A number of months in the past, within the wake of earlier experiences, I put collectively a crew of 5 individuals, together with myself, and created a week-long retreat that can be held on the island of Sardinia towards the top of Could 2026. Dennis Edwards, the secretary of the Matthew Fox Legacy Challenge, and Mario Bonfanti, who has labored for us on-site in Sardinia, have been instrumental in making this occur.
Matthew himself has supervised the initiative and can take part by the use of three reside classes throughout which members will have the ability to dialogue with him on an important discoveries that they’ll have made in the midst of the retreat.
We titled the initiative “Awakening the Divine Human: An Immersion within the Residing Knowledge of Creation Spirituality.” You’ll be able to take a look at this system HERE. The pivotal phrase for me on this title is “immersion” as I need to use an inductive methodology somewhat than a deductive one. That’s, expertise first, reasoning about it later.
This doesn’t imply that we are going to not be reflecting and pondering. In actual fact, the transformation of the thoughts and its habits is the essence of spirituality. I can not consider any religious grasp in any custom whose intention is anything than serving to practitioners remodel their thoughts, and thus the world round them (the by way of transformativa, which in Jungian phrases is “pondering”).
I’ve discovered too usually than individuals collaborating in retreats love listening to their voice expressing their ideas, that are in fact the ideas they introduced with them to the retreat location. In the middle of this week, as a substitute, individuals can be requested first to sense (by way of positiva), to really feel (by way of negativa), and to create (by way of creativa) and solely then giving full sway to the facility of thought/motion (by way of transformativa).
In actuality, there can be a verbal “gathering of experiences” in small teams within the late afternoon of every day, adopted by a sustained second of alternate with Matthew Fox on-line. However these moments can be preceded by “immersion moments” within the sea, in caves, in sizzling swimming pools, in nature. In Jungian phrases, we would like the soul to be main the expertise, somewhat than the mind.
As I used to be requested a couple of occasions concerning the Christian contents of the retreat, I need to be clear that there’s none, within the sense that we are going to not work on Christian symbols or texts. As a theologian, nevertheless, I’m satisfied that working inside the depths of human spirituality, getting in touch with the roots of our species’ quest for the divine, is a prerequisite for any wholesome engagement with the Jewish and Christian traditions.
We’ve got chosen the island of Sardinia certainly as a result of it affords one thing distinctive: the potential of connecting to the ancestral traditions of humankind in a pristine pure atmosphere. The quantity of Neolithic websites which might be nonetheless preserved or have been excavated is beautiful, and we’ll expertise a few of them not as vacationers however as pilgrims.
There was a problem to this system coming from some individuals who suppose that it’s unethical to advertise a tour that not all people can afford and is inflicting air pollution by means of air travelling. Wouldn’t or not it’s extra constant to follow in a single’s personal place, and possibly create sustainable native guilds of practitioners?
I’ve been dealing internally with related points prior to now and I’m not positive I’ve discovered an answer. I can, nevertheless, specific publicly the intention that’s behind this retreat. It’s giving me the event to introduce others to a deep supply of that means—i.e. Sardinia itself—that is essential for my very own soul.
I hope that members — a few of whom are making monetary preparations to have the ability to fly to Italy — will take a look at it not as yet one more journey however as a uncommon event and a sacred time. A time of deep listening. Past phrases. With the aim of elaborating for a really very long time, every in their very own place and life context, the insights that can be gathered.
Banner picture: “Sant’Antioco Island, Cape Sperone.” Picture by Maurizio Panicara. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
How do you take care of your moral conflicts across the sustainability of your ecological footprint? Or with the disparity between your stage of earnings and that of others?
Associated Readings by Matthew Fox
Unique Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Presents for the Peoples of the Earth
Ed., Charles Burack: Matthew Fox: Important Writings on Creation Spirituality
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug: Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Imaginative and prescient of Love and Motion
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice
