“Father Sky” is an ancient archetype for naming the Sacred Masculine.
But the modern era by calling the universe a machine shut down “Father Sky”–indeed it left the term practically meaningless. Now, with post-modern scientific exploring of the universe, we have learned amazing stories about our origins over 13.8 billions years, stories that can awaken us and, in Thomas Berry’s words, bring the sacred back to our lives.
It can also remake the way we understand masculinity and teach it to our boys and young men.
Some seem to be dismissing the Webb Telescope’s accomplishments as “pretty pictures” but are missing entirely the meaning of a new story of creation and its potential for reinventing the human race.
AND its potential for cleaning up the toxic version of masculinity called patriarchy that has reigned for 6500 years and that manifests itself regularly in our culture by way of mass shootings and destruction of the planet and subjugation of women and “fatalistic self hatred” from men (a point made by Adrienne Rich). And historically as empire building and war making and violence over others, the reptilian brain unchained.
Stories abound around the world about the sky being an abode for the Divine. Christians sing “Glory to God in the highest” and “you alone are the Most High” in their Liturgies and recall the story of the “Transfiguration” when Jesus went to the top of a mountain with three of his friends and shown glorious. Thus, the “Cosmic Christ.”
Christians also tell the story of Jesus “ascending into heaven” after his death and resurrection and how Jesus taught his disciples to pray like this; “Our Father who art in heaven…” and “God’s will “be done on earth as in the heavens.”
And for Paul, the first Christian theologian, Christ is “the pattern who connects” and unites “everything on earth, under the earth and in the heavens.”
Meister Eckhart makes consistent and fluid connections between the sky and the earth. He says the heavens “invade the earth, energize it and make it sacred.” The heavens “are continually running, running into peace.”
Eckhart recognizes the stretching that human undergo in our search for the Divine. For the divine spirit in the human soul is not easily satisfied. It storms the firmament and scales the heavens trying to reach the Spirit that drives the heavens. Because of this energy everything in the world grows green, flourishes, and busts into leaf. But the spirit is never satisfied. It presses on deeper and deeper into the vortex, further and further into the whirlpool, the primary source in which the spirit has its origin.
To be continued.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men, pp. 3f.;
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ; Matthew Fox and Bishop Marc Andrus, Stations of the Cosmic Christ.
Banner Image: Sunset at Clingmans Dome. Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree with Thomas Berry that “we will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred” only when we recognize that “the universe is the primary sacred reality”? What follows from that? How does Webb Telescope assist us in this recovery?
Recommended Reading
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God
7 thoughts on “Father Sky and the Sacred Masculine, continued”
Matthew, You say: Now, with exploring of the universe, we have learned amazing stories about our origins over 13.8 billions years, stories that can awaken us and, in Thomas Berry’s words, “bring the sacred back to our lives.” Well, let’s trace some of the religious history of our relationship to the universe. First, you give a number of examples of the use of the words “high” and “heaven(s)”–Christians sing “Glory to God in the highest” and “you alone are the Most High” in their Liturgies and recall the story of the “Transfiguration” when Jesus went to the top of a mountain with three of his friends and shown glorious. Thus, the “Cosmic Christ.” Christians also tell the story of Jesus “ascending into heaven” after his death and resurrection and how Jesus taught his disciples to pray like this; “Our Father who art in heaven…” and “God’s will “be done on earth as in the heavens.” But after the time of the Enlightenment the universe was seen as a machine–like a pocket watch, and this idea shut down “Father Sky”–indeed it left the term practically meaningless. But one thing is a constant throughout human history–and that h as been the patriarchy that has reigned for 6500 years. Now, in our “Post-Modern” era with unimaginable technology, the worldwide web has been created, and now the James Webb Space Telescope. And as it transmits images from our galaxy to earth, we are seeing things that no human has ever seen before!
And now for our “Queries for Contemplation”–the first being: “Do you agree with Thomas Berry that ‘we will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred’ only when we recognize that ‘the universe is the primary sacred reality’? Amen to that! It is our disconnect from the earth, the outdoors, the weather and the elements–and even in using the sky as just another highway (a means of travel)–rather than as a source of wonder and awe. Remember: “When I look at the heavens, the works of thy fingers, what are humans that you are mindful of us? And I think it is in this sense that the Webb Telescope assists us in the recovery of the sacred.
This is far greater than the A H A of Archimedes of Syracuse because this is an A H O Y from the Angels to human non-stop inquisitive mind.
There will be those, like a few of the astronauts, in whom space exploration and its imagery incite reverent awe and wonder, even epiphany. As for Berry and Swimme, their “new universe story” has yet to be told, at least not publicly. It can only be told successfully by integrating theology and cosmology (a cosmotheology) that simply identifies (1) the ‘patterns that connect’ the eternal with space-time at all scales, (2) by what energy, (3) and how those patterns, their energy and dynamisms replicate and express (via said vortices and whirlpools) in the interior life of humans at the spirit-soul level. And to show where and why such patterns appear Scripture. The new story of the future will be a synthesis, one that truly brings it deeply ‘home’ to human hearts, who for the first time “get-it,” seeing its operations in their interior life, not mere reflections of them many times removed in the external world of nature, or the far reaches of space. The ‘inner’ reaches and meaning of nature in the ‘outer’ world, including those of outer-space, will not truly be realized until then. As such, the entire created order at all scales is but a parable, what the hard shell of a nut is to its soft inner meat. To those who have eyes to see, it only awaits an inspired interpreter to ‘crack’ and reveal the mysteries thereof in a way that harmonizes with all fields of knowledge, the basics of which can be taught to a middle school child.
What comes to my awareness through today’s DM… is the mystery of the choreography and design of energy in constant motion, held in perfect balance… which are the alchemical movements that create all that exists. It’s all so magnifenctly orchestrated… beyond our human comprehension. That we humans, as co-creators within this unfolding, evolving and emerging mystery, could upset this balance in some way… disturbs me. Yet, at the same time, oddly enough there seems to be a trust in the mystery of sacred laws, that govern all that exists, which are unassailed, by the error of our human ways… that something much larger than we are, is in control of holding everything that exists in this natural state of balance.
The diversity of the many forms of that which exists may transform, change, evolve and emerge into new creations… yet the mystery of sacred laws, somehow keeps all in balance, and will continue to do so. Perhaps this is what is meant by the words we read in scripture of this Great Mystery, this Great Spirit, “creating a new heaven and a new earth.”
Mathew has often quoted the mystic Thomas Aquinas, stating that “God is forever lying on a maternity bed, giving birth.” In some strange way, this makes me less fearful of death, change, transformation and new birth.
This alchemical process is like the unfolding, evolving, emerging, explosive and expansive exhale of the breath of the living Spirit… leading all that exists, eventually to that empty space, that pause in-between the exhale and the inhale of breath… so the new birth, that implosive and contracting inhale of breath… begins to draw all existence back into the Great Mystery, the Great Spirit, itself… as an implosion of Wholeness and Oneness.
Human notions of gender dissolve into Divine LOVE when we surrender.
Yes, Matthew, the Sacredness of our inner & outer Universe~Cosmos – God’s Beautiful Diverse Loving Oneness and ongoing co-Creation~Evolution… our Beloved Cosmic Christ Consciousness….
🔥❤️🙏
If we were to go back to micro seconds after the Big Bang we would still be curious about what existed micro sections before the Big Bang. Was it
a recycle of debris from a previous Big Bang ? To be honest we are looking for our Source which we can only refer to as The Great Mystery. The pyrotechnics we are viewing through a new lens tell us nothing about The Great Mystery as I see it except that we are looking for that Mystery and our hearts are restless until it rest in that Mystery.