Mary Oliver...A Remembrance

Mary Oliver was a great North American mystic.  She called herself a "praise poet," but she did not come to her sense of praise easily for she had been sexually abused by her father as a child.  The day she graduated from high school she  left home and never returned.  She says it took her years to get her life back.  "For years and years I struggled just to love my life." 

She was a profound creation centered mystic who awakens us all to the healing powers of nature.  Here are a few of my favorite lines from her poetry ( including of course her poem "At the River Clarion" which names so wonderfully the cosmic Christ and which I reproduce in my latest book on Hildegard of Bingen)

"Glory to the world, that great teacher"

"There is only one question: how to love the world"

" I want to be in partnership with the universe."

" let me keep company with those who say 'look!' And laugh in astonishment and bow their heads."

"Still, what I want in my life
Is to be willing
to be dazzled--
To cast aside the weight of facts.

Mary Oliver drank deeply from the wells of the via positiva as well as the via negativa--she talks of " the black river of loss" and of how "nature has many mysteries--some of them severe."  She urges us to do the same

Mary Oliver recites her poem; set to Phildel's Piano B.
”…When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. “
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

An Evening with the Awakin Circle of Silicon Valley

In the midst of the paradoxical Silicon Valley culture, Matthew Fox was delighted to share an evening with a small, vibrant home-based Awakin circle, part of the Awakin.org movement just recently. He writes:

After speaking to the Silicon Valley circle, I was filled with gratitude to my hosts Nipun and Guri Mehta and their family for the 17 year commitment that they have made to bringing a spiritual ballast to the Silicon Valley and its creative accomplishments all those years.  (Theirs) is an important vision and I was honored to be part of it for an evening.  Blessings and continued grace on this meaningful and deeply needed work!

This was Nipun's account of the evening;

With his unique blend of stories, scholarship and spirituality, (Matthew Fox) filled our pockets to the bursting point with gems of insight.  Among much else he reminded us that study can be prayer if we bring our hearts to it, that zeal springs from a deep experience of the beauty of life, that "Nothing is so  like God as silence", and that trust is a form of courage.

He invited us on a quest for joy in the work that we do, and to fall in love with the banquet of all that is lovable in our lives. He informed us that at our core we are 'bipeds who make things', and the sacred act of creation, not consumption, is our birthright, and that without the faculty of awe we render the universe little more than a marketplace.

He urged us to honor the power of inter-generational community, to calm our 'reptilian brains' through meditation, to restore our relationship with the earth, and to reclaim the gift of true learning...he gave us through his words, his presence and his truth much to work with and return to as we travel our own paths, in this "University" called life. For that generosity we are deeply grateful.

The real record for what happened last night lies in our hearts.  We hope the evening energizes your spiritual journey in some way; surely, we feel blessed to host such conscious gatherings in our own home.

He also offered some links for more resources:

How do I engage more?  Here are some ways:

• Join an Awakin Circle (locally in Oakland, San Jose, Berkeley, South San Francisco, Half Moon Bay and of course, Santa Clara, and globally on five of the seven continents).
• Pick up a Smile Card.
• Stay connected to good, via DailyGood and Karmatube.
• To get more involved, volunteer with ServiceSpace.

Matthew Fox's Christmas Letter, 2013

Dear Friend of Creation Spirituality: A blessed Holiday Season to you all! I am sure we are all deeply yearning for the kind of peace with justice that the Christmas and Hanukkah seasons are all about. I hope these kind of miracles are in the works for all and through our dedicated inner and outer work.

A few summaries of our goings on at FCS this year. I have been working on a new book on Meister Eckhart, my third, but my first in over thirty years. Called Meister Eckhart: Mystic Warrior for Our Times, it is due out from New World Library in July. I borrowed my methodology from my recent book on Hildegard when I put Eckhart in the room with twentieth (and twenty-first century) thinkers such as: Rabbi Heschel; Adrienne Rich (on the Divine Feminine); Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry (on the Cosmic Christ); Black Elk (on shamanism); Dorothy Soelle (on liberation); Carl Jung; Otto Rank; Biblical scholars Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan and Bruce Chilton, Karl Marx, David Korten and Anita Roddick (on economics), Lily Yeh and M.C. Richards (on education), etc. I enjoyed doing it and I hope you will like it too—I incorporate his words from many of his sermons that were not part of my original fat book on him once called “Breakthrough” and now called Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart.

Andrew Harvey and I did two of our Christ Path Seminars this past year, one in Oakland with Joanna Macy and another in Pittsburgh at the Methodist church with Bruce Chilton. They were very rich and we filmed all the sessions. Unfortunately the financial results were less than break-even so we had to cut back on doing more for the time being. We do have those two weekends available in dvd form, however, and at a very reasonable price ($60 for about 12 hours of dialog and practices).

The YELLAWE Program has flourished this year in Fremont High School in Oakland and our teacher and director, Rose Elizondo, also took it to Oaxaca in Mexico and to Mexico City where she taught youth living in the streets. Newspaper articles appeared in both cities about the program which included using paints that the students made themselves from cactus (a practice Rose learned from her grandmother) and the use of moss so that the murals the students created are literally growing pieces. In both programs local artists, some of them quite famous, joined to instruct the young people. Also a very accomplished artist in the Bay Area, Francisco Franco, joined Rose at FHS to lead the students in painting a mural together at the school. Students also created “cosmic shoes” by painting stars and more on tennis shoes that the program furnished.

We were part of the annual Sounds True Conference in the Rocky Mountains this summer where we were invited to put on a Cosmic Mass for about 1000 participants. Celtic singer Noirin ni Rian and her two sons, also musicians and in their twenties, were part of the Mass. Nicole Porcaro did a fine job directing it with much assistance from the ST staff. It was highly ecumenical and very well received. I share the following quote from Thich Naht Hanh who, I think, truly gets the Cosmic Christ and the Mass: "Take, my friends, 'this is my flesh, this is my blood.' Can there be any more drastic language in order to wake you up? What could Jesus have said better than that?....This piece of bread is the whole cosmos. If Christ is the body of God, which he is, then the bread he offers is also the body of the cosmos. Look deeply and you notice the sunshine in the bread, the blue sky in the bread, the cloud and the great Earth in the bread. Can you tell me what is not in that piece of bread? You eat in such a way that you come alive, truly alive."

A number of people were deeply affected, including a woman who told me she had “hated religion for 22 years,” and wounded Catholics (know a few?) and others. Rabbi Rami Shapiro joined us for table prayers and Shiva Rea led dance during the DJ dance time.

On December 1 we began anew the TCM in Oakland at a club in Jack London Square named “Kimballs.” It too was very well received and I am pleased that over twenty people signed up to volunteer for future Masses in Oakland. The theme was “Celebration of the Body” and our prayer included Lakota drumming and singing, a Jewish cantor playing a Mongolian drum and song with words set to it from the Kabbalah, Pancho's spoken word, Joanna Macy teaching, Rabbi Michael Ziegler and Aeeshah Clottey at the table prayers and more. Sister Dorothy Stang's brother Tom and his wife were in attendance as well. And some great altars and entrance 'tent' overseen by Rose Elizondo! I am pleased to announce that we have a new director for the TCM, Skylar Wilson, who represents a new generation (he is 29 years old) leading things. For more on the recent Oakland TCM including pics you can go to www.matthewfox.org. We created a Kickstarter campaign that assisted with raising funds and getting the word out as well. The next TCM is scheduled for February 16 in Oakland.

On Thanksgiving Day the Italians released an Italian translation of my Letters to Pope Francis and several Italian papers have run reviews of it. Also, TIKKUN magazine ran a substantive article I wrote on Pope Francis that can be found at www.matthewfox.org In that series of letters I urge the new pope to be true to his namesake; I feel he is doing a pretty good job. When a pope gets Rush Limbaugh so mad at you that he calls your teaching “pure Marxism,” you must be doing something right! It will be something to watch the right wing Catholic politicians and supreme court justices squirm under the teachings of Pope Francis on behalf of the poor. I recommend that he and the Dalai Lama make a world tour together announcing the “Revolution in Values” that our species needs to survive.

Spread the word: The publisher of Letters to Pope Francis is running a special all week beginning Monday 11:00am ET with the e-book available from amazon.com for only 99 cents until Tuesday, 12/20 at 3:59 p.m. PST. There is a special price every day, so spread the word.

I appeared on Democracy Now! again a few weeks ago regarding the Pope's recent comments. You can watch the video or read the full transcript HERE. I was also interviewed on the Real News Network again this past week and that video will be published Monday.

Some other news…..We may have an announcement early in the next year about a reincarnation of our D Min program in creation spirituality and work as a fully accredited degree. My assistant Dennis Edwards goes in for surgery on his hip on Feb. 4, and I recommend your prayers for his rapid healing. He expects to be out of commission only a few days however.

So, much going on. Prayers to you all. If you want to reach into your pocket to help make our work sustainable either by donation or purchase of product, please don't resist the temptation.

Peace to you all,

Matthew Fox

Holiday 2012 News from Matthew Fox & FSC

December 8, 2012

Dear Friends of Creation Spirituality,

Happy and Blessed Holidays to you all! I would like to take this time to briefly bring you up to date on some goings-on in Creation Spirituality land as some exciting prospects are blooming.

First, as regards my own writing, I was pleased that my book on Hildegard of Bingen, Hildegard of Bingen, a Saint for Our Times: Unleashing her Power for the 21st Century, came out just in time for her canonization and being named 'Doctor of the Church' in October. That was my goal when I heard about those upcoming events last January and was fortunate enough to be able to find a publisher (Namaste in Vancouver, run by a woman who said she was “on the ceiling for three days” after reading the MS and learning about Hildegard) who did a very special thing: Got the book out in six months time. I had to hole up in a cheap motel to get it done in a rush but, having lived with Hildegard for over 30 years, was able to do so. I liked the methodology I came up with, namely putting Hildegard in the room with 20th century thinkers like Einstein, Howard Thurman, Mary Oliver, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Dorothy Soelle and more. I have been urged to write similar short and pungent books with similar methodology on Meister Eckhart and Thomas Aquinas and I might just do that.

I am also happy to say that Adam Bucko and I (see www.thereciprocityfoundation.org) have finished our book on young adults and spirituality called Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation, in which we dialog on the spirituality of young people today and incorporate the wisdom of these people we have gleaned from surveys and from filming a number of leaders from around the country. The book will come out in September, on the second anniversary of Occupy, from North Atlantic Press. We are grateful to Andrew Harvey for including our book in his new series on Sacred Activism with that press; ours will be the first book in the series actually. We just got a copy of the cover two days ago.

Also pleased that The Pope's War is in paperback now, updated by a new Preface. One person very active in ecumenical work said to me recently it is a “buzz” book among his colleagues and I do know that it is getting around sort of underground as it were. Frankly I think people should read the chapter on Opus Dei before they get too optimistic about this Supreme Court taking up gay rights.

Big news on the YELLAWE front. Last year YELLAWE linked up with another program, Art Esteem, in Oakland in a high school in Oakland's West side. But beginning in January YELLAWE will be active again on its own in two schools, Fremont and Met-West. The former is in the Fruitvale and heavily Latino district; the latter is near Laney College. Our teachers are very special. In the Fremont High School our program will feature Ernesto Olmos (Google his name) who is a remarkable artist and shaman really from the Mexican Zapotec peoples. He will be leading the high schoolers in making their own musical instruments (drums and flutes) as well as playing them while bringing in the value system of the 10 C's which are so important to YELLAWE. Ernesto's credits include exhibits of his paintings and sculptures at Oakland and de Young Museums as well as international venues. A beautiful and accomplished man to have teaching inner city youth!

With him at Fremont will be Rose Elizondo who helped establish the Restorative Justice movement in Oakland and beyond. She teaches meditation and centering prayer in San Quentin (among other venues) and is a real leader in and beyond the Latina community. I met her when she was preparing to introduce me at the Call to Action Conference in Louisville a month ago — she did a powerful job and among other things brought into the room of 2000 people our UCS graduate, Sr Dorothy Stang who died a martyr having been shot in the Amazon while defending the peasants there. It turns out a brother of Dorothy's was also in the audience. I have been informed that work is afoot to create a solid movie about Dorothy and the struggle going on in the Amazon. Rose is a great leader and I am thrilled that she is joining YELLAWE and bringing other talent with her! She is also a mother of teen-age daughters.

At the Met-West program music will be the basic art form of the YELLAWE program and our instructor will be Iamani I Ameni, a hip hop artist who has also taught mindfulness and meditation among other things at the Juvenile Center in San Francisco. He brings a big heart, lots of smarts including street smarts, and experience and love in working with street youth. Google i.Ameni. When I interviewed him for the job I asked him what the youth in Detention Center taught him and he said: Character. They have strong loyalty to their tribe but we can help them to broaden their tribe and view of the world. Indeed.

Ted Richards program, Chicago Wisdom Project, which is a daughter of the YELLAWE program of which Ted was director in Oakland, is doing well in its three incarnations in the Chicago area. Ted just finished a book on reinventing education that I was happy to endorse. Keep your eye out for it!

Our director of the Cosmic Mass, Nicole Porcaro, a graduate of UCS master's program, taught a conference course this Fall on the TCM thanks to Di Wolverton and Csource and she is doing another one this Spring. Also: She got married a year ago and just gave birth to their first child, a healthy girl! I am working here in Oakland on starting up the TCM again soon and it looks like we will be able to do it on Sundays at what was Historic Sweet’s Ballroom and is now the Tropicana.

Andrew Harvey and myself, with the strong support of Susan Coppage Evans and Di Wolverton, are planning a 12-week series of weekend “Initiations” into a Cosmic Christ-based Christianity, the Christianity of the future. We call it The Christ Path and are just nailing down the venue, one which many of you will recognize, 2131 Broadway—yes the Old UCS space (the main gathering Hall only as the other rooms are offices for various community organizations now). Good vibes? Good Morphic Resonance? We expect so! Most of the weekends will have another guest lecturer to speak on Saturday nights and be in a conversation with Andrew and myself on Sunday mornings. The weekends will run Friday night; all day Saturday (afternoon will be entirely devoted to Practices!); and through Sunday afternoon. The first four we have scheduled are these: March 8-10 (with Joanna Macy), June 28-30 (with Bruce Chilton), October 11-13 (with Adam Bucko), 2013, and January 10-14, 2014 (with Brian Swimme).

Just as the “Jesus Seminars” helped to reinvent our understanding of the historical Jesus, so we intend these gatherings, with both intellectual content and ecumenical and postmodern practices, to assist a rebirth of Christianity by deepening our understanding of the Cosmic Christ. Teilhard de Chardin once complained that he couldn’t find anyone—lay person OR theologian—interested in discussing not Jesus or Christ but the Cosmic Christ. Well, we think the time is ripe. If you agree, mark your calendars and come to these initiations. OR participate by live streaming which will also be available. OR do some of both! More details will be posted on a special web page, etc. within a month.

Speaking of the Cosmic Christ, Bishop Marc Andrus and myself (he being the Episcopal bishop of California at Grace Cathedral) led a weekend retreat this Fall on the theme and together we are preparing to launch a practice of The Stations of the Cosmic Christ to balance the stations of the cross that so dominate Christian churches. The Stations we hope to hang in Grace Cathedral include M C Richard's “I am” clay tablets that hung at UCS for years and that she left me when she died along with 8 more tablets created by a contemporary artist around Cosmic Christ events in the Gospels such as Nativity, Transfiguration, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, Matthew 25 and more. We hope said practice will go out from Grace Cathedral around the world just as the Labyrinth practice has.

I remain deeply indebted to the Academy for the Love of Learning in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with whom I am a "visiting scholar" and who support my work and that of YELLAWE in so many ways as they do their wonderful work reinventing education with art and creativity and more. Check out: www.academyfortheloveoflearning.com.

So there you have it. Just some of the goings-on occurring at FCS in the Bay Area. Of course there is much else going on, check out the CSC website for example. And our website at www.matthewfox.org. And I hope you are working in your own communities yourselves and feeling connected to it all.

If you can dig into your pocket and assist us with a tax-free donation we will be grateful and guarantee that it goes to the work itself, not to anything extraneous.

Peace, blessing and thanks to you all,

Matthew Fox President, FCS