Wanting towards a New Yr is commonly a time for evaluating the yr now we have simply undergone. From the viewpoint of a brand new presidency, issues haven’t been fairly. Under no circumstances.
Headlines I’ve seen simply within the final 24 hours embrace the next:
“Trump says broadcast licenses ought to be terminated…networks are ‘nearly 100% Damaging’ about him”; “DOGE Did not ship on each promise: $323 billion in uncollected taxes on account of IRS downsizing; Social Safety places of work gutted; World assist program dismantled, costing a whole bunch of hundreds of lives overseas”; “Trump Administration pronounces plans to dismantle, defund, and eradicate the Nationwide Middle for Atmospheric Analysis (NCAR)—the nation’s prime local weather and climate analysis middle”; “The highest 1% of Individuals personal extra wealth than the underside 93%”—and are getting huge tax breaks.
As I used to be questioning the right way to summarize all this darkness in just a few each day meditations—since our acknowledged function in launching the DM seven years in the past was to “pray the information” collectively—I acquired a cellphone name this weekend from a senior citizen and pupil of creation spirituality. He advised me how he was not too long ago re-reading my main ebook on Evil, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Remodeling Evil in Soul & Society, and the way stuffed with wealthy concepts it was, so wealthy that he wished to ship a replica to some college libraries.
This dialog jogged my memory that in that ebook, I lay out a template for discussing Evil and its penalties, created from a wedding of the Japanese teachings on the seven chakras and the Western teachings on the seven capital sins. This may present us with a chicken ’s-eye overview of the right way to consider the current administration.
So I’ll start an analysis in mild of that template of Evil in my subsequent DM, which is that this Saturday.
For at this time, I want to provide some Good Information that could be very a lot in keeping with yesterday’s DM on the significance of artwork as meditation to raise our spirits and deepen our braveness so we are able to face evil with grace and function and efficient motion.
I not too long ago acquired an finish of the yr e-newsletter from Lily Yeh and her Barefoot Artists group. Her non-profit serves poor individuals in Rwanda, Kenya, China, and the US.*
The Dandelion Mural Challenge for migrant staff in China gives a large-scale mosaic mural challenge and is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Artwork is central to its identification as a college. In Rwanda, Barefoot Artists has been working for 18 years and helps households be taught to domesticate land, develop dwelling vegetable gardens, and plant fruit-bearing timber, offering nutritious meals they as soon as gathered within the forest. Barefoot Artists additionally offers faculty provides and uniforms for a lot of youngsters.
In Nairobi, Lily led workshops for aspiring younger artists and helped design a Tree of Life mural that the group painted. As Artist in Residence at Harvard Divinity Faculty, working with Terry Tempest-Williams throughout a “Grief Week,” Lily led a week-long workshop on grief and artwork.
In January, Lily led a collection of workshops following Hurricane Helene. Stated the organizer, “Lily’s go to and life’s work has quietly shifted all of us.” Lily labored with inmates at Grateford Jail whose artwork is now on exhibit on the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Collectively, Lily and the prisoners additionally revealed a ebook written by a lady—now a lady—who was a genocide survivor from the 1994 bloodbath.
Lily’s work is a significant witness to the facility of artwork to heal. Meditation is not only sitting on a cushion; it is usually artwork that heals, celebrates, and returns pleasure to lives and communities. Artwork as meditation is “the best way of the prophets,” and Lily’s work is testimony to that. Tax-deductible donations to her work could be made right here.
Banner Picture: 2025—the anguish and the therapeutic. (L) A bombed-out constructing in Gaza, January 2025. Wikimedia Commons. (R) The Alfajiri Road Children—former avenue children—create a Tree of Life as a part of a group therapeutic challenge in one of many oldest slums in Nairobi. From the Barefoot Artists web site. Printed with permission.
Queries for Contemplation
How are you digesting the excellent news and the unhealthy information of 2025? Does artwork as meditation help you? And different types of meditation as effectively?
Associated Readings by Matthew Fox
“Deep Ecumenism, Ecojustice, and Artwork as Meditation,” in Fox, Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and On a regular basis Life, pp. 199-214
The A.W.E. Challenge: Reinventing Schooling, Reinventing the Human
Creativity: The place the Divine and the Human Meet
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Presents for the Peoples of the Earth
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Remodeling Evil in Soul & Society
Matthew Fox: Important Writings on Creation Spirituality
The Return of Father Sky: A Cosmic Thriller for Children of All Ages
The Reinvention of Work: A New Imaginative and prescient of Livelihood For Our Time
