Week of 8/4-9/2025: Everyday Saints, Clouds, Ecocide

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.

August 4, 2025: More Saints I Have Known and Worked With (MF)
Continuing to inspire us with exceptionally good people Matthew has known, he adds to his list: Rabbi Michael Lerner, Anita Roddick,, Father Bede Griffiths, Fred Shuttlesworth, Father Thomas Berry, and Sue Bailey Thurman. Rabbi Lerner was co-founder of the progressive magazine TIKKUN which, among other things, was a courageous voice for Palestinians when this was not popular. Anita Roddick was founder of the Body Shop, an early proponent of fair trade and sustainability, thus a leader in reinventing business. Father Griffiths was a pioneer in deep ecumenism. He lived for 40 years in India and oversaw an ashram which offered the best of the Christian monastic tradition along with a deep appreciation of Hindu wisdom. Fred Shuttlesworth showed unwavering faith in the midst of intense hatred and violence during the Civil Rights movement. Thomas Berry was a geologian and co-author with Brian Swimme of The Universe Story. Sue Bailey Thurman was the wife of the great saint Howard Thurman. She herself was a powerful force within the African American community. She taught, founded a magazine called The Aframerican Women’s Journal, founded the Museum of Afro-American History in Boston, and wrote books and articles about Black history and experience.

August 5, 2025: More Saints I Have Known, Part III (MF)
Matthew adds to his list of saintly people he has known. Among them are: Cecil Williams, prophetic pastor at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district; Satish Kumar, founder of Schumacher College and Resurgence Magazine, who walked many thousands of miles to protest nuclear weapons; Rev. Donald Reeves, prophetic pastor at St James Piccadilly in London; Father Louis Vitale, Franciscan provincial in California who went to prison numerous times to protest injustice in many forms; Cesar Chavez, labor leader and activist, who visited Mundelein College when Matthew was teaching in our ICCS program there; Bishop Pedro Casigalida, whose diocese was in the Amazon (many of his clergy and lay people were tortured to death by the military dictatorship); Cardinal Arns of Brazil, a leader in the liberation theology movement; Michael, a former student at ICCS, who died of AIDS. (Nurses told Matthew that the ICU filled with light for 24 hours after his passing) Also, Matt Furlong, who also had AIDS and spent his last years teaching high school kids the lessons he’d learned; and Rev. Elouise Oliver, a minister of the Church of Religious Science in Oakland who turned a small church of 35 into a thriving and vital community.

August 6, 2025: Clouds, Part 1 (GG)
On this day, two very powerful and vastly different events are remembered: 1) The transfiguration of Christ, and 2) The atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima. GG refers to the transfiguration as a powerful collective mystical experience. The bombing of Hiroshima is, of course, one of the scariest and most dangerous events in human history. In the transfiguration experience, a mystical cloud envelopes Jesus and three of his disciples. From within the cloud, they heard the voice of the Divine. Meanwhile, a very different kind of cloud formed over Japan on that fateful day in 1945. Gianluigi imagines God cried, “No! Stop!” And then He wept. GG considers both of these events to be via negativa experiences.

August 7, 2025: Clouds, Part 2 (GG)
For those of us who care deeply about all the pain we are currently seeing in the world, Nigerian musician Seun Kuti recently offered a powerful performance in France. He said:  I know you want to free Palestine, …Congo, …Sudan, …Iran… Free Europe! Free Europe from right-wing extremism, …from fascism, …from racism, …from imperialism! As soon as you do this job, Gaza will be free, Congo will be free, Sudan will be free, Iran will be free…. Meanwhile, it has been said that Netanyahu could not do any of what he does in Gaza if he were not backed up by the U.S. government. The problem is the West, which has become willfully blind in order to protect its interests. The ICE raids in the USA are an expression of the same Western violence as the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. Meanwhile, GG says he might drive up into the Alps, just to lie on the grass and watch the clouds. The reason? To gain a higher perspective. And to be better able to assist people to get in touch with their mystical selves.

August 8, 2025: Clouds, Part 3 (GG)
A treatise of the 1st century C.E. presents a list of ancestors who trusted in God since the origins of the world. All together they are called a νέφος μαρτύρων ὄγκον, that is, a great cloud of witnesses/martyrs (Hebrews 12:1), who are surrounding and supporting present believers. The word νέφος is usually translated as a cloud, but the cloud is so vast that when inside it, one cannot see the edge of it. Therefore it represents a great throng or swarm of believers. This theme is foundational for the doctrine of the communion of saints. Among the saints that GG wishes to acknowledge, though he does not know them personally, are: 1) Sam Stein, a young New York Jew who grew up as a Zionist. He eventually understood the horror of Israeli occupation and has become an anti-occupation activist living in Palestine as the only Jewish resident. 2) Grace Lolim is a Kenyan woman who witnessed the hostility between the Borana people and Somali people. She began to act as a peace mediator, employing teachings from both the Bible and the Quran. 3) Mairead Corrigan Maguire is an elder who was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 1967 for her effective peace work in Ireland, which began after three of her sister’s children were killed. These three are regular people who started to act when something happened close to home. We are surrounded by ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And we can be one of them!

August 9, 2025: EPA: Environmental Protection Agency or Ecocidal Promotion Agency? (MF)
The Environmental Protection Agency was born in December of 1970, at a time when rivers were catching on fire. The EPA was essentially murdered on July 29, 2025 by our current Republican President. The EPA is no longer an agency to protect the environment, but an agency for promoting ecocide. This is the epitome of what Pope Francis called “savage capitalism.” St. Hildegard of Bingen had this to say about protecting Mother Earth: The Earth should not be injured! The Earth should not be destroyed! The Earth is at the same time Mother. As Matthew wrote in his book on the Cosmic Christ 27 years ago, Gaia is being crucified. It is we who must speak for the Earth.

Banner image: “The Heavenly Jerusalem,” a photo is of the interior of the dome of the Duomo in Florence, by Fr Lawrence Lew, OP on Flickr. From Hebrews 12: “You have come to God himself, the supreme Judge, and been placed with spirits of the saints who have been made perfect…”

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

Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
By Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jen Listug

In the midst of global fire, earthquake and flood – as species are going extinct every day and national and global economies totter – the planet doesn’t need another church or religion. What it needs is a new Order, grounded in the Wisdom traditions of both East and West, including science and indigenous. An Order of the Sacred Earth united in one sacred vow: “I promise to be the best lover and defender of the Earth that I can be.”
Co-authored by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Berit Listug, with a forward by David Korten, this collection of essays by 21 spiritual visionaries including Brian Swimme, Mirabai Starr, Theodore Richards, and Kristal Parks marks the founding of the diverse and inclusive Order of the Sacred Earth, a community now evolving around the world.
“The Order of the Sacred Earth not only calls us home to our true nature as Earth, but also offers us invaluable guidance and company on the way.”  ~~ Joanna Macy, environmental activist and author of Active Hope.

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.

The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance

In what may be considered the most comprehensive outline of the Christian paradigm shift of our Age, Matthew Fox eloquently foreshadows the manner in which the spirit of Christ resurrects in terms of the return to an earth-based mysticism, the expression of creativity, mystical sexuality, the respect due the young, the rebirth of effective forms of worship—all of these mirroring the ongoing blessings of Mother Earth and the recovery of Eros, the feminine aspect of the Divine.
“The eighth wonder of the world…convincing proof that our Western religious tradition does indeed have the depth of imagination to reinvent its faith.” — Brian Swimme, author of The Universe Story and Journey of the Universe.
 “This book is a classic.” Thomas Berry, author of The Great Work and The Dream of the Earth.

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

Matthew Fox writes in Hildegard of Bingen about this amazing woman and what we can learn from her.
In an era when women were marginalized, Hildegard was an outspoken, controversial figure. Yet so visionary was her insight that she was sought out by kings, popes, abbots, and bishops for advice.
“This book gives strong, sterling, and unvarnished evidence that everything – everything – we ourselves become will affect what women after us may also become….This is a truly marvelous, useful, profound, and creative book.” ~~ Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism.