This being Mother’s Day season and our marking the fourth anniversary of the DM, I felt it would not hurt to share the original DM. Many current readers were not with us when we began after all.
It is significant and fitting that we are launching these Daily Meditations from the Creation Spirituality lineage on Mother’s Day. While we are celebrating our mothers and grandmothers today we also see in this holiday a powerful call to move beyond the anthropocentric limits of mother’s day to the larger vision, that of Mother Earth or Gaia, who is our Mother because she nurtures and nourishes all plants, animals and humans so abundantly.
She is being sorely abused in our time with untold extinction of species, global warming, poisoning of air and water, forests and soil. Just this week a new UN Report describes how a catastrophic environmental crisis is destroying ecosystems more rapidly than earlier thought. One million species are on the verge of extinction.*
Earth is in crisis as was pointed out to me in a dream 30 years ago that became the springboard for my book The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. The dream said to me: “Your mother is dying.” But my (literal) mother was not dying, in fact she lived another twenty years or so. So I realized the message I was being given was about the dying of the archetypal Mother and I began the book with an exegesis of that dream, proposing 8 dimensions of matricide that are afoot in our time: First, “Mother Earth is dying;” then, the “mystical brain,”; Creativity; Wisdom; the Youth; Native Peoples, their religions and cultures; Mother church; Mother love or Compassion were all dying.
But the last word was that “Mother is dying, but not dead”–we could still recover the Sacred Feminine and resurrect the archetype of the Mother. The rest of the book was about resurrecting mysticism and the archetype of the Cosmic Christ (or Buddha Nature or Image of God) and thus heal the dying Mother principle.
Not only the indigenous traditions celebrate “Mother Earth” but 12th century abbess, saint and doctor of the church, Hildegard of Bingen, did the same. She wrote: “The earth is at the same time mother, she is mother of all that is natural, mother of all that is human. She is the mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all.”
Happy and Blessed Mother’s Day, everyone! Let us get to work out of a passion for Mother Earth and her wonderful accomplishments, humans included.
* UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline Unprecedented. Species Extinction Rates Accelerating.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance, pp. 1-34.
To read a transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner image: Our Mother loves us. Photo by Liv Bruce on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Do you feel the 8 dimensions of matricide named here still going on? Do you feel we have made progress both interiorly and externally dealing with some of them?
Recommended Reading
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.
9 thoughts on “The First Daily Meditation–Mother’s Day 2019”
Yes, we are collectively out of balance. The eight fetters (chains that bind us) that the Hindus talk about exist in people to greater and lesser degrees. The fetters are present in our interactions and the interactions of the fetters are what collectively restrict our Universal Heart to do what our Universal Heart knows is right. It is the collective interacting fetters that keep us unconscious while holding us back. The eight fetters that are said to bind our Universal Consciousness-Jesus Consciousness-Krishna Consciousness-Buddha Nature are hatred, shame, lineage, pride of good conduct, fear, secretiveness, caste, and grief. The fetters can be looked at as stifling or holding back the Image of God-Atman-Soul in each of us. So we contemplate the fetters. We “dilute” and get rid of the fetters through contemplation. Contemplation will eventually release our Universal Heart-Consciousness-Self or Collective Soul to be our balanced Consciousness of our Earth.
An important aspect of the birthing of the Global Renaissance, is not only the Coming of the Cosmic Christ but also I sense, the reimagining and becoming of the Cosmic Mother, the sacred divine image of the feminine. Richard Rochi in his book “When Mary Becomes Cosmic”, along with Christine Falters Paintner book, “Birthing the Holy”, along with Mariann Burke’s book, “Re-imagining Mary”, speaks to this, which I am in the midst of reading.
Recently I had a dream, in which “The Way of the Rose/Rosary”, the pathway of connection with our Cosmic Mother has been broken and is in need of being reformed, renewed, and revived in imaginative and creative new ways. This form of connection to our Cosmic Mother, I realized I have not understood or fully engaged with… yet in someway I sense that I am now being drawn to. I find myself feeling a bit hesitant of stepping into this unknown.
The hesitancy, stems from my fears of religious patriarchal interpretations of who this Cosmic Mother is, and that I am not Catholic, therefore somehow unworthy to approach her in this manner of prayerful connection, communion, contemplation and relationship with. Perhaps others within this community whom practice “The Way of the Rose/Rosary”, whom are not religious but rather spiritual, would be willing to share their experiences of relationship with this living Spirit of the Cosmic Mother.
Being Catholic has nothing to do with connecting with the Cosmic Mother. I am Catholic and if anything, I find it a hindrance. We were/are not taught to embrace such ideas. Setting out to do so, we must seek guidance elsewhere. Thankfully there are places such as this and other like minded people who give us courage, help our vision and light our way. Hopefully, together we can help heal our broken connections and Mother Earth.
Our Lady of Guadalupe has been honored with titles like Patroness and Empress of the Americas by Patriarchal Pontiffs. Interesting. She is one manifestation of the Great Mother. The Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe is readily available on Internet. I have always loved her beautiful connection and deep care for all. She chose to reveal herself to the Patriarchy with Roses and Stars imprinted with her image on a simple man’s cloak. A beautiful Cosmic love story for sure.
Jeanette, if you haven’t yet, read The Way of the Rose by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn. He is a Buddhist and was told by “The Lady” who appears to him regularly to say the rosary and urge others to say it as well. It has led to a diverse and very active community who prays the rosary and its Mysteries in both conventional and unconventional ways. You can check it out both on their website and on Facebook. The Lady has a message for us all every month on the 15th (the anniversary of her first apparition), and their property has morphed into a shrine for all who are drawn (and they are from all over the world) to visit. You don’t have to be any “mainstream” religion to participate.
Thank you Jeanette for your comments, resource materials, and questions.
Yes, how do we introduce the Cosmic Mother alongside the Cosmic Christ?
I even find it difficult to hear the word “God” these days since it conjures up
that image of an old white man with the beard who is sometimes benevolent
and sometimes terrifying from my childhood. I have replaced this word with
Divine Mystery and imagine all life within this “field” of Love. It takes courage
to recognize the Mother in a society and Christian faith that still remain so
patriarchal. Thirty years ago, I explored “goddess” based rituals and today
connect most powerfully with the Black Madonna. She appears in our dreams,
creative activities, and unconscious. We can trust that she will come if we only
ask for this gift. She belongs to everyone and can be found in all religious and
mystical traditions.
Thank you, Marijo for sharing your Divine Experience. One of my favorite places on the planet is Montserrat in Spain. It is one of the cherished sites honoring the Black Madonna. But, as you know. we don’t have to travel far, just step outside and breathe her in. Stoop to touch her face and sing with her song in your soul.
Yes, unfortunately the 8 dimensions of matricide are still ongoing in our modern societies, the dangerous and destructive growing continuation of our toxic and unbalanced patriarchal values of human history the last several thousand years. Social disparities, greed, the suffering of poverty, racism and wars continue that lead to worldwide immigration, and the pollution and destruction of our planetary environment that’s destroying thousands of our species, and risking our own human species. Fortunately, the Compassionate, Merciful, Healing, and Wisdom Spirit of the Divine Feminine is still Present and Alive within our Souls, Mother Earth, and the sacred multidimensional Cosmos, Loving, strengthening, and creatively guiding us to continue compassionately/consciously evolving and serving one another and All Creation in God’s Spirit of Loving Diverse Oneness…
I, too, once had a sacred dream that very much mirrors Matthew’s. It was precipitated by my conscious desire to incubate a dream about saving the cities.
I was given a dream about encountering a large wolf lying within the cinder block foundations of a building. The wolf appeared dead. Next to the wolf was this lithe woman whom I took to be the wolf’s guardian. She told me that the wolf was not yet dead, but was certainly nearing death.
I took this to mean that the “soul of wildness” was almost extinguished. That, in order to save the cities (and our world), we would need to “cultivate wildness”–both wildness in the world and wildness in ourselves. I began to reflect on this and to imagine converting vacant lots into sacred places where there would be drum circles and women’s circles. I imagined great angels painted on the walls of surrounding buildings, acting as guardians for the sacred work that would be going on in those plots of reclaimed land.
Now, about 23 years later, more than ever I believe we need more wilderness in order to nurture the flora and fauna of the planet. We are too quick to cut down trees, too hasty to convert meadows and woodlands into sterile lawns devoid of the life of butterflies and bees and birds, all of which are declining at alarming rates. Not just the animals, but our spirits, too, need the medicine of a world untouched by human interference.