How Spiritual Warriorhood Calls Us All

The following two facts stare us in the face today.  They ought to arouse us to caring and to action surely.  Therefore, to our spiritual warriorhood, which is one of the significant archetypes of the Sacred Masculine, an energy to be found in both healthy men and healthy women.  (Just as the goddess is to be found in both women and men.)

1. A 2020 study by the RAND Corporation shows that between 1975 and 2018, $50 TRILLION of combined income was transferred from the lowest 90% of income earners in the US to the top 1%. It’s the greatest episode of internal looting from one class to another within the same society, ever recorded.

• A report from 17 of the world’s leading climate scientists released in January, 2021, concludes: “The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms – including humanity – is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts.” 

In yesterday’s DM, we celebrated the warriorhood of Julia Butterfly, who, to her own surprise and unexpectedly, spent two years living atop an ancient redwood tree to defend it and its cousins from destruction from the Pharaohs of our day, those out to kill old forests for cash.  Two years through weather of all kinds, alone atop a tree, to do something about point #2 above.  Surely such courage and magnanimity inspires the spiritual warrior in all of us.

Sister Dorothy Stang is another warrior on behalf of Mother Earth as she worked for decades in the Amazon region to assist the poor peasant farmers there by building schools for their children, studying the Brazilian laws to find their rights, all the while loving the forest and the people. 

Her feedback?  The Pharaohs of the Amazon hired three gunmen to assassinate her and one day, while walking alone through the woods, they ambushed her and pumped her 73 year old body full of bullets.  When they jumped out in front of her with their guns aimed at her, she had just enough time to open her Bible and begin to read the Beatitudes to them.

That is spiritual warriorhood.  It is an eco-prophet in action.  Sister Dorothy is a martyr and a source of inspiration for all who care about the future of the earth, the future of Gaia, and therefore the future of all humanity, our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  AND of all the marvelous and amazing and sacred beings with which we share this once-in-a-universe and once-in-a-13.8 billion year time span that we call our home.  Our Mother Earth.  Sacred Mother Earth. 

Sister Dorothy was deeply inspired herself by Hildegard of Bingen.  Beginning tomorrow we will look into Hildegard’s teachings on spiritual warriorhood to find what she is saying to us.  Meanwhile, think of other spiritual warriors, women and men, who teach you to stand up and be counted, to be the prophet all adults are meant to be. 

The country, the earth, the future needs you.

See Matthew Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth. 

And Matthew Fox, Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times.

Banner Image: “Divest from Fossil Cruel NOW” Police and paramilitary mercenaries of North Dakota and Energy Transfer Partners fire upon unarmed water protectors as they resisted the Dakota Access Pipeline. Cannonball River, Standing Rock, ND, November 2016. Photo by Alane Golden on Flickr.

Make a list of women who inspire you and a list of men who inspire you, contemporary people or ancestors, people from the past, to stand up and be counted.  Invite them into our soul once again.  Ask them for guidance in our perilous and demanding times.

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.

Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century

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.