburg as writing that "the Creator has given us two wines to drink from: the white wine of bliss and harmony and ecstasy and the red wine of pain and suffering and loss." To live full, spiritual lives we need to drink of both wines in our lifetimes. He quotes a twentieth century artist on the struggle between the lyrical and abstract in his work, who said that the conflict is welcome and that one thing fires the other (OB 213).

Fox criticizes the ecumenical movement today as having a dualistic approach. Dialogue which creates tolerance and a desire for more understanding is a first step. To move beyond dialogue to creating something new together is to enter a dialectical, multi-dimensional relationship. This requires some letting go of the ego identification with one’s own denomination or religion, however.

On the concept of the Trinity, Fox writes that it was created by fall/redemption religious tradition and St. Augustine’s introspective psychology. Today we need a cosmic and creative understanding of the Trinity based on the acknowledgement of the cosmos within and around us. Christians profess to believe in a triune God—the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, going back at least as far as the Council of Rome in 382 AD. However, just because dogma is recited, doesn’t mean that Christians are fully aware of what it means. Merely reciting doctrine with the head and lips doesn’t help it enter our right brains. According to Fox, "Can it be denied that what is being celebrated here is the truth that the ultimate energy of the universe is dialectical and therefore creative" (OB 214)?

Dualism and separation are the original sin because they refuse to give birth, "they refuse to spiral and to carry on the divine process of cosmogenesis that is the Creator’s divine force of Dabhar (the word or creative energy as defined in Theme I). The trinitarian truth being celebrated is that neither the universe nor the Creator is static:

they are unfolding, pulsant, passionate, loving, creating, breathing, spiraling…. Just as God is in continual process of birthing God,…so too are we humans to be in the process of birthing ourselves, our lives, our society, our cosmos…. The trinitarian doctrine that spirit must proceed from both Father and Son and not from Father alone or Son alone is an indisputable reminder that only both/and, only a dialectical and therefore creating consciousness, can constitute an imitation of the divine (Ibid.).

VC 19: God as Mother & Child/Humans as Mothers of God, "Birthers" of God’s Son

Following the theme in the previous section on the Trinity of male images of the divine, Fox focuses on a feminine one. He even quotes Mechtild of Magdeburg which ties-in to the Trinity:

God is not only fatherly. God is also mother who lifts her loved child from the ground to her knee. The Trinity is like a mother’s cloak wherein the child finds a home and lays its head on the maternal breast (OB 221).

Fox laments that the fall/redemption spiritual tradition, which has ignored the importance of creativity, is also not concerned about motherhood. Fox writes about motherhood in a metaphorical way, symbolizing nurturance as well as creativity. He points out that literal motherliness can be over sentimentalized on Mother’s day, in a patriarchal culture. He feels the mother within each of us is our potentiality to be artists. He says that modern feminism as well as creation centered spirituality have "retrieved the nonliteral meaning of motherhood." Adrienne Rich defined feminism as "developing the nurturing qualities of women and of men" (OB 223). He quotes C.G. Jung as saying, "The creative process has feminine quality, and the creative work arises from unconscious depths—we might say, from the realm of the mothers" (OB 222).

Many indigenous cultures have given more emphasis and honor to feminine qualities. The Catholic church has preserved the image of Mary, the mother of God, but Protestants seldom refer to this image directly. Fox quotes Julian of Norwich who wrote, "the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, in whom we are enclosed" (OB 223). In the book, The Feminine Dimension of the Divine, I have read that Mediterranean Goddesses were called Wisdom and the Wisdom literature and tradition in the Bible today can be traced back to before Jewish as well as Christian times.

We are not just "enclosed" by the "divine mother" in a womblike state of tranquility, but Julian of Norwich sees the motherhood of God in terms of "service." "The mother’s service is nearest, readiest, and surest: nearest because it is most natural, readiest because it is most loving, and surest because it is truest." It includes pain, risk and courage, Fox continues. "The service she has in mind is a service of compassion, for motherhood is about ‘compassion and grace.’" A return to the motherly side of God would be a return to compassion as a way of life and to wisdom as not mere information gathering, but a deeper kind of knowledge (OB 224-225).

Fox comments that it is a shock and a mystery that God came in a male form as Jesus to announce divine compassion and wisdom. He thinks it that because of the positive, nurturing qualities we associate with God, it would have made more sense for God to become incarnate as a woman (OB 226). Fox talks about Mary, the mother of Jesus, who teaches us that God is not only like a mother but also a child." Fox writes that we too are mothers of God when our works and "birthings bear the fruit of wisdom or compassion," as she did in birthing Jesus. Jesus grew "in wisdom and in grace," and summed up his preaching by saying, "Be compassionate as your Creator in heaven is compassionate Eckhart wrote, "Is your heart troubled? Then you are not yet a mother. You are only on the way to giving birth. You are only near to birth." Fox writes that our creativity is our way of being part of the divine process of creation and expressing the image of God in us. God, the child, is not just the "sweet baby Jesus," we know at Christmastime. God "must be allowed to grow up into human society and social structures," as Fox puts it, and "humanity is responsible for the birthing and the nurturing of God" (OB 225-226).

Greatness is to come to the kingdom of heaven as a little child, as Jesus says in the story of the Sermon on the Mount (OB 227). Adults can experience this childlike state, without being childish, through the playful and artistic activities. A nineteenth century poet, Baudelaire, said that the "artist is one who can recover childhood at will." A paternalistic culture, Fox writes, is dangerous because it takes itself so seriously that it aborts imagination, and criticizes the war toys prevalent in our society. Eckhart observed that "some people do not bear fruit because they are so busy clinging to their egotistical attachments and so afraid of letting go and letting be that they have no trust either in God or in themselves." Children are not afraid of letting go or of wonder and ecstasy in new and creative experiences (Ibid.).

VC 20: Sin, Salvation, Christ…Resurrection

Fox starts out by disagreeing with what he says has been a fall/redemption definition of sin, the "privation of good," privation meaning lack of or deprivation of. After watching news stories about some grisly murders, he came up with "misuse of good" as being a better definition. Sin is the misuse of the greatest good, which is the image of God that humanity holds in its imaginations. Humans are the only species which kill sadistically, supposedly for pleasure (OB 231).

Sadism and masochism are misplaced imagination, Fox continues. The fall/redemption hasn’t named this because it has never "considered human creativity to be that essential to the ongoing power of the universe" (OB 232). Thus it hasn’t realized what divine and demonic powers are entailed with human imagination and creativity. Humans who are capable of divinely inspired acts are also capable of doing the demonic. Humans have created the potential for nuclear war which could extinguish the lives of humans and countless other species. In fact, sadomasochistic and exploitive values can be found throughout modern society, from pornography to environmental pollution. It is sinful and sadistic for some to have too much power and masochistic for others to have too little. The sadist lacks an inner life and sensitivity to anyone else’s. The powerlessness of the masochist can lead to…"self-negation, guilt and depression" (OB 232-233).

One psychoanalyst defines masochism as "I can’tism" as a type of powerlessness in those who feel they can’t be creative or change anything. The sadist says, "You can’t, but I can." Fox compares this to the power of the advertising media which says "You can’t make friends, but our product can do it for you." He quotes Mechtild of Magdeburg as saying, "God has given me the power to change my ways" (OB 233). Liberation movements share the energy of reclaiming the power to act for change. Liberation movements release the energy of the artist, as a way of taking back power (OB 234). Leaving creativity out of our everyday lives is a sin according to Matthew Fox. Today, art is often left out of religion, education, science, and the media and is replaced with entertainment which becomes meaningless and superficial (Ibid.).

Salvation is the awakening to our divinity through creativity. It is an expanding experience to awaken to possibilities, which arouses us from boredom and pettiness, cynicism and negativism. From this perspective, it comes as Good News that humans are images of God. Fox quotes Nicholas of Cusa who called God the "‘absolute art’ who chose to make an image that was less perfect but which ‘had the power of constantly heightening itself and of making itself more and more similar to the original.’" It was a divine choice to make humans capable of growing into their divinity by way of divine imagination. Ours is a created divinity, while God’s is an uncreated divinity (OB 235). To repress the acknowledgement of this is like holding a cork under water, it will assert itself in some form sooner or later, possibly in demonic ways. Ernest Becker stated, "if we don’t have the omnipotence of gods, we can at least destroy like gods." Fox writes that "to bring the Good News of our divinity is to restore us and our relationship to creation" (OB 235-236). Recovering the realization that we are co-creators with God is another saving force. Beauty is a saving result of the Via Creativa (OB 236).

The theme of motherhood in a patriarchal society has saving and healing properties as well. Psychologist Otto Rank, though not a Christian, felt the recovery of the divinity of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a central symbol in the Catholic church, was revolutionary within a patriarchal culture. He wrote, "Christianity does not represent a mere parallel to those ancient conceptions but rather a revival and re-interpretation of the original mother-concept which had given way to the masculinization of Eastern civilization (OB 237).

Fox talks about the saving power of rebirth in conjunction with motherhood. Eckhart saw "the connection between Mary’s vocation in being impregnated with the Holy Spirit and that of the artist in each of us." Eckhart interprets the phrase, "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee" (Luke 1:35) as "The Holy Spirit shall come from within thee." Eckhart rejects temptation to see the work of the spirit as a hierarchical ladder. Fox writes that it is from deep within that holy birth takes place, be it that of a mother with child or of any other less literal birthing we undertake. He writes that this Good News, that the Holy Spirit births from deep within us, is truly salvific. It breaks through any temptations we harbor to worship a God or a superman outside of ourselves. In today’s world this might mean the government or a corporate power. Fox writes that the deepest mystery and gift of the cosmos is our own creativity which comes from the depths within us (OB 237).

Another salvific theme developed earlier in the book is faith, defined as trust. When we trust our images we ride them where "they must go." We must take responsibility for them where they take us. The Via Creativa invites us to trust our vocation as co-creators. Fox talks about trusting wisdom that has been present from the beginning of time. We can also trust the healing effects of the artistic process and the parallel process of play. Eckhart’s advice is that we learn to "live without a why, work without a why, love without a why" (OB 238-239).

The Via Creative saves us, Fox writes, from over preoccupation with salvation itself. In a patriarchal culture, where the artistic creative and playful process has been held back, a guilt-ridden focus on redemptive religion took over. The Via Creativa allows the healing power of the Holy Spirit to enter our lives and delivers us to find joy in living as creative beings (OB 239).

Last but not least, Fox writes about the relationship of Jesus Christ to the Via Creativa. He says that Jesus was an artist at storytelling and poetry. He was not a priest, a theologian, an academician or someone who performed religious sacraments. He woke people to the kingdom/queendom of God. Fall/redemption theologies have reduced Christianity to the cross alone—"Christ is the cross and nothing but the cross," Fox reported hearing one theologian shout. A theological over-emphasis on the cross leaves out Jesus’ life, teachings, artistry at stories, his works and resurrection. Fox writes that Jesus’ storytelling and parables are an artform which are the closest we will ever come to his exact words, images and message (OB 239). Jesus was an artist who trusted his own images. Jesus trusts the intelligence and integrity of his listeners. He trusts the power of images "to arouse truth to the open-hearted and open-minded hearer. Parables are nonelitist." Fox quotes Albert Nolan as saying that Jesus’ parables are not "illustrations of revealed doctrines; they are works of art which reveal or uncover the truth about life" (OB 240).

The parables usually end with a question or imply a question. They have universality in that one does not have to be a Jew or a Gentile to "enter into the images and questions Jesus’ parables raise. He appeals to ‘the divine authority within each person.’" They are not for entertainment. "They invite the listener to change his or her life, to motion, to transformation. And they invite a whole society to let go and start over again, trusting its images and its power for creativity" (OB 240). Fox writes that Jesus never told people to meditate on him but to do the works he did. Fox writes that Jesus ought to be a model of "extrovert meditation," that is, "how the true son or daughter of God comes as an artist to awaken others from their slumber and death" (Ibid.).

Jesus expresses dialectical dynamics. He expresses divinity through his humanity. The death on Good Friday is followed by new life on Easter. "By teaching every person not to fear death…, Jesus frees every person to be creative, dialectical, and divine" (OB 240-241). Fox quotes Iranaeus as saying that God became human so that humans might become divine. Fox proclaims that the release of divine Dabhar (the Word or creative energy) through human creativity is the primary focus of the Incarnation, not the wiping away of original sin. He quotes from Matthew where Jesus says that the reason he speaks in parables is because people "look without seeing and listen without hearing or understanding. Jesus quotes from the prophecy of Isaiah:

The heart of this nation has grown coarse, their ears are dull of hearing, and they have shut their eyes, for fear they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and be converted and be healed by me (OB 241).

Jesus doesn’t use the terminology of original sin, but speaks as a healer and an educator who is here to help people see and hear with real understanding and wisdom. Fox writes that Jesus teaches that we are redeemed and made whole by recovering the compassionate side of God. Jesus uses maternal imagery when he refers to himself as a mother hen who weeps over her lost chicks as he weeps over Jerusalem. His desire for healing and forgiveness, Fox writes, "assure us that it is okay to be divine and motherly."

Jesus also teaches us about beauty. He presents "an image of God who is also beautiful, is not passive and is not despising of self or of one’s gifts. An image of God does what God does, which is to birth beauty in all forms." The prophet Hosea wrote about the Messiah:

He shall bloom like the lily and thrust roots out like the poplar, his shoots will spread far; he shall possess the beauty of the olive and the fragrance of Lebanon (Hos. 14:6, 7) (OB 242).

Fox writes that Jesus is playful:

He plays with his audience and with his enemies, trying to love them and trust them into their own conversion. He plays, as every artist does, with his images. He invites us to do the same. He even plays with death. He lost that gamble on Good Friday, but on Easter Sunday the last play of the game was his to enjoy. And ours (OB 243).

Finally, Fox emphasizes that creativity doesn’t mean experiencing "pure enjoyment" or doing nothing all the time. The reality of creative birthing is that labor pains are involved. "All creativity involves destruction and deep suffering." Fox continues—that Jesus’ creativity with Israelite religion brought him to crucifixion and death. The artist does not dwell on the pain, as ascetics often do, "but on the ecstasy of birthing, as Jesus did….The price the artist pays for creativity often goes uncounted" (OB 243). It also can become distorted as in the case of the fall-redemption over-emphasis on the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus acts as savior also by inviting us to have the courage to create and to pay the price for new life. Fox concludes by saying that "the many crucifixions involved do not add up to even one resurrection" (OB 244).

Fourth Path: VIA TRANSFORMATIVA (VT) ~

Befriending New Creation: Compassion, Celebration, Erotic Justice

This spiritual path which follows the Via Creativa’s "creative energy" is a transformative and grounding force. Matthew Fox describes this completion of the spiritual journey as being characterized by compassion.

The Via Transformativa is about creation renewed,…and righted from its state of sinful or unjust relationships. It is the cosmos mended and made whole again; it is the return of wisdom and of celebration and play. All this adds up to compassion, for compassion is the goal…. (OB 247).

He writes that our creativity is meant to be put to the use of compassion. When it is not, social ills like racism, sexism, militarism and "giant capitalism" co-opt the image of God in people and use creativity for destructive purposes. Much creativity, he notes, went into Hitler’s ovens for efficient human extermination at Auschwitz. There is immense creativity which goes into the creation of nuclear weapons today. This does not lead to new creation, however, but the potential end of all creation as humanity knows it.

Compassion, rather than contemplation, is the fulfillment of the creation-centered spiritual journey, according to Matthew Fox. Justice and the struggle against injustice is also an integral part of this goal. The Via Transformativa is also the way of the prophets and the "anawim," or forgotten and oppressed persons in society who all call out for justice. Fox notes that many creation-centered mystics have suffered needless persecution as so-called heretics, including Meister Eckhart and Teilhard de Chardin. Thomas Aquinas was condemned three times before being canonized. Most creation-centered mystics have been conveniently ignored, including "Hildegard, Mechtild, Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Nicholas of Cusa and Iranaeus, because their way of life did not conform comfortably to the dominant religious world view of the fall/redemption ideology." This worldview has been in power for centuries and has served patriarchy and the marriage of empire and church quite well (OB 248).

VT 21: The New Creation: Images of God in Motion Creating a Global Civilization

To paraphrase, I believe what Fox means here is to bring forth social change through an artistic process. The image of God is a peaceful God and a global civilization is something that can be created by people who envision a peaceful world which is also a way to prevent world war. The art of this new civilization will be characterized by the art of our lives and art as meditation, not by elitist art.

Matthew Fox relates the story that Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western civilization and he replied that he thought it would be a good idea. Fox feels the human race has outgrown war, but hardly knows this yet. He feels we are emerging into a new civilization which will value the creativity of every person and will consider the artist a worker. This will create more jobs and help us to recreate social structures in the image of God. He quotes a psychologist who says that the next step of civilization will move us beyond "personal growth" into the development of a new communal climate.

Thomas Berry, a Catholic cosmologist scientist author, believes there have been four stages of development in human civilization: 1) the tribal shamanic phase; 2) the classical religions phase; 3) the scientific-technological phase; and 4) an ecological phase, based on a new revelatory experience of the new origin story shared by all who know about the history of the universe and the fantastic story science has discovered about the origin of the earth and the stars. After all, Fox says, history is creation history and not just salvation history. "Or to put it differently, there is no salvation without creation" (OB 252).

A civilization built on dualism and war within and between persons, which puts its most creative minds and its best engineers to the sadistic work of building destructive weapons, is no civilization and needs a radical transformation from the inside out (OB 252). Thomas Berry feels that we are entering an ecological phase partly because that is the only way we will survive. We are being remolded to meet the challenge of this new age in an artistic process. There is a lot of good work to do, though much of it is not currently recognized and many people are labeled unemployed or underemployed. Fox reminds us that transformation is not easy work or without terror. What is needed as Gandhi said, is not speeches or marches but to prepare for "mountains of suffering" (OB 253).

Matthew Fox quotes Alfred North Whitehead who writes that New Creation does not come cheaply or without confusion and doubt. The middle-class pessimism over the future of the world comes from a misunderstanding about the correlation between civilization and security. There may be less security in the imminent future than in the recent past. He says that a great deal of instability is inconsistent with civilization, and that on the whole, the great ages have been unstable (OB 253-254).

Paul wrote to the early Christians about the newness of their times. They experienced what they felt was a new consciousness and a "new rule….Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth." The new self will be characterized by letting go of dualisms, Fox writes, and by the ability to celebrate differences, yet remain harmonious.

Fox feels that little is theologized today about the "new creation" and that traditional religious people should not fear terms like "new age." What is new can often prove to be quite old.

Awakening people to newness is the baptismal experience of rebirth…metanoia, waking up. What is newest about our times is the global demand on our consciousness. The global pain, the global interconnections of beauty and pain. The invitation to create a global civilization of love/justice and ecological harmony is a new invitation (OB 255).

VT 22. Faith as Trusting the Prophetic Call of the Holy Spirit

Fox writes that the prophetic call in the fall/redemption creed of Western Christianity referred most often to those who prophesy the future, such as John the Baptist. The term, "prophesy," was seldom used to mean that Jesus called each Christian to be a prophet. Fox refers to the Pentecost for the early Christians, when a sort of reverse Tower of Babel experience, where people of many different languages suddenly understood each other. Some thought they must have been drunk, but the Apostle Peter insisted that the spirit of the Lord was poured out on them, quoting the prophet Joel:

In the days to come—it is the Lord who speaks—
I will pour out my spirit on all humankind.
Their sons and daughters shall prophesy,
Your young men shall see visions,
Your old men shall dream dreams.
Even on my slaves, men and women,
In those days, I will pour out my spirit.(Acts2:15-18; see Joel 3:1-5)

Fox writes that it is prophetic to say that ordinary people are called to prophetic vocations and that their visions and dreams are to be trusted. Earlier in the book, Fox interpreted faith to mean trust. This trust is not based on human apprehension or power but on the Holy Spirit, poured upon all people (OB 259).

A prophet is one who lives out and expresses "Dabhar," defined earlier in the book as "creative energy" or "the word of God." The prophet speaks out and acts for social justice. Fox describes the work of the prophet as "interference," thus calling for a halt when society refuses to acknowledge injustice.

Walter Brueggeman sees the prophetic role as one of a "ministry of imagination." Imagination steers the "sparks of anger in the direction of transformation and new creation." Art as meditation is the way of the prophets, as creativity is a process and a way to unite and bring incongruous things together, to make a whole out of pieces. Fox writes:

The prophet recycles the anger of oppressed peoples, not into sublimation or passivity but into ways of transformation, self-expression, and New Creation. This rebirth is the work of the Holy Spirit, the great transformer. The finest preparation for the prophet’s daily task of awakening and interfering is art as meditation. This is also the finest refreshment for tired and misunderstood prophets who need their own filling up and rejuvenation. Nonelitest art, with its sensuousness and immediacy of contact, is the prophet’s best friend (OB 261).

Matthew Fox comments that Swedish theologian, Krister Stendahl, who felt that the Christianity has described the Apostle Paul’s conversion as if it were a change from one religion to another. Rather, Stendahl has argued, Paul’s transformation was more of a prophetic call than a conversion. Paul did not change his religion from Jewish to Christian, he changed his work and his inner person was transformed from the sin of persecuting early Christians to being one of Christ’s apostles. Paul’s prophetic call was to transform the world from slavery and bondage to freedom and justice. Fox writes that Paul’s, like every Christian’s call and work, is to dismantle the Tower of Babel, contributing to interference with injustice and by planting new seeds of harmony and "cosmic" order.

Fox writes that prophecy need not just be an individualistic path. People join together to form prophetic movements as well. Also, each person can have more than one prophetic call. Prophets and prophetic movements must be nonelitist and speak in ways that everyone can understand. As theologian Walter n put it, "the prophet must be an artist who calls forth symbols of justice and injustice that are universally recognizable" (OB 263). Creation-centered spirituality is nonelitist because creation belongs to and appeals to all, not just the professional or ruling classes. Matthew Fox writes that professionals need to be asked the hard question of, "Whom are you serving" (OB 264)? The gifts they have received to gain professional training are to be offered back into the community.

Prophecy finds its fulfillment through the four creation-centered paths Fox outlines. The prophet falls in love with creation and is filled with compassion for the oppressed (Path I). She/he experiences the "bottomless depths of pain that wrench at the beauty and dignity of have and have-nots alike."(Path II) From the nothingness, she/he employs creativity (Path III) to launch a path of healing and compassion, celebration and social justice (Path IV). Fox concludes, "In this manner she interferes with pessimism, cynicism, and despair, and channels moral outrage into rebirth" (OB 264).

VT 23. Spirituality of the Anawim: Feminists, Third World, Lay, and Other Oppressed Peoples

Fox points out that the anawim, or oppressed peoples, are frequently told that they are unnatural or going against nature. The idea that women are to be submissive to men is, according to Apostle Paul, the "order of creation." According to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, women are "misbegotten males." According to St. Augustine, they are not made in the image and likeness of God, unlike men. "Homosexuals are persons whose sexual activity is ‘contrary to nature.’" Native Americans were slaughtered and enslaved while their captors contemplated whether they were human and had souls or not. Jews, according to St. Augustine, were "lustful" and blacks, according to Aristotle, were "natural slaves" "who fit beautifully into the "obviously natural" system of slavery. According to Descartes, "plants and animals too are without souls" (OB 268).

Fox writes that these decrees have been made by white heterosexual, usually economically privileged, males, who have set themselves up as "criterion for what is and is not natural" and "for what is and is not creation as God meant it to be." Homosexuality, for example, has been proven by science to be natural for ten percent of the human race and is found in species of birds and other animals as well. Gandhi warned that "Numerical strength savours of violence when it acts in total disregard of any strongly felt opinion of a minority" (OB 269).

Fox writes that creation spirituality serves the oppressed by including imagination, which is lacking in religions which serve the ruling class. Imagination empowers people to "release the divine energy in them to create their world and work anew." He continues, that the "anawim return us to true humility, i.e., earth and earthiness." They are an authentic source of revelation and spiritual direction and challenge all to "metanoia, change of heart and lifestyle" (OB 270).

Fox also writes that a panentheistic spirituality which encourages a nondualistic approach will also foster democracy. He quotes Starhawk who points out that the mechanistic concept of nature did not appeal to the political, social and economic powers in the past few centuries. "The principle of immanence was identified with radicalism and lower-class interests…. Such ideas were termed enthusiasm," which was also associated "with radical activism and rebellion." The state, the established church and new scientific institutions campaigned against these ideas. Another source points out that "the conception of the world’s being inherently active, full of Gods, and constantly charging helped develop people’s self-confidence," and encouraged them "to transform the world, rather than to remain passive in the face of the great social transformation then sweeping England" (Ibid.).

Fox relates positive feedback from people who have been outsiders of the system in response to his numerous presentations on creation spirituality, including Native Americans, feminists, homosexuals and third world peoples. A Navajo woman stated that this kind of dialogue was healing of the split inside her between Christianity and Native ways. She learned that the split was really between St. Augustine and Native ways (OB 270-271). Many of the people who Fox attributes Creation Spirituality to in the past have been women or were influenced by women. As mentioned earlier, Eckhart, on who he bases much of his research, was taught and his ideas were greatly influenced by the spiritual movement of women, the Beguines. Feminism is by its nature, prophetic, during a patriarchal period. Homosexuals have been the "anawim" in many cultures for centuries (OB 270).

Latin American theologians have a justice strong orientation. One such theologian writes, "It would be illusory…to claim to bear witness to God without engaging in practical activity to repair creation. Faced with the basic primary needs evident on our continent, all experience of God and all witnessing by the church must logically start there" (OB 272).

Matthew Fox writes that Gandhi was a Third World Creation Centered person who out of his love for the world and compassion, practiced true asceticism as well as creativity and social transformation. In summary, Gandhi reportedly said, "Real beauty is my aim" (OB 272). Fox reminds First World people that they often forget that the majority of persons in the world are peasants. He quotes from refers to John Berger’s book on French peasants, Pig Earth. "The peasant’s love of the earth, at-home-ness with sensuality and birthing processes, sense of folk art and of the art of survival, cosmic and compassionate consciousness, and sheer toughness and ability to let go teach us much about living creation spirituality" (OB 273).

Matthew Fox writes that African and African American spirituality is grounded in creation. African religion is cosmic and is based on imagination, participation, music, prophetic outrage and exodus symbols. Black theologian Cornel West considered two fundamental aspects of Christian gospel to be the dignity and the depravity of persons. Depravity, he defines as the "refusal to let go and to be transformed and to transform…."

Christianity flows from the ‘prophetic stream’ of the Bible and…is ‘dialectical’ in nature. The Black Theology Project of 1977 decried a ‘piecemeal Christianity’ that creates a false dualism between ‘spiritual’ and ‘physical’ needs of peoples. And…James Cone points out how a futuristic eschatology instead of a realized eschatology played in the hands of slavemasters who wanted their slaves to look forward to a liberated existence only in the life after this one…. There is no understanding of black worship apart from the rhythm of the song and sermon, the passion of prayer and testimony, the ecstasy of the shout and conversion as the people project their humanity in the togetherness of the Spirit (OB 274).

Fox writes that there is a deeply creation centered Celtic heritage in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Appalachia. Though it was in large part wiped out in Ireland, the Celts settled along the Rhine and in Germany and northern Italy and laid the spiritual groundwork for the Rhineland creation-centered mystics, including Hildegard, Mechtild, Eckhart and even Francis of Assisi (OB 274).

The creation-centered tradition, Fox writes, is "fundamentally a lay spiritual tradition, though "it does not exclude religious or ordained persons from participating." It is "essentially nonclerical because it recognizes existence, life itself as the primary sacrament." Fox criticizes the process of canonization in the Catholic church. Apparently, for a thousand years, it was "ordinary believers" whose role was decisive in deciding who was to be canonized, but then the decision came to be controlled by the ordained clerics and finally, the central hierarchy in Rome held the power. "’It is almost impossible for any layman to be able to meet’ today’s conditions or have the money necessary to support" this process.... It has become a clerical prerogative to define the very meaning of holiness for us. Fox concludes that the creation centered spiritual tradition would surely bring new models of power and of holiness if the anawim were heard from again as they were in Jesus’ and Mary’s day (OB 275-276).

VT 24. Compassion: Interdependence, Celebration, and the Recovery of Eros

Fox says that a recent Oxford English Dictionary definition states that the notion of compassion having to do with a relation among equals is obsolete and that it is really about relationships between those who are superior to those who are in an inferior status. If you judged it by the way social compassion is lived out, you might come to this conclusion, as charity by those who have too much, given to those who have too little, never quite evens the gap (OB 278).

Fox states that we must redeem the meaning of compassion by understanding and practicing it. We must enter into a "consciousness of interdependence which is a consciousness of equality of being" and equal worth. Hildegard of Bingen wrote that "God has arranged all things in the world in consideration of everything else." Meister Eckhart wrote, "One creature sustains another, one enriches the other, and that is why all creatures are interdependent" (OB 279).

A new era of scientists support the concept that interdependence is a basic principle in our cosmos as well. Fox quotes Barry Lopez who points out that "the inclination of white men to regard individual and social motivations in themselves as separate" led them to misunderstand the native peoples as well as the rest of creation. The air we breathe and the ground we walk upon is shared by every other that breathes and walks and has breathed and walked on this earth. As Eckhart put it, "What happens to another, whether it be a joy or a sorrow, happens to me." And Jesus, "Whatever you do to these little ones, you do to me." Fox quotes the poet Angelus Silesius, "There are no objects for compassion because there are no objects." In other words, she perhaps is saying that all creatures are subjects and divine beings. To enter into this reality, Fox writes that we must let go of our ego and move from "I" to "we," not by adding but by letting go (OB 280-281).

What Fox is trying to say is that compassion, defined also as interdependence, already is the universe and does not have to be created anew. "Compassion…is a grace and not a work." The author of Proverbs wrote, "If a person is mean to herself, to whom will she be good? She does not enjoy what is her own. No one is meaner than the person who is mean to herself." Jesus said to love others as you would have them love you. Fox writes that to celebrate from deep within ourselves is a way to avoid being mean to ourselves. Passionate celebration, though co-opted of late by a consumer oriented pornography industry, is "pleasure." Our spiritual traditions have lost this sense of passion for celebration of pleasure and eros. Audre Lorde writes that what distinguishes the erotic from the pornographic is that true love includes feeling and not just sensation. "To recover the erotic is to recover feeling." In a patriarchal society, the erotic becomes misnamed by men. Our economic systems divorce us from feeling because "it defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need." Human need is about feelings of our self-worth, our cosmic interconnectedness, as our emptiness and pain as well as our power to give birth as well and to be instruments of change and transformation (OB 281-282).

Ann Ulanov says that "the erotic can not be felt secondhand’ and defines eros as

the psychic urge to relate, to join, to be in-the-midst-of, to reach out to, to value, to get in touch with, to get involved with concrete feelings, things and people, rather than to abstract or theorize (OB 282).

Eroticism must be redeemed from the controlling patriarchal society that pushes us into war and the brink of extinction by unleashed capitalistic forces that only want more.

Fox writes that "the creation-centered spiritual tradition calls women and men alike to celebrate Eros and the erotic Creator of Eros." The Creator God is not an unmoved participant who is a perfectly in-control patriarch in the sky, rather, one who delights and truly participates and leads us in the art of savoring and treasuring creation.

Eckhart says that this God is "voluptuous and delicious," who dances and becomes tickled with joy. This youthful God is eternal in the sense of being eternally young. Mechtild calls God our "divine playmate" who calls out the child in each of us. "Does not God the Mother play? What kind of mother would it be who never played with her babies." Fox continues to say that the Song of Solomon "celebrates the holy playfulness of lovers," but isn’t compelled to name God even once. As the psalmist asked the question, ‘Does the maker of ears not hear?’ we can ask, does the maker of play not play? Does the maker of Eros not join in the erotic" (OB 283).

The human is unique of all the animals in that it continues to play into and throughout adulthood. For many adults, however, this requires letting go and making time to celebrate. "Hildegard encourages one and all to stay green, wet, moist." She wrote that "the entire world has been embraced by the kiss between the creator and creation, comparing it to the relationship between lovers or husband and wife. Fox suggests that the time may have come to play with God, more than to pray to God, and "in our play true prayer will emerge." Eckhart’s term for play is "to live without a why, to work without a why, to love without a why." Fox writes that this celebration need not be an expensive party or formal ritual. Often it is a response to the pathos, tragedy and joy of the moment, a nonelitist ritual. It could be an occasion to celebrate our being first of all, then our joys, then our suffering. "All of it needs to be remembered and let go of and therefore celebrated (OB 284).

Fox tells about two Alaska Native tribes who, when a war is brewing between them, hold a poetry contest between the two best poets of each tribes. "The winning poet wins the war for both sides." This instance of art as healing, Fox writes, is what William James called the "moral equivalent of war." If all military departments became this imaginative, it could be quite a different world. Play can be a way out of aggression.

Matthew Fox writes that compassion is about celebration because it is about what people and all creatures ought to do with one another whey they find themselves together in one common "soup." He compares the cosmos to a cosmic womb or soup in which all creatures swim. Fox says that the Jewish word for compassion is derived from the word for womb. If we are all swimming in the same cosmic soup, then we ought to celebrate the playful and erotic as part of our relational experience together. When people come together and meet eye to eye, there is feeling and potential for vulnerability. "The Jewish word for celebration, kagiyaah, is related to kag, to draw a circle or go round….." Patriarchal time based on linear events and thinking is not celebrative. Einstein’s curved time and curved space, Fox writes, invite us into cosmic celebration once again. Artists do the same: "It is precisely from music that philosophers could learn that it is possible to say the profoundest things in the world while preserving the appearance of frivolous youthful levity."

After all this talk of play, the serious priest in Father Fox comes out at the end of this chapter as he cautions that in order for discipline in our development, at times we will need to let go of eros. "That emptying will prove in time to be a deep preparation for a fuller celebration, a richer sharing of Eros" (OB 285).

VT 25. Compassion: Interdependence and Erotic Justice

Matthew Fox writes that the second response to interdependence and sharing the "common, grace-filled soup of the cosmic womb," after celebration, is "to heal." He writes that when false dependencies and false independencies are the cause of injustice, justice-making is the kind of healing needed. He writes that W.H. Auden observed that as a rule it is the pleasure-haters who are the most unjust. Thus, Fox writes, a civilization that fosters erotic celebration can usher in a new era of justice-making. "Just as the celebrative side of compassion is a right-brain response to the interconnectedness of our world, so too the justice side of compassion" is a left-brain response. However, he writes that it has been too abstract, too distant, "and ironically, too subjective to move most people. In the name of an abstract justice, Communist countries have resorted to moving people by coercion and capitalist countries" have moved them by advertising and consumerism. "Neither ideology has found "justice to be moving in itself" (OB 288).

Feminists bring to both Marxists and capitalists the recovery of Eros. "Both giant capitalism and state-run bureaucratic socialism suffer" from a lack of Eros, Fox writes, "of nearness, of feeling, of care and intimacy with the unemployed and the employed as well as with earth, water, air, plants, animals, bodies. Erotic justice is an immanent force that moves people.

"Justice moves us first because injustice moves us. An erotic justice means first of all getting in touch with our feelings about injustice." We have feelings about our violent prison system and have feelings when local small businesses become swallowed up by "multicorporate" monsters. This draining away of Eros and joy from our lives was expressed by the prophet Isaiah:

The wine is mourning, the vine is pining away,
All glad hearts are sighing.
The merry tambourines are silent,
The sound of reveling is over,
The merry lyre is silent.
There is lamentation in the streets: no wine, joy is lost.
Gladness is banished from the country.
Nothing but rubble in the city….(isa.24:7-9, 11, 12) (OB 289).

The erotic cannot be felt secondhand, Lorde writes. Fox continues, "So too the pained and suffering victims of injustice need to be touched" (OB 289). It is from a distance that napalm bombs, 42,000 feet up in the air, are dropped to burn up whole villages. Fox writes:

The First world keeps its distance too readily from the Third World: criticisms of multinational corporations" or of "right-wing dictators" do not transform First World peoples until they talk to victims whose relatives have been tortured or who live in cities with 90 percent (sic) unemployment, or until they walk through the streets of Calcutta over bodies that are lined up side by side begging for alms. Then transformation begins (OB 289).

There are international organizations that sponsor such tours for well off Americans who can afford it, to see first hand, problems created by U.S. policies around the world. One doesn’t have to travel quite so far to experience communities of low economic status and to be inspired to do something about it. The U.S. has inner cities such as Harlem, Indian reservations, Appalachian mining towns, and steel mill towns like Detroit, etc., close enough at hand for this purpose. For so-called "first world" people to admit the existence of and experience the "third world," Fox writes, is to initiate erotic justice (OB 289-290).

Fox writes that erotic justice flows from a panentheistic theology where all creation is in God and God is in all creation. When creation is in pain, God feels pain. Theism, Starhawk has written, has created a cold and abstract type of justice and writes:

The conceptions of justice in the Western, patriarchal religions are based on a worldview which locates the deity outside the world….In the broad view of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, God is transcendent and His laws are absolutes….

Starhawk "calls for a recovery of the sense of an immanent justice based on "the interwoven chain of relationships that link all forms of life" (OB 290).

Rabbi Heschel describes justice as the "active process of remedying or preventing what should arouse the sense of injustice." Fox compares the word "arousal" to his definition of "erotic," and states that "justice is aroused by passionate caring." Heschel continues, What is uppermost in the prophet’s mind is not justice ‘an ideal relation or static condition or set of perceptual standards’ but the presence of oppression and corruption. The urgency of justice urges an urgency of aiding and saving the victims of oppression (OB 290).

Fox recalls the term, "interference," used in Theme Twenty-Two of Original Blessing, used there to explain the "prophet’s main activity." Fox elaborates that it is "a great act of interference in a dualistic and flat and patriarchal culture to announce the good News that Eros is a blessing far too beautiful to be left to pornographers to peddle" (OB 291).

Erotic justice is more imaginative than confrontation. Eros as love of enemy inspires imagination that allows transformation to happen. The power in Gandhi’s nonviolence is a prophetic method for change, Fox writes. "Gandhi does not define justice-making as winning/losing but as loving people into transformation; this love includes…absorbing their hatred" (Ibid.).

Mechtild of Magdeburg wrote about the "play of love" which transforms. She said, "Compassion means that if I see my friend and my enemy in equal need, I shall help both equally." And "Justice demands… that we seek and find the stranger, the broken, the prisoner and comfort them and offer them our help." Fox points out the use of the term "seeking" and not waiting comfortably for something to happen. The term "seeking out" is used in the erotic Biblical wisdom literature, particularly the Song of Songs, when a lover seeks out her beloved. This is part of the nonelitist and "street spirituality" characteristic of the prophets and wisdom writers, Fox continues. St. Hildegard presented erotic justice by describing the relationship of Creator to creature as one of "lover to lover" or "husband to wife." Injustice is when that relationship ruptures. Eckhart wrote that "In compassion peace and justice kiss." Fox concludes, The erotic marriage of peace and justice, of the pleasure of relationship and the righting of relationship is God’s work. It is our work too. "All this passion," Fox writes, "deserves to be celebrated, honored, and then let go of. Eros deserves a home among spiritual people once again" (OB 291-292).

VT 26. Sin, Salvation, Christ…: A Theology of the Holy Spirit

Hildegard of Bingen who warned that those who lose their juiciness, wetness, greening power fall into a "dryness of carelessness." Carelessness: not caring, apathy, coldness of heart and loss of passion," are deeply sinful. In the Bible, he writes, coldness of heart, not hate, is the opposite of love. That is why Dante characterizes the lowest pit of hell as cold as ice, not fire. Fox continues:

The cold heart is the birthplace of the great sin of omission in Path IV, the omitting of compassion, which is both celebration and justice-making, from our lives. The Creator God is not without passion, either for life and celebration or for justice. To settle for a heart that is indifferent to the sufferings of others is to refuse to imitate the Creator. This rejection of God in our lives marks the beginning of cynicism and with it despair (OB 295).

To refuse to use our creativity to transform with or to settle for superficial uses of our imagination and artistry would be a sin against the fourth path. To refuse or run from our vocation to be prophetic would be to "miss the mark" and sin against the fourth path as well. Sin is not trivial. Injustice is not trivial. "It can build ovens of genocide" and wipe out whole races and cultures of people "and it has." Injustice is not just the lack of justice but the use of creativity to lord over others, to kill, be sadistic and to refuse to celebrate. Injustice is the rupture in the order, harmony, balance and survival of the universe itself (OB 290).

Fox writes that violence and dualism are the refusal to do compassion and justice and behind this lies dualism, which he calls the basis of all sin. "No one can live in an isolated privatized religion or world any longer." Interdependence is a reality of every nation today and for all global struggles of growth and peacemaking.

Justice is an important theme in the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible and this tradition has been continued by Christians, though marginalized by those strains that emphasize mainly personal salvation. Fox points out that creation, justice and the liberation of creation are intertwined. In Second Isaiah, creation and redemption are so closely together that one is involved in the other:

Send justice like dew, you heavens.
Let the clouds rain it down.
Let the earth open up
So salvation will spring up,
Let deliverance too bud forth
Which I, Yahweh, shall create (Isa.45:8).
Was it not I, the Lord?
There is no god but me,
a God of justice, a saviour.
There is no one but me (Isa. 45:21)

The Psalmist writes:
Faithfulness will spring from the earth
And justice look down from heaven.
The Lord will make us prosper
And our earth will yield its fruit (Ps. 85:11, 12) (OB 297).

Fox writes, "What the Via Transformativa makes abundantly clear is the biblical teaching that in fact there is no such thing as privatized or individualized salvation. The prophets of yesterday and today find it necessary to constantly remind God’s people of this fact. He mentions Mahatma Gandhi, and Dorothy Day and quotes Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I stressed the need for a social gospel to supplement the gospel of individual salvation. I suggested that only a "dry as dust" religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an earthly hell…." (OB 298).

Gandhi, Fox writes, like King, believed we are here to transform the social order and not merely endure it in a passive or cynical way. Fox quotes from a book about Gandhi, "The problem in India, as Gandhi saw it, was to adapt the older notions of moksha and tapas, the pursuit of individual salvation through specific austerities and prolonged contemplation—to the practical needs of a society in which men were more concerned to escape than to alter the conditions of worldly life" (Ibid.).

Christian biblical scholars have fought this issue as well. Krister Stendahl wrote that "righteousness and justice are the one and only justitia." Justitia, apparently, is the original word that has been translated as righteousness or as justification. The meaning of justice has often been missed, as, for example, when phrases like salvation through Christ, have been overused by those touting a solely personal religion. According to John Yoder, justification, in Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Ephesians "means making peace" or "breaking down the wall" between peoples (Ibid.).

The meaning of Pentecost was that the Holy Spirit broke through the "Babel of confusions and dualisms" between people. Biblical scholar Markus Barth wrote that justification in Christ is not an individual miracle which happens to individuals, "Rather, justification by grace is a joining together of this person and that person, of the near and far;…it is a social event." Fox continues, "Stendahl, like many other scholars, sees Augustine as the one who began the Western preoccupation with individualized salvation." Augustine was absorbed by the question of not when God would "send deliverance in the history of salvation," but how God is working in the "innermost individual soul" (OB 298-299).

Jesus Christ continues the biblical tradition of compassion and justice. Fox writes, "If Jesus is truly a son of God then he is a son of the Compassionate One, and all his life and work and death and teachings find their culmination in the Via Transformativa." First, Jesus’ birth was not ordinary but triggered by the Holy Spirit. It was a cosmic event, "as was the original birth of creation" (OB 300). Fox writes that Jesus was not only a prophet of the New Creation but the New Creation itself. Jesus called all persons to reconciliation with themselves, one another and with all creation. He became an outcast because of his compassion for injustice dealt to the masses. "Jesus was in touch with his guts, his feelings, his passion; he had passion-with, that is a compassion with others" (OB 302).

Jesus inaugurated a new type of personality, according to psychologist Otto Rank. He called all persons to be compassionate prophets, transformers of society and of pain and suffering. The Holy Spirit which he sent after leaving this life "cuts through babbling tongues of discord and disharmony to make all peoples sit up and take notice of the goodness of their own creation and of others" (Ibid.).

Jesus drew on Hebrew tradition by saying that he was anointed to "proclaim the acceptable year of Yahweh," referring to the jubilee year, "a time for Jews of political and economic reconciliation, when debts would be erased and economic life would start over from scratch." Fox writes that is no wonder he was driven out as from his own town, as prophets so often are. A jubilee year is a kind of exodus and Jesus was "a new Moses leading his people away from slavery."(302)

Jesus’ teaching through his example, the Lord’s Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount, and his parables, all point to the same Good News for all, those who are oppressed as well as for oppressors. "The cross was a political event, the result of too much Good News, too much insistence on the human capacity for compassion and justice." The cross, Yoder writes, represents "the punishment of a man who threatens society by creating a new kind of community leading a radically new kind of life." The cross is the price one pays for prophecy. But from it too surprises and new birth and new sendings of the spirit can occur" (OB 302-303).

Matthew Fox relates Jesus to the theme of Erotic Justice. Jesus tells people to pray to God in an intimate fashion, with the word, "Abba," loving parent. His relationship to the poor is not as a bureaucrat or from a distance but one of touch, smell, dining together and walking together. He taught, loved and shared in festivals with the rich as well. When the multitude was hungry he got everyone to share. He taught people to let go of their fears so they could truly celebrate the blessings of self, others and life. He counseled love of life and not force or fear. He revealed the "eros of God, the intimacy God shares with creation and especially with the anawim of creation." He said in so many words that to feed the hungry was to feed the Creator (OB 303).

Otto Rank pointed out that Eros is what made the spirit of Christ so powerful to human history. Ideas are not enough by themselves. "Jesus’ preaching was charged with Eros, he sent people away murmuring, complaining, angry, excited, ecstatic, deeply moved." After his death, the Apostle Paul, inspired by the teaching and experience of Jesus, professed ‘the law of love’ as an active life force," which changed human history, according to Rank (Ibid.).

Jesus undertook the work of transforming the religion of his time because of his compassion for justice. He was not pleased with the privileges of the leaders in the religious and social institutions of his day and their insensitivity to the poor. The theologies were too abstracted and lacking in erotic care and relationship, too uncritical of injustice and too uncaring toward the dispossessed.

At the conclusion of the book Fox challenges the reader by saying that Original Blessing, and the journey to explore creation-centered spirituality, leads and points to a letting go of certain forms of religion, those based on fall/redemption theologies, structures and spiritualities and is a call to transformation. Religion must let go of dualisms and be transformed into the tradition which is more ancient, more celebrative, more justice-oriented and more like the tradition Jesus himself lived and preached. This would be a truly a "New Pentecost, a New creation, a spiritual awakening that all the world’s peoples and all the world’s religions might share in." Fox writes that there is not much time to wait for this transformation, implying that this new perspective will save us from nuclear, environmental and all other destructions that human hands can cause to this creation we have all been born into (OB 305).

Gandhi complained of a "Christianity without Christ." Fox remarks that Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is in fact "with us still," wherever transformation is happening. The "good news" is happening, "in and out of church structures, wherever people are responding to the call of the spirit to impassionate living, to simpler lifestyles and the letting go of surplus things." To recover the spiritual tradition that Jesus himself lived and would be at home in would also inaugurate a truly ecumenical era in which global problems might be addressed from the wisdom of global religions, from the basis of a common acknowledgement of the created heritage and inheritance, the original blessing that we all share and are called to recreate (Ibid.).


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