The First Juneteenth Holiday, 2021

FROM THE ARCHIVE: June 20, 2021

This weekend we celebrate the first national holiday of Juneteenth, the culmination of the freedom of slaves in the USA (on paper at least).  It is a holiday and holyday long overdue in the larger community, commemorating a keystone in Black American history. 

Juneteenth is to that community what the Exodus from Egypt was and is for Jewish people.  A day of victory, celebration and remembrance of a great liberation.

Just as Exodus has inspired enslaved people of many diverse cultures and periods throughout history, here’s hoping that Juneteenth does the same.

I search for the reasons behind slavery and behind genocide toward indigenous peoples.

Let us not forget the enslavements we call speciescide or ecocide that our culture is involved in even today insofar as we deny climate change and refuse to take responsibility for the extinction spasms happening all about us on Earth.  So many species struggling to survive.

Is there a common denominator to these tragic stories of genocide, slavery, ecocide and extinctions?  Sadly, I believe there is.  It is our neglect of the sacredness of nature—human and more-than-human.

Is this not what all creation stories are in essence telling us?  That we did not make nature; nature made us.  Nature preceded us, we now know, by 13.8 billion years.  We are nature’ s guest.  Have we been good and grateful guests?  Or have we been punishing our host/hostess, nature, for inviting us here?  Have we projected onto nature our own self-hatred in place of awe, wonder, reverence, and gratitude?

If humans think we are #1 and earth creatures are here is to serve us, feed us, make our industry prosper or entertain us, that is the beginning of the downward slope.  But the creation stories of the world do not tell us that this is the case.  

Slavery was both an economic thing and a bad religious thing.  The “discovery doctrine” from 15^th century popes encouraged Christian kings and queens to take what they wanted from African peoples and peoples of Turtle Island because they were not “redeemed by Christ.”*

A religious consciousness that leads with redemption and not gratitude for creation buttressed such atrocities.

Creation Spirituality leads with creation and gratitude for the Creator. Thanking is very different from conquering in the name of redeeming.

How might history have been different had a creation spirituality accompanied 16^th century European explorers and missionaries?

*To his credit, Pope Francis finally apologized for the Doctrine of Discovery, but the apology was very late coming and long after the horse had left the barn.

See Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond, pp. 109-124, xxxviiif.

Banner image: Traditional African song and dance at Booker T Washington National Juneteenth Celebration of Freedom, 2019. Wikipedia.

Queries for Contemplation

Meditate on how a religious consciousness that leads with the sacredness of creation including all of nature and all humans results in a different historical outcome than that manifested by slavery, genocide, ecocide, matricide and misogyny.  Consider the religion Julian of Norwich espoused, for example.

Recommended Reading

Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond

Julian of Norwich lived through the dreadful bubonic plague that killed close to 50% of Europeans. Being an anchoress, she ‘sheltered in place’ and developed a deep wisdom that she shared in her book, Showings, which was the first book in English by a woman. A theologian way ahead of her time, Julian develops a feminist understanding of God as mother at the heart of nature’s goodness. Fox shares her teachings in this powerful and timely and inspiring book.
“What an utterly magnificent book. The work of Julian of Norwich, lovingly supported by the genius of Matthew Fox, is a roadmap into the heart of the eco-spiritual truth that all life breathes together.”  –Caroline Myss
Now also available as an audiobook HERE.

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science.  A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics

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