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Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth

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Matthew Fox has "rediscovered" mystical Christianity, which celebrates the "Christ" present in all of creation. Such mysticism was a significant movement within Christianity during the Middle Ages, but it was effectively silenced by the centralized Church and then ignored when enlightenment ideologies favored much more reductionistic, as opposed to mysticism's more holistic, thought. Fox astutely notes that the same worldview expressed by mystical Christians has also been appreciated by Jewish and Muslim mystics, and by aboriginal peoples. He is particularly drawn to Native American traditions. Fox suggests, I think correctly, that spiritualities that focus on personal salvation with little regard for the rest of Creation tend to be spiritually unfulfilling for the undividual and destructive for the world.

For those looking for a spirituality that is positive and all embracing, vursus one which is exclusive and judgemental, this is the place to start. Matthew Fox introduces the reader to ideas and themes that are more fully developed in his book "Original Blessing". Original Blessing v. Original Sin is one such theme. Others are the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, art as meditation, liberation for First World peoples, and the return of true Trinitarian Christianity.

Bottom line: Matthew Fox puts forward a Christianity that is a beautiful relection of Jesus the Christ and shows how such a Christianity can help to heal the world.

For those of you who dont't know,Matthew Fox is the only man who dares to find the connections between seemingly conflicting dogma. He is the freshest voice. He is a true Christian- one who loves, who accepts, one who ministers. The hate ridden religious right has a lot to learn from Matthew Fox.Jesus never hated anyone. Creation Spirituality is a good primer for the next millenium

Have you ever looked at the Moon with a pair of binoculars? Or at the rings around Saturn with a telescope? Or thought about a Hummingbird flying to Central America? Or saw in a flower the rays of the sun, the minerals of the earth, the awareness of day and night?

Jesus was not fixated on any one aspect of reality. He was not a religious fundamentalist. Jesus was a mystic that was so awestruck by the Cosmos that he gave his life for all life. God is no respecter of persons. God is not isolated by anything or anyone. God is a part of everything. God is omnipresent. Everything has value. Everything is worthy of honor. Not just mankind. A shephard without a flock is superfluous. Though each aspect of reality has its role none is above the other for everything is interconnected. We do not have to climb a ladder to get to God. God is within as well as without. Heaven is beneath our feet.

Creation theology is a glass is half-full perspective. A holistic perspective. A fresh start. Hopeful. Original Sin theology tends to be a glass is half-empty perspective. A narrow perspective. A dead-end. A never ending dark night of the soul. With that said; Pope John Paul II turned original sin upside down with his affirmation that there is no evil from which God cannot draw forth a greater good. John Paul had the heart of a lion and the eyes of an eagle. He was fearless and could see a blade of wheat in a field of weeds. He was truly a great man of God. Personally, I prefer the easier and more positive approach to my religion. Jesus did not die for our sins, he died for us. This may be more a matter of semantics than an actual difference. Though our perspectives may be different, we are still looking at the same thing. In any event, a Cosmological perspective is the perspective of God. God looked at his creation and it was good. Original Sin theology is for the most part the product of State Religion. It is based on fear and shame. True Christianity, the kind the Pope preached, is fearless. He had enough confidence in his God that he did not feel he had to defend his faith every time he talked to someone of another Faith. He had reduced God down to his simplest terms, God is love. The Pope was more a moral man than a religious man. Jesus was more a moral man than a religious man. (I am amending this review after the Death of Pope John Paul II). Fundamentalist religion, as opposed to spirituality, all too often is used by the powerful to control the weak, to divide and conquer. "The Love-Religion has no code or doctrine. Only God", Rumi. Creation Theology is a liberating religion based on awe and joy. Wisdom does not start with 'fear', that is a poor translation, wisdom starts with 'awe', wonder, amazement, joy. Go and sin no more. You are free. If the next Pope is from Latin America, I believe even more of the sensitivities of Creation Theology will find their way into the Catholic Church. This would be a good thing. God cares about life, not just human life.

Some of the other reviewers have chosen to attack Fox. That the Dominican Order excommunicated him is true. Their Order also conducted the Inquisition. That Fox slips into Pantheism, that nature is God. Actually he slips into panentheism, that nature is part of God. A nuance perhaps, but a fundamental nuance nontheless. All monotheists make 'one' fundamental mistake, that all is numerically one. Trinitarians are onto something but don't quite realize what it is. Let 'us' make man in 'our' image. If all is numerically one then it is all just a game. A license to kill in the name of God. A license to do whatever one pleases like the hedonistic Nicolatians. The background for the despair of existentialism and the schizophrenia of solipsism. This is wrong thinking. All is not numerically one. Reality is much more complicated than that. Everything is not the figment of our imagination. All is more than one but less than two. And this makes all the difference in the world. The whole of everything, the Universe, God, the Tao, is not a linear function. One is a number, God is not a number. Not one. This misperception is due to the fundamental error of applying dualistic logic to the nondual realm of reality.

There are fundamentally two aspects to reality. The dual and the nondual. The dual side of the coin is where we find ourselves at present. Up/down, good/bad, duality. Nonduality, the spirit realm that includes duality but goes beyond time and space, good and evil, is not to be understood properly based solely upon a dualistic perspective. All wholes manifest a synergetic effect wherein the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The tensile strength of steel is far greater than the sum of the tensile strength of the individual minerals and metals used to create steel. God is not One. God is whole, more than one, but less than two. And in between one and two lies infinity. God is neither alone nor all one. We are not alone. Things matter. Life isn't just a game of pretense, though there are certainly elements of game playing going on. Life is 'like' a masquerade ball. A dance. More verb than noun. Even Advaita sages create a dualism with their need for Maya as a means of contrasting the One. They are confused. The blind leading the blind. Our world is real. Impermanent in its configuration but real nonetheless. That one never stands in the same river twice does not mean the river is an illusion. Because one cannot put a river in a bucket nor the wind in a bag does not mean they do not exist. To reason purely discursively like the Kantians do is an exercise in futility where nonduality is concerned. Idealized Continental philosophy is a maze in the middle of a minefield. Nonduality is a labyrinth in the holy of holies, the heart. In my Father's house there are many mansions, and if it were not so I would tell you. More than one, less than two. We are a point, a morphogenetic field of spiritual energy, a seed of divinity, between one and two. Made in the image of God we are godlike beings for it takes a god to worship God. We are godlike but not God, lest any man should boast. The Father and I are a fractal symmetry.

Thou essence art that essence.

This is an easy eye opening read to the cosmos of Matthew Fox and his reclaimed vision of true human spirituality. Having spent his life challenging many long standing, but non-biblical, Christian doctrines and dogmas (and being excommunicated for doing so), he opens the door to the cosmos which is the source, quest and goal of Creation Spirituality and the recognition, affirmation and celebration of all people's spirituality. He doesn't create new senses of spirituality or just another collection of doctrines and dogmas; he affirms the spirituality inherent in our history and in our lives today.
Buy "Original Blessing": his seminal, detailed discourse on Creation Spirituality at the same time an read on...
He allows us to embrace all the world's spirituality as common to our own. Something, as an ordained minister in the UCC, I have been waiting for all my life.

Finally there is a concise book that explains creation spirituality without getting bogged down in irrelevant details. Matthew Fox makes this text much more digestible for anyone looking for a "different" way to expalin God in nature without becoming a botanist, biologist or geologist. The book is understandable and quotable without being flippant.

this Fox teaches us.

Yet his voice like so many other great and important voices of Christ was silenced long ago by the current resident of the great and universal throne of Peter.

Go figure.
GOd will win as GOd is love, and hate does not create.

Fox draws on many sources such as Meister Eckhart and Hildegard of Bingen to try to craft a spirituality based on awe of Creation. What I fear however is that his slide towards pantheism denies some of the rich spiritual gifts of Christ and the Holy Spirit. For example it is Eckhart who says "God begets his Son in you whether you like it or not." (See for example the book "Meister Eckhart from Whom God Hid Nothing : Sermons, Writings, and Sayings", or Schurmann's analysis of Eckhart in "Wandering Joy"). Subsequent to this book, Fox was expelled from the Dominican order in 1993.

At times Fox also seems to blame all that is ecologically corrupt on traditional Christianity, for example "Pantheism is not only democratic, it is also ecological, Theism, on the other hand, reinforces anthropocentrisms ". Additionally he makes a broad claim that "Creation Spirituality" encompasses such broad divergent groups as "AA", Support groups, and Protestant parishes.

Though I agree with Fox's quest for a deeper ecumenism, he seems to pick what he wants out of the Christian tradition. I still find ample mining in a more traditional, though slightly broadened views of the Holy Trinity, rather than his Cosmology, Liberation, and Wisdom. Although I don't always agree with Fox, he does offer an injection of joy and awe.

The previous reviewer claims "Jesus never hated anyone." He did seem, however, somewhat angry at the money-changers in the temple - not becaue they were carrying on a business as such but because they were cashing in on the gullible under the guise of religion. When I went to a lecture by the Reverend Mr Fox on "creation spirituality" at the local University, it was interested to see tables set out outside the lecture theatre selling his books with a merry jingling of cash-registers. No prizes for guessing what it reminded me of. Who:whom? Lenin was wont to ask. In this case; who got the money? And how does this alleged apostle of anti-capitalism get the wherewithal to travel the world promoting his ill-written and error-filled books? Hardly "religious right" questions but worth thinking about. As for the actual intellectual content of the work, it is beneath criticism but not beneath a proper contempt.