Dear Friends of CS, Holiday Greetings to you all! Many thanks to all those who are carrying on the work and vision of the movement/tradition from Mary Plaster in Duluth to Susan Coppage Evans in Boulder to Diane Wolverton in Wyoming and many, many more. (Can’t mention you all.)
A few words from my Oakland base. Here are some things going on.
My two books that came out this Spring are stirring things up a bit. Christian Mystics just received an award as “one of the best spiritual books of 2011” from Library Journal. The Pope’s War is coming out in paperback in the Spring and is already out in German. The translator wrote me that she “cried often” while translating it because her generation (she is in her forties) was promised “never again, no more fascism” and that the book proves fascism is back in the church and especially through the German wing of the church. This book is a “bomb” she says and Germans need to read it. Reviews coming in from Germany, all of them positive. Others have told me the “book is a page-turner—I stayed up two nights in a row to finish it” they say. A number of positive and thoughtful reviews in the US too.
Susan Coppage Evans and I launched a series of CS retreats this Fall in Boulder, Co., based on the Four Paths. September event was Via Positiva with Mary Oliver as our guide. I loved working more deeply on Oliver’s wonderful poetry and had the privilege of seeing her in person deliver a reading and q and a in San Francisco ten days before our retreat. In January we are doing the Via Negativa with Eckhart as our guide. Later we will do Via Creativa with Hildegard as our guide and then the Via Transformativa with Howard Thurman as our guide. Spread the word! www.wholeheartedretreat.com Lots of good practice stuff going on with Susan leading that and I offering in-put on the various subjects and guides.
I am very grateful to Mary Plaster for carrying the torch with a facebook page with my name on it. Thank you, Mary, and Congratulations too for the wonderful work you are doing with theater pieces and puppets galore!
Mel and I have been working diligently to rescue some of the wonderful articles and interviews from Creation Spirituality Magazine from its very first issue to its very last. We are putting these on its own web page very soon and access will be free. I was excited and pleased to see how many great articles were written and interviews offered over its 13 year history—articles that are still very relevant. (I was also amazed to see how many I had written, just about one per issue). Authors or Interviewees range from Jerry Brown to Buck Ghosthorse, from Joanna Macy to Bill Everson, from Jeremy Taylor (a regular) to Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, from Charlene Spretnak to Starhawk and many, many more. Thanks and kudos to all the editors over the years of the cs magazine. It is nice to revisit it at this time in my life.
Nicole Porcaro has been working diligently on putting together a Manual for the Cosmic Mass and I have been overseeing the project. She is drawing on the documents that Debra Martin brought together for her Manual when teaching the course on the TCM at the Ballroom plus history plus more. We hope to have that Manual on line by February. (Nicole is getting married in early January! Send your blessings her way!)
Beginning in January and with the hard work of Diane Wolverton we are launching a teleconference course on “Mystics: Pioneers of Consciousness” taught weekly for 10 weeks (first week free) by yours truly. We are hoping this will be a first “out of the gate” experience for starting an on-line teaching experience that is global and that is using the latest in technology that insures interaction among students and teacher as well. You can go to www.CSourcewisdom.com. Spread the word please! Maybe we are resurrecting UCS in this teleconference format making it much cheaper and more accessible than ever before. We shall see how it evolves.
I am working hard with Adam Bucko of NYC who is co-founder of “The Reciprocity Foundation” (see www.reciprocityfoundation.org) who has been working with street youth in NYC for six years. We are writing a book together in dialog form about young adults and spirituality, have handed out lots of surveys and have also interviewed on film about twenty interesting young adults from Bay Area to Boulder to North Carolina to NYC. So we are creating a film project as well. We expect to have the book completed by February and the film later this year.
The work with Yellawe goes very strong in Chicago where Ted Richards is active with three Chicago versions of the project called “The Chicago Wisdom Project.” (He is also commuting to NYC to work with New Seminary there). In Oakland we have linked YELLAWE up with Kokomon Clottey’s project, “Art Esteem” and his and Aeesha’s Attitudinal Healing Project this Fall. This month it morphs from an afterschool program at McClymonds high school to being an accredited afternoon in-school program and we all see that as a plus.
I am still on the road a lot with lectures, workshops and preaching. And some Cosmic Masses in the works also. I will be going to England and Scotland in the Spring for a series of lectures. I remain very grateful to Aaron Stern and the Academy of the Love of Learning for their support and mutual work and vision. www.aloveoflearning.org Their new building in Santa Fe is a stunner and fully Leeds approved and above all full of wonderful activities.
I have been seeing more of Brian Swimme lately and share his joy that his life’s work of putting the “Journey of the Universe” to film is now getting a great hearing by being on so many PBS stations this season. Surely Tom Berry is blessing the project.
I am currently writing an article on the Occupy Movement, a movement which I have great hopes for. I have visited Occupy in Boston, NY, Ashville, Boulder, Oakland. Lots of cs energy and principles there! I will make the article available on line shortly.
A high point for me this year was going to Rome for the launch of the Italian version of my “Original Blessing” book—they launched it on the anniversary of Giordano Bruno’s burning at the stake in Rome in 1600 (he too was a Dominican and keen on spirituality in science). A well known Italian philosopher wrote a very rich Introduction to the book (which is now in its fifth printing) and an Italian publisher is committed to publishing “The Pope’s War” and also “Creativity” (which is being translated by a fellow in Florence—seems like the perfect city). While in Rome I posted an Italian translation of my 95 theses at Cardinal Law’s basilica on a Sunday morning. Much drama with the Vatican police there in street clothing leading the attacks. We, not they, remained non violent.
So that kind of brings you up to date from Oakland. If you have some money to contribute to a still very viable non-profit called FCS, don’t hesitate to do so. www.mcssl.com/store/matthewfoxorg/books/donation If you don’t I fully understand. You can help other ways by spreading the word and maybe stirring up some lecture invitations or pushing books or courses such as our on-line ones, etc. And many thanks to Dennis for his continued and dogged work contributions to FCS—and to Dominic Flamiano too for his legal assistance.
Blessings on your Holidays and New Year Days for 2012!
Grateful for all you Be and Do,
Matthew Fox