Week of 7/29-8/3/2024: The Cosmos, Creativity, Olympics

July 29, 2024: A Plan for Inspiring the Young
We continue to look at ways we might support our youth in the face of the alarming news that, around the globe and across cultures, youth are not happy. Worse, many express having “bad mental health days.” Without the passion and exuberance of our young people, our future looks bleak. Matthew proposes that our materialistic and consumeristic culture is not geared toward satisfying the human soul. Mystics hold the key.

July 30, 2024: Step Number One in Awakening the Young: Cosmogenesis
Perhaps a vision of cosmogenesis can inspire not only the youth, but all of us. Cosmogenesis is the universe we live in and the universe being born within us and all around us. It’s a vision of creativity and regenerativity. The malaise that besets our species today is a malaise born of ignoring the new cosmology. Step Number One in responding to the ennui of the youth? Let anthropocentrism go, and allow the universe to enter.

July 31, 2024: Kudos to the French Daring a New Olympic Opening Ceremony
In alignment with our vision of a post-mechanistic universe, we salute the French on their imaginative, creative, re-visioned opening ceremony for this year’s Summer Olympics. Instead of athletes entering a stadium under their national flag, the French offered up the city of Paris and the river Seine as the preferred locale. Each team appeared in a caravan of 85 boats. Along the way, there were dancers of all kinds and music of all genres. Instead of lighting a fire in a cauldron in a stadium, the Olympic flame also came by boat and was lit in the Tuileries Gardens in a ceremony that launched a hot air balloon that then hung over the Gardens. The hot air balloon was invented by the French in 1783.

August 1, 2024: The Olympic Opening Ceremony, the Unio Mystica & the Next Revolution
We continue our celebration of the French in their exciting opening extravaganza of the Olympics in Paris. Musicians playing grand pianos in the rain. A woman singing a magnificent version of “La Marseillaise” atop the Grand Palais, rain beating down upon her. A bridge turned into a runway with models strutting across. Sculptures representing famous paintings emerging from the river itself. Otto Rank says that only the unio mystica—which we experience “in love and art”—can heal what ails humanity. Matthew thanks the French for their originality, grace and courage in offering us an experience of unio mystica which perhaps we all needed at this time.

August 2, 2024: bell hooks & Others on Beauty, Politics and Justice
bell hooks spoke of the “next (and non-violent) revolution” which she predicted would be an “aesthetic one” that would bring humanity together. Beauty, art, and excellence in sports, as depicted at this Olympics, can all be a part of this next revolution. [FROM THE ARCHIVE: June 2, 2023] Awakening to justice and beauty go together. After all, what is more ugly than injustice? And what is more beautiful than rising up and overthrowing systems of injustice? Arturo Paoli was an Italian priest who, during World War II, worked overtime to save Jews from the fascists. In 1997, he wrote: To be religious is to give your life so that the world may be more beautiful, more just, more at peace; it is to prevent egotistical and self-serving ends from disrupting this harmony of the whole. Yes. Beauty and justice go together.

August 3, 2024: Olympic Games, bell hooks & Thomas Aquinas on Truth & Justice
Without truth, a community dies.  Lies are poison to relationships of any kind.  Bell acknowledges that when she says, “the heart of justice is truth telling.” [FROM THE ARCHIVE: November 3, 2022] The current election in America is very much about the “Big Lie” and the many implications of it, including the 400+ laws passed to curtail voting of the disenfranchised. Our culture seems to be going through a truth crisis with “fake news,” incendiary news, and denial of facts like climate change. The former president. with his penchant for compulsive lying, contributed to this epidemic of non-truthfulness. For Aquinas, moral decision-making resides not in the will but in the passions! May we passionately rise to the occasion in the coming election!

Banner image: The Eiffel Tower at night. Image by barnyz on Flickr.

Recommended Reading

Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation

Authors Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox encourage us to use our talents in service of compassion and justice and to move beyond our broken systems–economic, political, educational, and religious–discovering a spirituality that not only helps us to get along, but also encourages us to reevaluate our traditions, transforming them and in the process building a more sacred and just world. Incorporating the words of young activist leaders culled from interviews and surveys, the book provides a framework that is deliberately interfaith and speaks to our profound yearning for a life with spiritual purpose and for a better world.
“Occupy Spirituality is a powerful, inspiring, and vital call to embodied awareness and enlightened actions.”
~~ Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist and author of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times

A stunning spiritual handbook drawn from the substantive teachings of Aquinas’ mystical/prophetic genius, offering a sublime roadmap for spirituality and action.
Foreword by Ilia Delio.
“What a wonderful book!  Only Matt Fox could bring to life the wisdom and brilliance of Aquinas with so much creativity. The Tao of Thomas Aquinas is a masterpiece.”
–Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit