Now that you have been welcomed to the Via Transformativa, let us focus today on various acts of justice-making. Then, as you are reading, ask yourself: which of these quotations speaks to you the most?
We become ‘sons and daughters of God’
by being peacemakers, justice doers, prophets.
All are called to be prophets,
for in our hands lies the responsibility
for economics, justice, and good work.
Creation Spirituality
is a liberation theology
for “First World” peoples.
Fasting allows us to identify,
at least partially,
with those millions of the world’s poor
who can never
take eating a meal or drinking good water
for granted.

Religion often legitimizes
the oppression of women
with a kind of divine sanction.
In contrast,
creation spirituality celebrates
women’s wisdom and experience.
PERSONAL AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
Creation spirituality expresses a methodology of “praxis and theory” through body prayer, art as meditation, the revision of our mystical heritage, an analysis of our cultural situation, the appropriation of scientific perspectives, ways of re-imaging our relationship to divinity, such as panentheism and the Cosmic Christ tradition, and concrete activities on behalf of social justice. All of this has one goal: personal and social transformation.
Creation spirituality critiques the sin of homophobia
and by celebrating the diversity within creation,
allows the homosexual to be homosexual.
There is no compassion among those
who are cruel to animals.
And no compassion among a science,
a philosophy or a religion
that ignores our interdependence with animals.
Creation spirituality insists that
all are mystics and all are prophets
and that all persons are called both
to their own dignity and
to responsibility and leadership.
See Matthew Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth, pp. 61, 69, 93, 107, 74, 109, 129
See also Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice, p. 162
Banner Image: A federally-protected right – but for how long? “Straight allies protesting at Seattle March for Marriage Equality,” 2008. Photo by varnent | Ryan Georgi on Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Which of these quotations spoke to you most powerfully?
Recommended Reading

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.

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
6 thoughts on “Some Things that Justice Doers Do”
“One goal: personal and social transformation” – by what means?
We will all do just fine to be humbly called followers of Christ, and imperfect followers at that at times. Let those who want to ‘carry’ the label of mystic be a mystic, those that want to ‘wear’ the label of prophet be a prophet then. It is the humble followers of Christ that choose to ‘carry and wear’ the Cross that they have been given and that is enough. Our identity then is one of love, faith, joy, peace, truth, mercy, charity and hardship in suffering. The latter may not ‘be just’ but it is the path we have chosen to take is it not? In His moment of glory, in His Passion, did Jesus look to defeat the ‘unjust’ with His own placard carrying followers, His own Divine power, might and force or did He show us another way to love and transform the hearts of others? Let us then, humbly do likewise. — BB.
“There is no compassion among those
who are cruel to animals.
And no compassion among a science,
a philosophy or a religion
that ignores our interdependence with animals. ”
It is time we start treating animals as our little brothers and sisters in creation, they do so much for us and we have underestimated and denied their feelings and abilities. The mystics have always known this. As St. Francis said, “If you gave any men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow man.”
Spiritual transformation, is about connecting, through relationship with, to all that which is Sacred. It refers to the fundamental changes that unfold, evolve and emerge as one searches for an understanding of and the significance of the Sacred, which gives meaning and purpose to life; experienced and encountered through engaging in efforts to discover the Sacred.
Once discovered and comprehended, often through glimpses; one then does what one can do, to conserve and sustain one’s relationship with the Sacred. Throughout one’s individual relationship of convergence with the Sacred; one’s internal character is transformed. As well, one’s external responses of being and living in right relationship with the Sacredness within all life, is also transformed.
The search for the Sacred, within the all and the everything of creation, which includes oneself and one’s life, continously unfolds, evolves and emerges over the course of one’s soul journey; as does the pathways the individual takes to the Sacred, as one converges in relationship with the Sacred. Cultivating and nurturing this connection of relationship with all that which is Sacred, creates fundamental progressively positive transformational changes within oneself and one’s life.
This is the Creation Spirituality, that the mystics and prophets from many diverse spiritual pathways discovered and responded to throughout the ages into our present day and hopefully into the future.
“… ways of re-imagining our relationship to divinity, such as panentheism and the Cosmic Christ tradition and concrete activities on behalf of social justice. All this has one goal: personal and social transformation.” Also, David Haskel’s excellent Ted Talk in the enclosed DM: “We’re All Made From Relationships” that emphasizes Our interconnectedness and Our interdependence with All of Life.
Our co-Creator~Source’s LOVING Diverse ONENESS with-in Our physical and non-physical spiritual dimensions of Our Sacred Evolving COSMOS….
“..ways of re-imaging our relationship to divinity, such as panentheism and the Cosmic Christ tradition”:
This is not a “new” type of spirituality, but the original one that was layered into Biblical texts. The careful mystical wording of Moses’s revelation, the deliberately, mystically worded creation motifs in Genesis and again in the Gospel of John (the Logos/Word was WITH God, and WAS God, and THROUGH Him ALL was made), and the absolute insistence of rabbis in retaining the “sexy” Song of Songs BECAUSE OF its MYSTICAL meaning, demonstrates clearly that this mysticism was understood to be intentionally and clearly expressed in the Bible. Jesus lived as the exemplar, in life, of the Jewish Biblical heritage’s social/ethical/mystical message. The “Logos”/Word/mystically Divine Christ was even cemented into official Christian creeds.
Mysticism is NOT a “foreign intrusion” into Christianity or Judaism, nor is it new: it’s been integral since at least the text of Moses (the Deuteronomy period); before that, ancient Judaic tribes were probably polytheistic or, at best, henotheists, i.e., our god is the best god. Monotheism itself was probably created from this Mystical Revelation. It had no name back then, but it was eventually refined into a distinctive monotheistic. integrated theology/”virtuous Path” teaching, and transmitted into several religions.
“Creation Spirituality expresses a methodology of praxis and theory.”
this is a phase that spoke to me the first time I became acquainted with Matthew Fox and his Cosmic Christ and Creation Spirituality. That had to be 30 years ago (at least)