I am inviting people to meditate on saints they have known. Further saints I have known include the following: Rabbi Zalman Schactner, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement and deep ecumenist par excellence. He liked my term, “deep ecumenism” because, as he told me, he had been doing it for years but didn’t have a name for it.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder of TIKKUN magazine that stayed true to its name, to bring healing to the world, and stood up for justice including justice for the Palestinians in spite of severe opposition from some quarters.
Anita Roddick, who helped reinvent work, business and capitalism through the Body Shop and its many good deeds. I was honored to emcee her funeral in London, which was attended by several thousand people from many continents, who came to thank her for her inspiration and support for grass roots movements in their lands. In my brief comments, I did acknowledge how she was “saintly” in a new way—not as a pious church goer—but as a leader in reinventing business. (She founded an M.A. program in business at the University of Bath that insisted on three bottom lines: Ecology, Community, and Financial Sustainability.
Father Bede Griffiths, pioneer in deep ecumenism especially regards Hinduism and Christianity, who lived over 40 years in India and oversaw an ashram that offered the best of the Christian monastic tradition along with appreciation of Hindu wisdom. He helped me with my Sheer Joy book on Aquinas, by bringing my translations of the Latin up to the Queen’s English and writing an Afterword for the book (his friend, scientist Rupert Sheldrake wrote the Foreword). Reading Aquinas as an atheist after attending Oxford, he was converted to Christianity, so he had a special soft spot for him.
Fred Shuttlesworth, street minister in Birmingham, Alabama, during the heavy civil rights marches there. He was beaten with chains by the KKK three times, his house was blown up (with him in it), his young children jailed, and he kept on keeping on. When he invited me to dialogue publicly with him about “Ecology and Racism,” I asked him in a private moment where he got his courage, and he said, “I don’t call it courage. I call it trust.”
Father Thomas Berry, Geologian and co-author with Brian Swimme of The Universe Story, where both recognized the new myth and new creation story that science is gifting us with today. Also author of Dream of the Earth and The Great Work, he helped move us from what he called a “redemption fixation” in Western Christianity to a creation-centered and science-honoring view of our world, its 13.8-billion-year history, and its numinous presence. He taught that we can summarize the universe in one word: “Celebration. It is all an exuberant expression of existence itself.”
Mrs. Howard Thurman, Sue Bailey Thurman, wife to a great saint and prophet, Howard Thurman, the spiritual elder behind the civil rights movement. It was my privilege to meet her on some occasions at the Church of the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco. She was a force in her own right in the African American spiritual community and founded the Aframerican Women’s Journal in 1940 and the Museum of Afro-American History in Boston. She wrote several books including Pioneers of Negro Origin in California (1949) and The Historical Cookbook of the American Negro (1958). With her husband, she met Gandhi in India in 1936.
See Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations.
And Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest.
Fox, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times, pp. 15-34, 221-250.
Fox, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing From Global Faiths.
Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: Nurses and doctors of Britain’s National Health Service thank Anita Roddick for donations of over 500,000 of The Body Shop UK’s products, to help in the fight against Covid-19. From The Body Shop’s website.
Queries for Contemplation
How do you understand “holiness” or “saintliness”? Do you see its meaning evolving in your own life? And in our times? Do you agree with theologian and historian Père Chenu that this is a positive thing, that notions of holiness evolve as humanity evolves?
Recommended Reading
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
As Matthew Fox notes, when an aging Albert Einstein was asked if he had any regrets, he replied, “I wish I had read more of the mystics earlier in my life.” The 365 writings in Christian Mystics represent a wide-ranging sampling of these readings for modern-day seekers of all faiths — or no faith. The visionaries quoted range from Julian of Norwich to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Thomas Merton to Dorothee Soelle and Thomas Berry.
“Our world is in crisis, and we need road maps that can ground us in wisdom, inspire us to action, and help us gather our talents in service of compassion and justice. This revolutionary book does just that. Matthew Fox takes some of the most profound spiritual teachings of the West and translates them into practical daily mediations. Study and practice these teachings. Take what’s in this book and teach it to the youth because the new generation cannot afford to suffer the spirit and ethical illiteracy of the past.” — Adam Bucko, spiritual activist and co-founder of the Reciprocity Foundation for Homeless Youth.
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest (Revised/Updated Edition)
Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. Five new chapters in this revised and updated edition bring added perspective in light of the author’s continued journey, and his reflections on the current changes taking place in church, society and the environment.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible spiritual revolutionary enlivens the mind and emboldens the heart — must reading for anyone interested in courage, creativity, and the future of religion.”
—Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Time
While Matthew Fox recognizes that Meister Eckhart has influenced thinkers throughout history, he also wants to introduce Eckhart to today’s activists addressing contemporary crises. Toward that end, Fox creates dialogues between Eckhart and Carl Jung, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Heschel, Black Elk, Karl Marx, Rumi, Adrienne Rich, Dorothee Soelle, David Korten, Anita Roddick, Lily Yeh, M.C. Richards, and many others.
“Matthew Fox is perhaps the greatest writer on Meister Eckhart that has ever existed. (He) has successfully bridged a gap between Eckhart as a shamanistic personality and Eckhart as a post-modern mentor to the Inter-faith movement, to reveal just how cosmic Eckhart really is, and how remarkably relevant to today’s religious crisis! ” — Steven Herrmann, Author of Spiritual Democracy: The Wisdom of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Forward
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths
Matthew Fox calls on all the world traditions for their wisdom and their inspiration in a work that is far more than a list of theological position papers but a new way to pray—to meditate in a global spiritual context on the wisdom all our traditions share. Fox chooses 18 themes that are foundational to any spirituality and demonstrates how all the world spiritual traditions offer wisdom about each.“Reading One River, Many Wells is like entering the rich silence of a masterfully directed retreat. As you read this text, you reflect, you pray, you embrace Divinity. Truly no words can fully express my respect and awe for this magnificent contribution to contemporary spirituality.” –Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox. He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story
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