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Daily Camera (Boulder, CO) Spiritual HEALING Matthew Fox talk to focus on Sept. 11 Story By Kevin Williams, Camera Staff Writer September 29, 2001 Matthew Fox is fond of quoting the great thinkers of the past. It's an idiosyncrasy that only adds to his reputation as a great thinker of the present. "Aquinas once said 'One human being can do more evil than all the other species put together,'" Fox says, alluding to the recent events in New York City. "Our minds are so amazingly powerful; we can come up with the most beautiful and the most ugly." Fox is a Christian spiritual theologian and the founder of the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, Calif., a Naropa-affiliated institution committed to reawakening mysticism and bringing spirit into education. An author, teacher and lecturer, Fox holds degrees in philosophy, theology and spirituality and believes that the wisdom of indigenous cultures and a passion for creativity must guide us in the new millennium. Many of his 24 books have been best-sellers, and in 1995 he received the Courage of Conscience Award, joining other recipients such as the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Rosa Parks. He was silenced by the Vatican in 1988 for diverging from traditional Catholicism and dismissed by the Dominicans in 1993 for disobeying an order. Fox is now an Episcopal priest in the San Francisco Bay area. Considered a radical by some, a visionary by others, he will be giving a talk, "From Despair to Hope, From Grief to Creativity: A Spiritual Response to Sept. 11," from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday at Boulder High School. "(His) presence provides a rallying call to the Boulder community to begin to see itself as a very unique area on the planet that has much potential for peace and healing," says Rebecca Browning, director of Soul Journey 2000, a local Internet-based magazine aimed at merging ancient and modern teachings for living in harmony. Browning worked with University of Colorado professor Bernard Amadei, founder of Engineers Without Borders -- a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping developing countries with their civil and environmental engineering needs -- to bring Fox to Boulder. While Fox sees what happened in New York City as an obvious tragedy, he also sees it as a wonderful opportunity. "Moments like this pose really significant issues," he says. "This is a time for opening our hearts up and asking about meaning; it would be an awful thing if we missed that." He says we should examine the roots of terrorism, and if what we do in our own capitalistic society contributes to terrorist acts the world over. "It's very scary to say the evil is overseas," Fox says. "I think evil is much more subtle than that. Evil is in collective greed and consumer culture." He goes even further, saying that evil is embedded in the injustices we as Americans have propagated against other peoples. And it's in the injustices of the world's religions, whether it be Islam, Christianity or something else. Fox contends that the first level of violence is injustice, which eventually turns into despair. It's just a matter of time before people act out against the injustice and despair, he says. Quoting Aquinas again, " 'Despair is not the most serious sin, but it's the most dangerous sin.'" And Fox believes it's what came home to haunt us on Sept. 11. "(The terrorists) felt they were representing the poor classes; they built an ideology and acted on that. There have been generations of despair." Although Fox thinks we, as a country and a world, need to find who committed these acts and who's sponsoring these terrorists, he preaches caution. He warns about keeping the rhetoric quiet, and rather than calling for blood, he suggests a concerted effort toward a more the plate and quit beating up on each other," he says. "We have to move beyond denominations to ferreting out the wisdom of the various traditions. "I think that religion has got to put spirituality first, which is about the heart and heart practices, and the awakening of wonder, beauty and joy." He thinks that spirituality needs to filter into all facets of life, including environmental conservation, education and politics. That creative, spiritual process is our hope and salvation, Fox says, a means of serving future generations and the health of the planet. The implicit message is that eradication of terrorism will be a byproduct of this movement, as we move forward toward the better parts of our past. "We`re trying to bring back that ancient mind that is in all of us." We do that partly through biophilia, or love of life, he says. In his recent book on evil, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, Fox cites Erich Fromm, who said "Necrophilia (the love of death) grows when biophilia is stunted." "You don`t stomp out evil, you try and turn it into something good," Fox says. "Evil is always with us; it courses through us, our institutions and our history." Fox thinks American pop culture exports necrophilia with its war games and consumerism. That`s not to say he expected the attack or thought, in any way, that we deserved it. "The place where we live is a sacred place," he says. "When it`s violated it`s the same as having your home invaded." The first reaction is shock, then anger, then sorrow, he explains. "We are as a nation, as a species, on a grieving path ... we have a lot to grieve," Fox says. "Now our hearts can bring up other things (like) slavery, genocide to the native people. Grieving is a really important part of healing the heart and releasing our creative energy." And the creative energy is there, he says, dormant in some, used for evil purposes by others. "This incident," he says, referring to the attack on the World Trade Center. "There was a brilliance to it, the simplicity of turning an airplane into a missile. It`s precisely that creativity that humanity encounters in both the divine and the demonic." What we need to do is come up with appropriate ways to steer creativity in positive directions, he says, by restructuring our schools and workplaces. Compassion, wonder and imagination have to enter the mix daily. "I think we definitely have to reach out to the children and learn from the children. There is so much in our culture that needs careful attention." Religion cannot be reduced to words in a book; it`s much deeper than that, Fox says. "The idea that revelation is only in a Bible is extremely reductionistic," he says. "It`s in a sunset, a baby being born and the history of the universe." It`s in all of creation. |
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