Welcome from Matthew Fox

About Eckhart and Erfurt

Meister Eckhart may well be the most significant mystic-prophet of the West.  His influence has been vast, running from Karl Marx and Carl Jung to Thomas Merton and John of the Cross to Dorothee Soelle and Eckhart Tolle.  His deep insights ring true to Buddhists, Sufis, Hindus, Jews and indigenous peoples. What better place to study him than in his own Dominican house where he lived “longer and more continuously than anywhere else during his lifetime,” according to historian Joel Harrington.

Predigerkirche in Erfurt was a Dominican priory and church in the middle ages.  Its Gothic church was still under construction during Eckhart’s time, the choir and high stone altar only fully roofed a year or two before his joining the Dominicans at 15 years of age.

Now Lutheran, the church and priory went amazingly undamaged for 700 years including the two world wars.  Updated and renovated, it provides a most special space of morphic resonance and deep memory in which to listen deeply to what Eckhart is telling us today amidst our struggles for eco-justice, social justice and an evolutionary leap towards a deeper consciousness for our species.   

Also in Erfurt is the Augustinian church where Martin Luther was ordained a priest.  And two hours away is Wittenburg where Luther pounded his theses that launched the Reformation movement and we will visit those sites as well.

Learn more about Erfurt here.

For more information, contact Dennis @ 510.835.0655, or email 33dennis@sbcglobal.net.  

Our Instructors

Like Meister Eckhart, Matthew Fox was a Dominican, until, like Eckhart, he was condemned by a corrupt papacy. Now a priest and educator in the Episcopalian church, he is recognized as a pre-eminent scholar of the work of Eckhart and other mystics. He has written three books on Eckhart and 33 other books on Creation Spirituality including three on Hildegard of Bingen. His books have been translated into 70 languages. He holds a doctorate in the history and theology of spiritualities from the Institut catholique de Paris. 

Steven Herrmann, PhD, MFT is a Jungian psychotherapist and scholar who has been studying the “Master” for forty years. Herrmann studied with the former Dominican monk William Everson who was his faculty adviser at UC Santa Cruz for his Senior Thesis “Meister Eckhart: On the Recollection of the Self.” He has taught on Eckhart, Jungian literary criticism, American poetry, transpersonal psychology, vocational dreams, and led groups on Jungian dream work and journaling. Herrmann is the author of the books William Everson: The Shaman’s Call; Walt Whitman; Spiritual Democracy; and Emily Dickinson: A Medicine Woman for Our Times.

Meshi Chavez is a choreographer and movement teacher based in Portland, OR. He began his teaching career in Soul Motion TM, and then got seduced by his pursuit of the dance form called Butoh. He is a student of Natsu Nakajima (the first female to dance this form) and Denise Fujiwara. Meshi is co-founder of Momentum Conscious Movement.  His approach to presence in the body is greatly influenced by his 20 years of working with Native Spiritual leaders and ceremonies.

Claudia Picardi will oversee the workshop and also lead a “Process Seminar.”  Claudia holds a master’s in Transpersonal Psychology from ITP and a Doctorate in Computer Science.  As vice president of the Creation Spirituality Organization in Italy, she leads workshops on re-activating the imagination through fairy tales, myths and sacred texts.  In this optional Seminar following the Art as Meditation classes the learning of each day will be processed and shared via images, colors, words and impressions of the participants.

“Fox has given us yet another radioactive, stunning work.  Every chapter is a true, clear, and swift revelation.”
–Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism

“Whether our species has a future on Earth does not depend on the development of more gee-whiz technologies, but on whether we are willing to move into the psycho-spiritual dimension proclaimed by Meister Eckhart and elucidated by Matthew Fox in this important book.” 
--Larry Dossey, MD, author of One Mind

“In this book Matthew Fox, one of the gigantic Christians of this century, engages and presents Meister Eckhart, one of the gigantic Christians of the ages, in dialogue with some of today’s best minds.  The result is a stunning new vision of Christianity that transcends both creeds and boundaries.  It is a thrilling read.”
--John Shelby Spong, author of The Fourth Gospel; Tales of a Jewish Mystic

Passion for Creation: the Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart

"The most important book on mysticism in 500 years." 
-- Madonna Kolbenschlag, author of Kissing Sleeping Beauty Goodbye.

"What Eckhart does in his work and what Fox brings out very well in this book are the awareness of that piece of God which is in each one of us." 
-- Dorothee Soelle, author of Thinking About God

 "This book marks an important stage in the rehabilitation of Eckhart, one of the supreme Masters of Catholic spirituality."
 -- Bede Griffiths, author of The Golden String

"This very readable volume gives us something of the thrill of mysticism."
 -- National Catholic Register