Week of 8/28-9/2/2023: Celebrating the Cosmos

August 28, 2023. The Original Blessing of the Cosmos
In this meditation we reflect upon the idea that the Cosmos is an Original Blessing, for without the cosmos, we would not exist, nor would the animals, trees, mountains, rivers, etc. The Webb telescope helps us to explore our origins, something that is an innate curiousity among human beings, as Howard Thurman reminds us. Contemplation concerning origins is a part of the curiosity of the race.  

August 29, 2023. Worthwhile Thoughts on the Original Blessing of the Cosmos
Nineteenth-century French poet and translator, Gerard de Nerval, noted our lack of awareness of the universe. He said, Free thinker, do you think you are the only thinker on this earth in which life blazes inside all things? Your liberty does what it wishes with the powers it controls, but when you gather to plan, the universe is not there. Matthew adds, We think we can be a-cosmic.  Whereas the cosmos birthed us all. 

August 30, 2023. Teilhard, Einstein, Aquinas, Ricoeur & Simone Weil on Cosmic Awareness
Albert Einstein tells us: “The most important function of art and science is to awaken the cosmic religious feeling and keep it alive.”  Meanwhile Teilhard de Chardin says: It is almost commonplace today to find people who… live in the explicit consciousness of being… a citizen of the universe. This collective awakening must inevitably have a profound religious reaction on the mass of mankind—either to cast down or to exalt. Aquinas says that each one of us is “capax universi,” capable of the universe. But are we taught that greatness?

August 31, 2023. Aquinas’s Invite to Get Drunk on Cosmic Awareness & Beauty
We have become such a narcissistic species, completely unaware of the magnificence of the cosmos that makes our life possible. Aquinas cites the psalmist when he says, “’They shall be drunk with the beauty of thy house’ — that is, the Universe.” When Aquinas tells us that we are “capable of the universe,” he is urging us to get beyond our own hurts and wounds and petty agendas and look at the big picture. As Matthew says,  “It is not enough to live in the worlds we make.  We need to consider the world that makes us.“

September 1, 2023. Aquinas on Consciousness, Cosmos, Creativity & Enlarging Our Souls
When we reflect upon creation, cosmology and cosmogenesis we grow our souls, and as Meister Eckhart put it, “God is delighted to watch your soul enlarge.” And not only our souls, but our minds are capable of great things. Aquinas said, “There is nothing that the human mind cannot understand potentially. It is capable of knowing all things.”  

September 2, 2023. From Aquinas to Sunken Ship Rescue: The Amazing Ingenuity of Humanity
There is a documentary about the raising of the cruise ship Costa Concordia from the place that it had sunk off the coast of Italy in 2014. Matthew was moved by the extraordinary effort and ingenuity it took to accomplish this gargantuan task. It was an example of how we are capable of solving any problem when we work together and use our minds and our skills for the good. Can we now take this ability and apply it on a large scale in order to heal and save our planet?

Banner image: Our Beautiful Universe. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Recommended Reading

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox renders Thomas Aquinas accessible by interviewing him and thus descholasticizing him.  He also translated many of his works such as Biblical commentaries never before in English (or Italian or German of French).  He  gives Aquinas a forum so that he can be heard in our own time. He presents Thomas Aquinas entirely in his own words, but in a form designed to allow late 20th-century minds and hearts to hear him in a fresh way. 
“The teaching of Aquinas comes through will a fullness and an insight that has never been present in English before and [with] a vital message for the world today.” ~ Fr. Bede Griffiths (Afterword).
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake