This can be a abstract of the earlier week’s every day meditations. Some are written by Matthew Fox (MF) and a few are written by his colleague, Gianluigi Gugliermetto. (GG) You may click on on any title to view the DM in its entirety. Additionally, keep in mind that every Monday DM continues to incorporate a video instructing by Matthew Fox. Thanks to your loyal readership.
Could 4, 2026: Past SCOTUS: Conscience vs. Fascism (MF)
After the un-Supreme Court docket decimated the Voting Rights Act final week, the governor of Louisiana rushed to cease an election already in progress so as to redraw congressional traces and gerrymander extra seats for white voters. Mahatma Gandhi understood moments like this when he stated, “There’s a increased courtroom than courts of justice and that’s the courtroom of conscience. It supersedes all different courts.” In distinction, fascism is a type of idolatry, a worship of energy. Fascism and conscience are incompatible. When non secular establishments help fascist actions, whether or not Opus Dei or “Christian nationalism,” that isn’t solely institutional violence, however hypocrisy.
Could 5, 2026: Cinco de Mayo, Could Day, & Explosion of Financial Inequality (MF)
Cinco de Mayo (Could 5) initially celebrated a shocking army victory within the Battle of Puebla, Mexico. The subsequent yr, Mexican Individuals in California commemorated the date as a vacation and a “political and cultural second tied to resistance and democracy.” In the meantime, Could 1st is Worldwide Employees Day. One of many causes staff are struggling proper now could be the massive disparity between the wages of staff and the CEOs. One current article in The Guardian is titled: “CEO pay soared in 2025, 20 instances sooner than staff’ pay.”* Within the yr 2025, billionaires had been paid $2,500 per second in dividends. Because of this each two hours, the common billionaire receives extra in dividends than the common employee earns in a complete yr.
Could 6, 2026: Intercourse and the Church (GG)
Final week, Pope Leo, answering a journalist’s query concerning the blessing of same-sex partnerships that the German Catholic bishops are planning to authorize, stated: “We (Rome) disagree, however the unity of the Church doesn’t rely on sexual issues.” This, by a Church held collectively, since not less than the XVII century, by guidelines about heterosexual marriages, priestly celibacy, and nuns’ virginity. Matthew Fox has been, in fact, one of the vocal opponents of the ban on homosexuality throughout the Catholic Church. For generations, homosexuality was seen as a deviation from “what’s pure.” However this was based mostly on defective science. We should applaud the Roman Catholic German bishops for his or her braveness.
Could 7, 2026: Flesh and the Church (GG)
Many church officers love energy. Intercourse is code for energy as a result of human hierarchical relationships have a hidden sexual construction. Think about the sadomasochistic construction of all types of domination and submission dyads throughout the human species, in addition to the blind obedience requested by the Church. Even in the present day, as GG learns in his position as a non secular counselor, the repression of sexual need is a robust software of energy and domination throughout the Catholic Church. However intercourse can also be code for sensuality. The phrases “flesh” and “carnal” come to thoughts. Matthew Fox says that flesh can develop into a redemptive power…. Once we realize it, we develop into grateful and reverent towards our our bodies, towards meals, towards flowers, towards forests, towards soil, towards different animals and birds and fishes and towards different human beings. Gratitude and Reverence heal. They redeem…. Flesh redeems as a result of it awakens awe and surprise and delights. Awe is redemptive.
Could 8, 2026: The Universe and Flesh (GG)
When Matthew Fox talks about sexuality, and even simply the human physique, he locations such themes inside a cosmological context. He helps us join the dots between the fact of the fleshliness of the earth and of its relation to the fleshliness of the universe and our personal flesh. Richard Hooker, an Anglican theologian of the sixteenth century, responded to the Puritans’ allegiance to all of the “legal guidelines” of the Bible. He asks, “What’s a regulation?” He then argues that God has set many such “legal guidelines” within the universe in addition to within the human coronary heart, other than something written in any e-book — even probably the most holy of books. Matthew says about intercourse: None of us could be right here with out lust. Our dad and mom’ lust is what introduced us into this world. Lust in itself, subsequently, is holy and sacred. Subversions of lust, like pedophilia, exploitation, and trafficking of the weak by the highly effective, shouldn’t be understood as “sins of the flesh” however reasonably as “sins in opposition to the flesh” inasmuch as they’re offensive to the flesh.
Could 9, 2026: Mom’s Day 2026 together with Gaia & Colbert Birthing the Artwork of Laughter
A blessed Mom’s Day to all! Bringing new life into the world is an unbelievable act of creativity. And nourishing and caring for all times is one thing that moms–and all of us–are referred to as to do. We’re all moms in a roundabout way. As Meister Eckhart insisted, we’re all moms of God and “God is at all times needing to be born.” Mothering brings steadiness and caring, compassion and justice into all facets of our lives. With creativity comes Pleasure, self-expression, and sharing. One one that has blessed us with these qualities is Stephen Colbert. For a few years, he has entertained us together with his humor and presence. Laughter is without doubt one of the artwork varieties that will get us by way of exhausting instances. Humor is a risk to fascism which needs to close it down as a part of its habit to regulate. We’ll miss Stephen as his present ends later this month.
*Michael Sainato, “CEO pay soared in 2025, 20 instances sooner than staff’ pay,” The Guardian, Could 1, 2026.
Banner picture: The blessing of connection. Picture by Lareised Leneseur on Unsplash
Associated Readings by Matthew Fox
Trump & The MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had at all times shied away from utilizing the time period “Anti-Christ” as a result of it was so typically used to unfold management and worry. Nonetheless, given in the present day’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables on this e-book using the archetype for the reason for justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a second, for inspecting the archetype of the Antichrist, it’s now…Learn this e-book with an open thoughts. Good and evil are actual forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, writer of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For rapid entry to Trump & The MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white pictures, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To obtain a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for rapid obtain.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Reworking Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling writer Matthew Fox affords a brand new theology of evil that essentially modifications the standard notion of fine and evil and factors the best way to a extra enlightened remedy of ourselves, each other, and all of nature. In evaluating the Japanese custom of the 7 chakras to the Western custom of the 7 capital sins, Fox permits us to suppose creatively about our capability for private and institutional evil and what we will do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a greater imaginative and prescient and depth of notion far past the grasp of anybody single science. A breath-taking evaluation.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, writer of Quantum Theology: Religious Implications of the New Physics
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Time
Whereas Matthew Fox acknowledges that Meister Eckhart has influenced thinkers all through historical past, he additionally needs to introduce Eckhart to in the present day’s activists addressing modern crises. Towards that finish, Fox creates dialogues between Eckhart and Carl Jung, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Heschel, Black Elk, Karl Marx, Rumi, Adrienne Wealthy, Dorothee Soelle, David Korten, Anita Roddick, Lily Yeh, M.C. Richards, and plenty of others.
“Matthew Fox is probably the best author on Meister Eckhart that has ever existed. (He) has efficiently bridged a niche between Eckhart as a shamanistic persona and Eckhart as a post-modern mentor to the Inter-faith motion, to disclose simply how cosmic Eckhart actually is, and the way remarkably related to in the present day’s non secular disaster! ” — Steven Herrmann, Creator of Religious Democracy: The Knowledge of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Ahead
Confessions: The Making of a Put up-Denominational Priest (Revised/Up to date Version)
Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his private, mental, and non secular journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. 5 new chapters on this revised and up to date version carry added perspective in mild of the writer’s continued journey, and his reflections on the present modifications happening in church, society and the setting.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible non secular revolutionary enlivens the thoughts and emboldens the center — should studying for anybody keen on braveness, creativity, and the way forward for faith.”
—Joanna Macy, writer of World as Lover, World as Self
Authentic Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out an entire new path for Christianity—a path that’s the truth is very historic and really grounded in Jewish considering (the truth that Jesus was a Jew is commonly uncared for by Christian theology): the 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an prolonged and deeply developed approach.
“Authentic Blessing makes obtainable to the Christian world and to the human neighborhood a radical treatment for all darkish and derogatory views of the pure world wherever these might have originated.” –Thomas Berry, writer, The Dream of the Earth; The Nice Work; co-author, The Universe Story
