Creation Spirituality – Creativity, compassion and justice

Matthew Fox is a spiritual theologian, an Episcopal priest and an activist for gender, racial and eco- justice. He has written more than 39 books that have been translated into over 60 languages. As founder of the University of Creation Spirituality in California and The Cosmic Mass, he conducts dozens of workshops each year and is a visiting scholar at the Academy for the Love of Learning. He is the recipient of many awards including: The Abbey Courage of Conscience Peace Award. Recent projects include Order of the Sacred Earth and Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox as well as The Cosmic Mass. 

In 1993 he was expelled from the Dominican order of the Catholic church after 34 years, by Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). His mistake was reviving Creation Spirituality, which decries original sin (the doctrine that we’re all born sinners) in favor of Everyone Born is a Blessing and all of creation being an original blessing.  Creation Spirituality blends teachings from the Christian mystics with science, the arts, social justice, environmentalism, and ideas from other spiritual traditions worldwide (including those of indigenous cultures). He then became an Episcopal priest on the basis that he wanted to work with young people to bring life back to ritual and worship.

Matthew feels the difference between spirituality and religion is that religion has evolved to become mostly about social structures whereas spirituality is the essence of the inner work that we do. Awe and wonder at the joy of living, grief and suffering, silence and creativity. We need creativity to help us find some balance in our lives, compassion and justice. A lot of people want these things but don't want to go through the church to find them. Religion comes and goes in different eras or moments in time and at certain points in the west has become linked to empire building and politics but spirituality is the essence.

Nowadays we can’t take things like clean air or clean water for granted. A return to a sense of the sacred is at the heart of spirituality. We need to learn and appreciate the simple but necessary things in life. The natural environment and nature are sacred and the indigenous people know this. More people though are now finding that nature is a gift as science is telling us there is no planet that is as hospitable, beautiful or diverse as earth

We have come through lockdown and started to realise that human beings are social animals and need to collaborate but we now seem to be going in the opposite direction and starting to fight and fall out with each other. We seem to have lost the sense of community that spiritualism and belief can give us. There was a shared consciousness that religion gave us through the symbol of going to church. It is having a shared ethic or view of the world that helps hold a community together.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

You can find out more at www.matthewfox.org or www.dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org