The Cosmic Mass and Malidoma Somé, continued

Yesterday I shared how Malidoma Somé, the shaman and ritual teacher who became an ancestor last week, was very supportive of the movement known in Sheffield England as NOS, in which young people reinvented liturgy by way of rave.  From that movement was born in America the Techno-Cosmic Mass (TCM), and later simply The Cosmic Mass.

A little more about the origins of the TCM here.  When I finished writing my book, The Reinvention of Work, a dream instructed me that I had another chapter to write, that on Ritual.  In that chapter, among other things, I laid out six principles for Ritual:

• Reset all of worship in a cosmological context.
• Bring the body back.
• Bring play back.
• Make room for the via negativa—darkness, silence, suffering, grief.
• Awaken and nurture the prophet
• Bring participation back.

After completing this new chapter, I sent it off to the publishers and traveled to Seattle for a conference I was leading on Creation Spirituality.  To my surprise, five young people from Sheffield were in attendance and took me aside, telling me of their NOS project including lots of press clippings about it.  I studied their documentation and later flew to Sheffield to see their community ritual in action, the “Planetary Mass” as they called it. 

I was deeply impressed and asked them how I could help and they said if I became an Episcopal priest I could run interference because they were already using my theology of the Cosmic Christ, but few priests understood what they were doing. 

I prayed about it. The Pope had already fired me, so I was not needed there, but here was a visionary group of young people truly reinventing ritual—as Malidoma Somé said, one of the most important movements on the planet.

I went to the Episcopal bishop of Northern California, Bishop Swing, and told him I was considering becoming an Episcopal priest for one reason: To work with young people to reinvent forms of Liturgy.  He gave me a green light, saying “the church is not doing anything for young people.”  I knew that the Roman Catholic Church was even further away from inviting young people to bring post-modern art forms to liturgy.

We have, over the past 25 years, celebrated over 100 Cosmic Masses in North America, including at the last three gatherings of the World Parliament of Religions.  In the Toronto WP, about 500 people participated, including several Buddhist monks, and responses were very deep indeed.  One 42 year old woman said it was the “most powerful religious experience of her life” and many others said it was the “high point” of the 12 day conference.

Gratitude to Malidoma Somé for his inspiration and encouragement is due.

Adapted from Matthew Fox, The Reinvention of Work, pp. 249-295. 

See also, Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest, pp. 6-16, 363-390.

For more information on the Cosmic Mass, see TheCosmicMass.com.

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.

Banner Image: Participants form a double spiral dance in a Cosmic Mass at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C. Photo by Katy Gaughan.

Queries for Contemplation

Do you think these six principles for reawakening ritual in the West are still relevant (after COVID passes)?  Have you had experiences of them yourself either in Western liturgies or indigenous ceremonies?  Do they work for you?

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