January 6, 2024: Additional Classes from the Universe: Interdependence & Compassion
We discover sure “habits” of the universe that increase our souls. First, we take a look at interconnectivity or interdependence. Compassion is “the ethical regulation” of interconnectivity, the cosmic regulation of responding to a different’s ache and struggling. Hildegard of Bingen mentioned: All the things that’s within the heavens on the earth, and beneath the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness. And Meister Eckhart mentioned: What occurs to a different, whether or not it’s pleasure or sorrow, occurs to me. The Dalai Lama says: We are able to get rid of all faith, however we will’t get rid of compassion. Compassion is my faith. Jesus mentioned: Be you compassionate as your Father in heaven is compassionate. (Lk 6:36)
January 7, 2025: Creativity & Compassion: Extra Classes from the Cosmos
The basis for the phrase “compassion” in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic comes from the phrase womb. In calling us to compassion, we’re reminded that the universe is God’s womb, a spot of gestation and fertility and creativity. What we now know is that from the second of the universe’s start, 13.8 billion years in the past, it has been teeming with creativity. Birthing, begetting, dying, and being reborn—all this occurs to stars and planets, galaxies and microbes, in addition to crops, birds, animals and people. Creativity is baked into the universe. As Meister Eckhart put it: “What does God do all day lengthy? God lies on a maternity mattress giving start.” Our creativity, huge and wondrous and numerous as it’s, is for use for spreading compassion and justice.
January 8, 2025: Cultural Transformation & The Want for Non secular Warriors
Each November fifth and January sixth name us to be non secular warriors. In instances like these we’re all referred to as to intervene. To face as much as greed in its many manifestations, we have to be non secular warriors. Gus Speth, former dean of the Yale Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Research, says this: I used to suppose that high world environmental issues had been biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and local weather change…. I used to be mistaken. The highest environmental issues are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to cope with these we’d like a non secular and cultural transformation. And we scientists don’t understand how to try this.*
January 9, 2025: Politics, Science, Spirituality and Non secular Warriors
Because of the grief so many people really feel resulting from each November’s election in addition to January sixth, many Individuals have a undergone a form of kenosis, or emptying, as a prelude for what comes subsequent. Mahatma Gandhi taught that spirituality and politics go collectively and those that don’t acknowledge that have no idea what faith means. If the political order is important for the attainment of “the best earthly good,” ethical outrage is certainly so as when a fascist venture like Mission 2025 lurks on the horizon. As Thom Hartmann places it, “the oligarchs are now not simply on the gates,” they’re “shifting into the White Home.” However the rupture occurring at the moment in politics and human consciousness generally is a prelude to a brand new future. And non secular warriors would be the leaders.
January 10, 2025: On Turning into a Non secular Warrior in a Time of Apocalypse
How does one develop into a non secular warrior? By caring for physique and soul. By creating “ethical creativeness.” By stepping as much as the plate to do what must be executed. By being each mystic and prophet. By discovering allies and dealing along with different non secular warriors. By creating rituals, ceremonies, and liturgies to present thanks and awaken Pleasure. The Cosmic Mass is a nice instance of such nourishing rituals. A non secular warrior heeds the knowledge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who noticed that motion springs not from thought however from a readiness for duty…Silence within the face of evil is itself evil. God won’t maintain us guiltless. To not communicate is to talk. To not act is to behave.
January 11, 2025: Raging Fires in LA: Are Local weather-Denying Politicians Criminals?
Solely a pair months in the past, we noticed the catastrophic impact of floods in North Carolina and Tennessee. Now we see the impression of horrific, raging wildfires within the second largest metropolis of the nation. Local weather change is on full show for these with eyes to see and ears to listen to. Unbelievably, some nonetheless deny its actuality. Some even forbid the usage of the phrase “local weather change” in any official correspondence. With regard to the LA fires, one observer mentioned: “This isn’t only a tragedy. It’s a crime.” In the meantime, a fireplace ecologist named Morgan Tingley posted this on Bluesky: The madness of being a fireplace ecologist within the epicenter of a serious fireplace occasion, luggage packed and able to evacuate, watching lively fireplace from my window, whereas taking media requests and explaining to the general public, for the 100,000th time, how local weather change is essentially liable for this.
**Cited in Rabbi Yonatan Neril & Rabbi Leo Dee, Eco Bible Volume 1: An Ecological Commentary on Genesis and Exodus, p. xviii
Banner picture: Preventing for our future (cropped). Photograph by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Beneficial Studying
Unique Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a complete new course for Christianity—a course that’s in truth 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 approach.
“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
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the which means and observe of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the long run that guarantees private, social, and world therapeutic, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, main the best way towards a gentler and extra ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate exercise.
“Nicely price our deepest consideration…Places compassion into its correct focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Imaginative and prescient for a New Technology
Authors Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox encourage us to make use of our skills in service of compassion and justice and to maneuver past our damaged programs–financial, political, academic, and spiritual–discovering a spirituality that not solely helps us to get alongside, but additionally encourages us to reevaluate our traditions, reworking them and within the course of constructing a extra sacred and simply world. Incorporating the phrases of younger activist leaders culled from interviews and surveys, the ebook supplies a framework that’s intentionally interfaith and speaks to our profound craving for a life with non secular function and for a greater world.
“Occupy Spirituality is a robust, inspiring, and very important name to embodied consciousness and enlightened actions.”
~~ Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist and writer of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Lady, and the Wrestle to Save the Redwoods
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 fine and evil and factors the best way to a extra enlightened therapy 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: Non secular Implications of the New Physics
