The Cosmos and the Cosmic Mass

One reason the cosmos is on my mind is that we just celebrated a “Cosmic Mass” (TCM) in honor of the Sacredness of Earth (and therefore the Cosmos) at last week’s Parliament of World Religions in Chicago. 

The TCM is a movement to reset and revitalize worship, liturgy, ritual—call it what you will—that I have been involved in for 27 years or more.  And for which I became an Episcopal priest 29 years ago: to work with young people to bring liturgy alive through post-modern art forms. 

I sensed back then what is obvious today—the absence of the young in particular, but many others too, at Western liturgy where the form is often too stilted, stiff, eye-oriented and too bound to reading prayers from a book instead of inviting them from our hearts and bodies (the heart is inside the body after all and the center of all seven chakras). 

So I offered, in the last chapter of my book on The Reinvention of Work,  seven steps to revitalizing worship in the West.  Two weeks after handing my manuscript to the publisher six members of the NOS community in Sheffield, England showed up at a conference I was conducting on CS in Seattle.  They told me of their “Planetary Mass,” and that began my journey into bringing rave to Liturgy.

One response I received from our recent TCM at the Parliament was from a young woman (I would guess about 27 years old) who came up to me afterwards and said:

I am electrified.  My whole body is feeling like electricity is pulsing through it.  This is what my generation needs—the recovering of a sense of the sacred, the grieving, the empowerment, to be agents of creativity and transformation.  I want to commit myself to this kind of work the rest of my life.

See Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest, pp. 5-16, 363-383.

Also see Fox, “Ritual: Where the Great Work of the Universe and the Work of the People Come Together,” The Reinvention of Work, pp. 249-295.

Banner Image: A poet/activist recites during a Cosmic Mass on racial justice in the Washington National Cathedral. Photo by Katy Gaughan, published with permission.

Queries for Contemplation

Have you had experiences in worship or ritual where the great work of the universe and your existence, the Self and the self, come together?  What fruits were borne from that experience?

Recommended Reading

Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest (Revised/Updated Edition)

Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. Five new chapters in this revised and updated edition bring added perspective in light of the author’s continued journey, and his reflections on the current changes taking place in church, society and the environment.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible spiritual revolutionary enlivens the mind and emboldens the heart — must reading for anyone interested in courage, creativity, and the future of religion.”
—Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self

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