This week I received a letter from Marianne Grosspietsch, whom I have written about before, and who founded an orphanage named Shanti among the poor in Nepal. The subject of her letter was titled “Let us not give up despite the Anti Christ’s painful activities.” She presents a request here.
I believe her project makes for a rich and meaningful Monday morning meditation. It also reminds us how others around the world suffer from decisions made in America.
When I heard last week, that Mr. Trump‘s decision to abolish USAID entailed the incinerating of tons of emergency food, which had actually been intended to save starving children’s lives, my heart sank with despair.
Yet rather than allowing myself to be weakened by a hardhearted egoist’s sinful destroying of valuable food, I turn to you, dear Matthew, to be my ally.
May I kindly ask you to join forces with us and support our “Fruit tree planting project in Nepal.”
I have a dream that there will be fruit trees growing in many poor countries, where children went hungry until now, so that eventually no children die of malnutrition nor of sicknesses caused by vitamin deficiency. Much to our sorrow, this happens in Nepal in worrying numbers these days.
Last year Shanti, our humanitarian organization distributed 7,600 such trees, 90 % of which survived. This year we have ordered 25,000 fruit trees no less than five feet high.
This project is meant to protect our climate and simultaneously fight hunger and malnutrition in children. There is such a crying need for nourishing food in Nepal, a country where people cause comparatively little harm to the climate, yet they suffer from the disastrous consequences by the climate change: Floods and landslides make people homeless and even kill them. And such catastrophes are mainly caused by our Western lifestyle.
WHO estimates that thousands of children will die because of hunger. I am therefore determined to find allies with whom to unite and make every possible effort to save as many vulnerable children as we possibly can. Our Jewish sisters and brothers live by the principle of “Tikun Olam.” Let us do our part in the “repair work,” which is so much needed.
The principle of Shanti’s fruit tree planting project is based on the fact that Nepal has to import fruit (often highly contaminated) from India and China, rather than producing organic fruit herself, despite her very favorable climate. Poor people in Nepal say: “Fruit is only there for the rich.“
In order to make sure that poor families will soon benefit from having fruit for their children, Shanti donates fruit trees above 5 feet in height to poor farmers‘ wives. These women diligently protect the trees from greedy goats by putting bamboo shields around them. They water the trees so that they will grow fast.
In two to three years they will give substantial yields. These fruit trees are already big and not saplings, which might whither before they have grown into real trees.
Do we not think of Paradise, as a place where God gave fruit as food to our ancestors?
Presently we are able to purchase a fruit tree for $10 US.
The purpose of most tree plantations are normally that they should absorb CO2; retain the soil and thus avoid landslide; give shade and protection from the heat; hold water; and offer nesting places for birds that eat bugs.
Their wonderful PLUS however is: They fight hunger and give nutritious food containing essential vitamins.
Here is the easiest way to make a contribution to this worthy project: paypal@shanti-leprahilfe.de
See Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: Nepalese orphans of the Shanti project, assisting with planting fruit trees. Photo by Marianne Grosspietsch, used with permission.
Queries for Contemplation
Does this action taken in Nepal—or others you can imagine and create yourself–assist you to move out of despair into action? How important is it that Americans stay in touch with how our political decisions as well as our lifestyles affect others around the world?
Recommended Reading
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
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
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement 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 images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
