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