It’s no secret that we live in a time of apocalypse and antichrist. Hildegard of Bingen painted such instances as an unraveling of order. But additionally how Christ arrives to problem Evil and convey peace.
Thus, breakthroughs and revelations happen amidst the darkness. “Apocalypse” additionally means “Revelation.”
I reproduce her portray and commentaries on it in my ebook, Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen and in my latest ebook on Trump and MAGA as Anti-Christ.
How flip Apocalypse into Revelation? How keep grounded throughout such fierce instances? I supply right here some practices for surviving spiritually throughout instances like these.
1. Don’t deny the darkness in you or the darkness of the instances. Denial shouldn’t be a wholesome response. “God is the denial of denial.” (Eckhart)
2. Floor your self within the Through Positiva, i.e. the goodness and great thing about life, nature and cosmos that birthed us and the Earth that feeds us and cares for us just like the Mom she is.
3. Name on Father Sky for the vastness of soul and creativeness and coronary heart and braveness (“huge coronary heart”) and the really wholesome masculine virility (i.e. advantage) that the instances require.
4. Hearken to your conscience, connect with it and act from it.
5. Demand that your political representatives search and discover their conscience, connect with it and make selections based mostly on it.
6. Name on the non secular warrior in you–all of us have one in us. The biblical phrase for non secular warrior is “prophet”—one who speaks out and interferes.
7. Discover different non secular warriors each residing and lifeless to hyperlink up with as allies.
8. Attain out to Jesus as non secular warrior and uncover why the church selected Scriptures to learn on the Christmas liturgy on the holiest evening of the 12 months that decision him “probably the most highly effective Phrase” and “stern warrior” who “leapt” to earth (Wis 18. 15).
9. Discover or delivery neighborhood, whether or not on-line or in particular person or each.
10. Learn and research with an open coronary heart the mystic-warriors of the previous and current.
11. As I wrote within the conclusion to my antichrist ebook: Develop into a camel and return typically to the oasis and watering gap of the Through Positiva. Refill there in your love of life–the fountain of biophilia–as you cross the desert of the Through Negativa. Drink within the easy miracle of existence, the marvel of the 13.8 billion years which have introduced you and the Earth and all her wondrous creatures into existence.
12. Be grateful—filled with thanks. Carl Jung writes: “If our faith is predicated on marvel, our chief emotion can be gratitude.”
13. Apply silence, contemplation, emptying, letting go. (The Through Negativa)
14. Discover a grief apply. Beating a drum every day for quarter-hour permitting sounds from the third chakra to emerge unedited is one such apply.
15. Apply artwork as meditation: Draw, paint, backyard, dance, sing, do clay, chant, journal—let the depths of your soul out.
16. Apply protest or boycotting or contact politicians and attend city halls with them, name their places of work, let your seek for the widespread good be felt.
17. Handle your self. Snicker, take heed to music, be with mates, get relaxation, learn and pray the information however not overly a lot. Get into nature, let nature into you, make mates with the more-than-human. “Look to the skies, look to the mountains,” the psalmist says.
18. Create and do rituals with self or others that join your soul to the cosmos.
19. Resist and protest properly and passionately however non-violently (see yesterday’s DM).
See Matthew Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ.
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Reworking Evil in Soul and Society.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth.
And Fox, Authentic Blessing: A Primer of Creation Spirituality
See Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, Jen Lustig, Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Imaginative and prescient of Love and Motion.
Banner Picture: Visionary artist along with his work. Photograph by One zone Studio on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Which of those practices work greatest for you? What others would you add?
Advisable Studying
Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen
An introduction to the life and work of Hildegard of Bingen, Illuminations reveals the life and teachings of one of many biggest feminine artists and intellectuals of the Western Mystical Custom. On the age of 42, she started to have visions; these have been captured as 36 illuminations–24 of that are recorded on this ebook alongside together with her commentaries on them.
“If one particular person deserves credit score for the good Hildegard renaissance in our time, it’s Matthew Fox.” – Dr Mary Ford-Grabowsky, creator of Sacred Voices.
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 concern. Nevertheless, given right this moment’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables on this ebook 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 analyzing the archetype of the Antichrist, it’s now…Learn this ebook with an open thoughts. Good and evil are actual forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, creator 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 photographs, 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 creator Matthew Fox affords a brand new theology of evil that essentially modifications the normal notion of excellent and evil and factors the way in which 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 assume creatively about our capability for private and institutional evil and what we are able to do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a greater imaginative and prescient and depth of notion far past the grasp of anyone single science. A breath-taking evaluation.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, creator of Quantum Theology: Religious Implications of the New Physics
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 apply of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the longer term that guarantees private, social, and world therapeutic, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, main the way in which towards a gentler and extra ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate exercise.
“Effectively value our deepest consideration…Places compassion into its correct focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the therapeutic and liberation present in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of each spiritual and political persuasion to unite in a brand new imaginative and prescient via which we study to honor the earth and the individuals who inhabit it because the reward of an excellent and simply Creator.
“A watershed theological work that provides a standard floor for spiritual seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Apply.
“I’m studying Liberating Items for the Individuals of the Earth by Matt Fox. He’s one which fills my coronary heart and thoughts for brand new life despite a lot that’s violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
Authentic Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a complete new route for Christianity—a route that’s in actual fact very historical and really grounded in Jewish considering (the truth that Jesus was a Jew is usually 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 accessible to the Christian world and to the human neighborhood a radical treatment for all darkish and derogatory views of the pure world wherever these could have originated.” –Thomas Berry, creator, The Dream of the Earth; The Nice Work; co-author, The Universe Story
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Imaginative and prescient of Love and Motion
By Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jen Listug
Within the midst of world fireplace, earthquake and flood – as species are going extinct daily and nationwide and world economies totter – the planet doesn’t want one other church or faith. What it wants is a brand new Order, grounded within the Knowledge traditions of each East and West, together with science and indigenous. An Order of the Sacred Earth united in a single sacred vow: “I promise to be the very best lover and defender of the Earth that I could be.”
Co-authored by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Berit Listug, with a ahead by David Korten, this assortment of essays by 21 non secular visionaries together with Brian Swimme, Mirabai Starr, Theodore Richards, and Kristal Parks marks the founding of the various and inclusive Order of the Sacred Earth, a neighborhood now evolving world wide.
“The Order of the Sacred Earth not solely calls us house to our true nature as Earth, but additionally affords us invaluable steerage and firm on the way in which.” ~~ Joanna Macy, environmental activist and creator of Energetic Hope.
