This is a weekly summary of the previous week’s Daily Meditations. Three of them are penned by Matthew Fox (MF), and three by Gianluigi Gugliermetto (GG). On Monday, we will also continue to offer a video teaching by Matthew.
July 28, 2025: Fighting Despair with Action: A Fruit Tree Planting Project in Nepal (MF)
Marianne Grosspietsch, who founded an orphanage named Shanti for the poor in Nepal, recently wrote to Matthew. Her email was titled “Let us not give up despite the Anti Christ’s painful activities.” With Trump’s abolition of USAID, thousands of children in Nepal are at risk of hunger and malnutrition. Marianne organized a project to address both hunger and climate change. Shanti has purchased and distributed 7,600 fruit trees, each a minimum of five feet tall. So far, 90% have survived. Currently, in spite of Nepal’s favorable climate, almost all fruit is imported from China and India, and it is usually toxic. This project is a win/win for the people and the Earth. One fruit tree costs $10. Donations can be made to this worthy cause HERE (US dollars) or HERE (euros and other currencies)
July 29, 2025: Saints I Have Known and Worked With (MF)
Reflecting on the recent death of Joanna Macy has caused Matthew to reflect on the many saints he has been blessed to know and work with over the years. In order to uplift ourselves during this dark time, let’s acknowledge and celebrate them. Besides Joanna Macy, others on Matthew’s list include: Matthew’s mentor Père Chenu, Sister Dorothy Stang, Sister Jose Hobday, Buck Ghosthorse, and potter and poet MC Richards. What a blessing these people are to our lives and to the planet.
July 30, 2025: Fighting Despair with Understanding (GG)
Last Sunday night, in Italy, churches all over the country, rang their bells at 10pm — an unusual time —to signify solidarity with the Palestinians who are being killed by an engineered famine. As a friend put it, “At least we feel we are a portion of a hurting whole.” We are beginning to realize that we are interconnected. We are all organically interrelated. As Anglican priest John Donne famously wrote: No man is an island…. Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.
July 31, 2025: Attuning to the Great Work (GG)
Last year Gianluigi translated Matthew’s book The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time into Italian. In Italian, “work” can be translated as “lavoro” (labor) or as “opera,” as in “l’opera della vita” (the work of life). Says GG: There is a true metanoia (mind/heart change) that is required to understand the book: leaving behind the equation between work and job that has been hammered into our minds. At this time, when we may feel impotent in our social action, and when there may be less job security, it is especially important that we recognize that our work is not about a job, but about the Great Work.
August 1, 2025: Emptiness and Work (GG)
Recently, GG led a workshop on the themes in Matthew’s book, The Reinvention of Work. Many of the participants were stunned by the poems that Matthew shared in the book. They were especially moved by the following concept from one of Rumi’s poems: “Every craftsman searches for what’s not there to practice his craft.” The notion that the engine of our activity is found in the lack thereof, or that, as the Tao Te Ching puts it, being originates from non-being, is not only unfamiliar to most of us, but is paradoxical and hard to understand. Rumi’s poem concludes: Dear soul, if you were not friends with the vast nothing inside, why would you always be casting your net into it, and waiting so patiently? Matthew clarifies: Emptiness and nothingness are part of the Great Work of the universe and, indeed, feed our yearning for work.
August 2, 2025: Saints I Have Known, continued (MF)
Matthew asks, Why is it good spiritual practice to pause and meditate on saintly people we have known and worked with? Because we must combat the flood of news about the evil deeds of people that is pouring out from the media daily. Some others whom Matthew wants to honor include: Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Daniel Ellsberg, liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, Dominican Father Schillebeeckx of Holland, Father Albert Nolan, a South African Dominican priest active in the anti-apartheid movement, and Thomas Merton. Also, if Thomas Merton is correct that “every non-two-legged creature is a saint,” then I must also acknowledge Tristan, my dog and spiritual companion of 15 years.
Banner image: “The Blue Cave Temple.” Image by Daniel Arrhakis on Flickr, who writes “The greatest treasure of mankind is the power to share love and to protect life in all its forms..”
Recommended Reading
The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time
Thomas Aquinas said, “To live well is to work well,” and in this bold call for the revitalization of daily work, Fox shares his vision of a world where our personal and professional lives are celebrated in harmony–a world where the self is not sacrificed for a job but is sanctified by authentic “soul work.”
“Fox approaches the level of poetry in describing the reciprocity that must be present between one’s inner and outer work…[A]n important road map to social change.” ~~ National Catholic Reporter
Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet
Because creativity is the key to both our genius and beauty as a species but also to our capacity for evil, we need to teach creativity and to teach ways of steering this God-like power in directions that promote love of life (biophilia) and not love of death (necrophilia). Pushing well beyond the bounds of conventional Christian doctrine, Fox’s focus on creativity attempts nothing less than to shape a new ethic.
“Matt Fox is a pilgrim who seeks a path into the church of tomorrow. Countless numbers will be happy to follow his lead.” –Bishop John Shelby Spong, author, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Living in Sin
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.
