This can be a abstract of the earlier week’s every day meditations. You’ll be able to click on on any title to view the DM in its entirety. Additionally, keep in mind that every Monday DM continues to supply a video instructing by Matthew Fox. Thanks on your loyal readership.
February 9, 2026: Leonard Cohen on Saintliness, continued
We proceed to mirror on what Leonard Cohen says about saintliness, in his ebook Lovely Losers.* Cohen says that Love is on the heart of a saint’s power. And what love accomplishes, Cohen believes, is steadiness, “a sort of steadiness within the chaos of existence.” Notice: Saints don’t eradicate the chaos, they educate us dance with it, make steadiness occur. As a substitute of attempting to rid the world of chaos, they be taught to journey it—journey “the drifts like an escaped ski.” An escaped ski has momentum and power however nothing to steer it. Subsequently, a sort of religion is required, or a give up to forces bigger than ourselves.
February 10, 2026: Leonard Cohen on Saintliness, continued
The saint just isn’t angelic and ethereal, however grounded and earthy. The saint goes deeper than the earth’s crust, to the depths the place issues will be each stable and bloody. The hot button is that he/she is “at residence on this planet,” it doesn’t matter what is shaking and being shaken. The home shakes, the world shakes, however one finds a house on this planet and doesn’t flee the scene. Braveness and belief reign within the coronary heart of the saints. Says Cohen, “It’s good to have amongst us such males (saints), such balancing monsters of affection.” A saint is taken over, monster-like, by the facility of affection manifest in an immense balancing act.
February 11, 2026: Ernest Becker Providing Extra Ideas on Saintliness
Right this moment we ponder one other considerate individual’s wrestling with sainthood, specifically Ernest Becker, creator of the Pulitzer-prize profitable ebook The Denial of Demise.** He additionally wrote Escape from Evil.*** It’s right here that he talks about saintliness. He writes that wholesome faith gives the opportunity of a brand new heroism, the heroism of sainthood. This meant residing in major awe on the miracle of the created object…together with oneself in a single’s personal godlikeness. He provides: If we weren’t fear-stricken animals who repressed consciousness of ourselves and our world, then we’d reside in peace and unafraid of demise, trusting to the Creator God and celebrating His creation.… The concept of spiritual sainthood, like that of psychoanalysis, is thus the opening up of notion: that is the place faith and science meet.
February 12, 2026: Becker on Saintliness, continued
Ernest Becker sees faith in the present day as failing to open up our notion to “celebrating God’s creation.” He praises indigenous religions for doing precisely that. He stated: Not was man an animal who died and vanished from the earth; he was a creator of life who might additionally give everlasting life to himself by way of communal rituals of cosmic regeneration. The Cosmic Mass is such a ritual. So, too, the celebration of the Inexperienced Man in indigenous Celtic spirituality. Aboriginal instructor Eddie Kneebone taught Matthew that his folks “educate our kids that stars are the campfires of our ancestors.” Becker stated: The early promise of Christianity was to result in, as soon as and for all of the social justice that the traditional world was crying for. Christianity by no means fulfilled this promise and is as far-off from it in the present day as ever. No surprise it has hassle being taken significantly as a hero system.
February 13, 2026: Why Meditate on Sainthood in a Time of ICE, Epstein Information, & the Relaxation?
We’re meditating on sainthood as a result of evil is so omnipresent in our information day-after-day that we have now to entertain its reverse, that’s, information of the holy. Saints—and that is meant to be all of us—are those that have a conscience and are usually not afraid to talk up and stroll their speak about values that matter. We see such braveness and holiness enjoying out within the streets of Minneapolis today by unusual residents, not less than two of whom have been murdered and martyred by ICE, which is our authorities at work. Matthew is satisfied that each mystics and prophets require nice braveness. In French, braveness means “massive coronary heart.” For many people, our hearts are breaking as we witness a lot evil, however Joanna Macy stated, “When your coronary heart breaks, the entire universe can pour by.”
February 13, 2026: Confronting Giant-Scale Lies By means of Satire, Opera & Humor
We now have been speaking about saintliness, however one other strategy to confront large-scale lies is thru satire. As America is changing into a laughing inventory on this planet in the present day, in addition to a supply of worry, Europe is responding by satire. Lately, in Hamburg, Germany, the world premiere of Monster’s Paradise not too long ago opened to a really enthusiastic reception.* The plot is described as follows: A President-King so gluttonous, ravenous, and absurdly swollen with ego that he enters a gilded Oval Workplace with a Coca-Cola fridge, a crown on the desk, and a literal eject button for undesirable guests. Trump, rendered as a diapered titan with a golden necktie, grows to monstrous proportions and vegetation a golf membership like a flag on conquered territory. The director of the opera admitted that Washington is “sprinting towards parody so quick that the manufacturing may be outdated in eight hours.” However laughter is usually a device in a single’s anti-fascist toolbox since fascists in all places notoriously lack a humorousness—particularly when it’s geared toward them and their ever-so-fragile egos.
* Because of Maria Popova, “The Balancing Monsters of Love: Leonard Cohen on the Saints Amongst Us,” The Marginalian, February 23, 2023.
**Ernest Becker, Escape from Evil. Revealed by Free Press, March 1, 1985
**** Mary Geddry, “Opera vs. Coverage” on Geddry, February 9, 2026.
Banner picture: The reward of flowers and a smile. Picture by Norbu GYACHUNG on Unsplash
Associated Readings by Matthew Fox
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Time
The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Knowledge for Onerous Instances
Julian of Norwich: Knowledge in a Time of Pandemic—and Past
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Therapeutic of Mom Earth and the Start of a World Renaissance
Trump & the MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Remodeling Evil in Soul & Society (2016)
