It is a weekly abstract of the earlier week’s Each day Meditations. Some are penned by Matthew Fox (MF), and a few by Gianluigi Gugliermetto (GG). You may click on on the title of a DM so as to view the unique piece in its entirety. Additionally, please word, we are going to proceed to supply a video educating by Matthew every Monday.
August 25, 2025: Joanna Macy on Unique Blessing: A Apply in Deep Ecumenism (MF)
On Saturday, there was an internet memorial service for Joanna Macy, with over 1000 taking part. Matthew shared excerpts of a letter Joanna despatched him over 20 years in the past about Matthew’s e book Unique Blessing. She referred to as it a revolutionary occasion in spirituality. She stated, OB jogs my memory of the Dharma wheel as a result of it brings an analogous shift of focus—a radical shift from substance to course of. The e book means that we aren’t entities to be perfected a lot as processes to be valued and enlivened. Matthew concluded his discuss with a Buddhism-inspired prayer: Might all creatures be blissful. Might all creatures be saved. Might all creatures be acknowledged as authentic blessings. Might all of us be pleased about our existence. And act prefer it. Amen.
August 26, 2025: Psilocybin & the Mind: A Physician Studies on Science & Mysticism (MF)
Final week, Matthew and GG mentioned how some clergy had optimistic experiences when taking part in a guided LSD expertise. Matthew is gloomy that so many in our tradition really feel they will’t expertise transcendence except they make the most of psychoactive substances. Matthew believes that non secular rituals can obtain the identical finish. And that’s one of many causes Matthew has been concerned within the Cosmic Mass motion for 30 some years. Nevertheless, there generally is a place for substances like psilocybin. As an illustration, one 67-year-old affected person, dwelling with metastatic most cancers, was very fearful “of nonexistence, of the tip.” However “mushrooms taught him die.” The affected person stated it was “probably the most actual factor he’d ever skilled.” Dr. Michael Hunter says that psychoactive mushrooms can “unhook” the mind, and when that occurs “the self softens — and struggling, typically, dissolves.”
August 27, 2025: Prayer and the Physique, Half I (GG)
Western Christians, once they pray, are inclined to not be very embodied. However Saint Dominic (founding father of the Order of Preachers, aka the Dominicans) modeled many alternative embodied methods to hope. Reportedly, Dominic prayed nearly consistently. His “9 methods of prayer” are offered in a single thirteenth century booklet. As an illustration, he bowed profoundly earlier than praying. Typically he prostrated himself fully on the bottom. Dominic used to genuflect and get up repeatedly, lots of of occasions in a row, whereas repeating sentences from the Psalms. Typically he prayed standing immobile for lengthy stretches of time, sweetly repeating to himself phrases from Scripture, but additionally opening his arms in a welcoming gesture. Extra not often, Dominic prayed stretching his arms within the type of a cross. He additionally prayed whereas strolling. There are such a lot of methods to hope!
August 28, 2025: Prayer and the Physique — Half 2 (GG)
A up to date of Saint Dominic, much more radical in her bodily prayer, was Saint Christina, additionally referred to as Christina the Astonishing. Christina was recognized for climbing up timber and staying there for lengthy stretches of time, immersed in prayer. Sources clarify her habits by saying that she couldn’t tolerate the stench of sin — each actually and figuratively. Like Dominic, Christina additionally prostrated herself in grief earlier than altars inside church buildings. Christina threw herself in rivers throughout winter and managed fireplace in her palms with out getting burned. She ran within the fields and spent lengthy stretches of time alone within the woods. At occasions, Christina prayed by spinning in a dervish type of method. She was additionally recognized for her wondrous levitations, and he or she reportedly accompanied a number of souls from purgatory to heaven throughout her out-of-body travels. Clearly, St. Christina concerned physique, coronary heart and thoughts when she prayed.
August 29, 2025: Supplications (MF)
Prayer is greater than supplication. It may be thanksgiving, contemplation, lament, and many others. Matthew likes to name prayer “an openness to life.” One reader privately took problem with that pronouncement, saying that prayer is greater than openness, that prayer can change actuality—not essentially as a result of there’s a God who waits to listen to supplications however as a result of the world is made from delicate energetic fields which talk with one another. As Westerners, we’re going via a paradigm shift. Our understanding of the Divine has modified and can change. Thus, we’ll have much more debates on the that means and effectiveness of every kind of prayer within the subsequent few centuries, if we survive our propensity for self-destruction.
August 30, 2025: Two Republican Presidents: “I’m not a dictator.” “I’m not a criminal.” (MF)
This week our sitting president stated at a most uncommon cupboard assembly: “I’m not a dictator.” Then he went on to say he might do no matter he desires as president and that “many” Individuals need a dictator. His “I’m not a dictator” sounds eerily much like Nixon’s “I’m not a criminal.” Sadly, the checks and balances that had been put in place by our founding fathers are usually not holding very effectively with purchased justices on the Supreme Court docket and sychophantic Republicans in Congress who’ve fully misplaced not simply their backbone, however their soul. The primary-ever Republican president Abraham Lincoln believed in democracy and stated: “Authorities of the individuals, by the individuals, and for the individuals shall not perish from this earth.” We’re getting scarily shut. It’s time for all palms on deck to guard our democracy earlier than it perishes.
Banner picture: “The Praying Man.” Photograph by Aina Vine on Unsplash
Really helpful Studying
Unique Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a complete new route for Christianity—a route that’s the truth is very historical 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 method.
“Unique 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
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
How do prayer and mysticism relate to the battle for social and ecological justice? Fox defines prayer as a radical response to life that features our “Sure” to life (mysticism) and our “No” to forces that fight life (prophecy). How will we outline grownup prayer? And the way—if in any respect—do prayer and mysticism relate to the battle for social and ecological justice? Considered one of Matthew Fox’s earliest books, initially printed below the title On Changing into a Musical, Mystical Bear: Spirituality American Type, Prayer introduces a mystical/prophetic spirituality and a mature conception of pray. Referred to as a “traditional” when it first appeared, it lays out the distinction between the creation spirituality custom and the autumn/redemption custom that has so dominated Western theology since Augustine. A sensible and theoretical e book, it lays the groundwork for Fox’s later works. “One of many best books I’ve learn on modern spirituality.” – Rabbi Sholom A. Singer
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
As Matthew Fox notes, when an growing old Albert Einstein was requested if he had any regrets, he replied, “I want I had learn extra of the mystics earlier in my life.” The 365 writings in Christian Mystics symbolize a wide-ranging sampling of those readings for modern-day seekers of all faiths — or no religion. The visionaries quoted vary from Julian of Norwich to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Thomas Merton to Dorothee Soelle and Thomas Berry.
“Our world is in disaster, and we’d like highway maps that may floor us in knowledge, encourage us to motion, and assist us collect our abilities in service of compassion and justice. This revolutionary e book does simply that. Matthew Fox takes a few of the most profound non secular teachings of the West and interprets them into sensible each day mediations. Examine and follow these teachings. Take what’s on this e book and train it to the youth as a result of the brand new technology can’t afford to endure the spirit and moral illiteracy of the previous.” — Adam Bucko, non secular activist and co-founder of the Reciprocity Basis for Homeless Youth.
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. Nevertheless, given immediately’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 quick 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 photos, 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 quick obtain.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Remodeling Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling writer Matthew Fox affords a brand new theology of evil that basically modifications the normal notion of excellent and evil and factors the way in which to a extra enlightened remedy of ourselves, each other, and all of nature. In evaluating the Jap custom of the 7 chakras to the Western custom of the 7 capital sins, Fox permits us to assume 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
