Week of 8/12-17/2024: Sports & Spirituality, Joy & Justice

August 12, 2024: Olympic Games Ended: A Meditation on Sport & Competition
As a theologian, Matthew offers his view of the Olympic games. As a species, conflict inevitably arises from time to time. When we are creative, we can find ways to deal with these conflicts other than all-out war. For instance, when the Inuits had a conflict with another tribe, each side would choose its best poet. Then, over the course of a week, the two poets would showcase their best efforts. A jury would choose a winner at the end of the week. Conflict resolved. Sports is similar. Participants work very hard perfecting their skills. Then they compete. And we get to watch the beauty, the joy, the teamwork.

August 13, 2024: Sports and Spirituality, continued
There is joy in watching the beauty, the boldness, and the craft of Olympic athletes. In fact, all Four Paths are evident as one watches the games. One of the highpoints for Matthew in this year’s Olympics was watching Simone Biles, as winner of silver, and another American as winner of bronze, bow to the Brazilian woman who had won gold. They exemplified grace in this action. If a certain American politician had learned such grace when he lost, the Big Lie would not have happened, and the travesty and horror of January 6th would never have happened.

August 14, 2024: Sports as Prayer & St. Paul on Athletics & Spirituality
Matthew tells us that sports can be an example of Art as Meditation. Indeed, sports and art often overlap. It is interesting how St. Paul went to Corinth at the time of the Isthmian Games in the spring of AD 51. Held every two years, they included footraces, wrestling, boxing, discus, javelin, the long jump, chariot racing, poetry reading and singing. Women competed as well as men.* One Biblical scholarnoticed that St. Paul’s epistles are “peppered with athletic terminology,” including these words penned to Timothy from his jail cell just prior to his execution: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

August 15, 2024: A Feminine Feast Day & Honoring the Elephant Nation
Today is the 74^th anniversary of the Feast of the Assumption of Mary declared in 1950 by Pope Pius XII.  Carl Jung called it “the most important religious event since the Reformation.” This feast day is a symbol of the rise of the Divine Feminine, so badly needed in a world where patriarchy has wreaked such havoc. Next week’s Democratic Convention will proclaim a woman as candidate for presidency–for the second time in our history. Meanwhile, another beautiful feminine presence on the planet is Krystal Parks, an activist currently working to defend the elephant nation. She was mentored by two beautiful men: Daniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh.

August 16, 2024: Joy & Justice: American Mystic-Warrior, Kristal Parks
One dimension to the Harris-Walz presidential message that people find refreshing is the dimension of Joy that they exhibit while also talking of the need to work for justice and compassion.  This contrasts sharply with the dour message of the other team, the leader of which constantly talks about crime and calls America a “third world nation.” [FROM THE ARCHIVE:  August 13, 2019] Kristal is a contemporary mystic-prophet alive and well and living in the woods of Colorado. For ten years she actively resisted nuclear weapons and spent 11 months in prison for her efforts, almost five months in solitary confinement. She has worked with Mayan Indians in Guatemala, Hmong refugees in Thailand, and villagers in Africa. Her current passion is defending Elephants. She is also author of the book Re-Enchanting the World: A Call to Mystical Activism.** She writes: Our work for the earth, the whale and the honey bee must come out of profound adoration, ecstatic delight and a vision of the bursting splendor that is reflected in the tiniest ant. Such work and actions must be grounded and arising from joy, ecstasy, bliss, humor, delight and freedom. Not fear. Not urgency. Not desperation.

August 17, 2024: On Joy in Today’s World
The Harris-Walz presidential campaign embodies “joyful warriorhood.” In his first speech while appearing with Kamala, Tim Walz thanked her especially for “bringing back the joy.” The recent Olympic Games in Paris also brought back a sense of joy. Matthew wisely said: Joy is not outside suffering or in denial of it. But it is larger and can embrace it. [FROM THE ARCHIVE: The Mystics on Play: August 16, 2019] Today science is underscoring the importance of play. Neotony is a scientific term expressing our capacity to stay young and stay playing. Meister Eckhart says, I am younger today than I was yesterday and if I’m not younger tomorrow than I am today I would be ashamed of myself. 

* Gordon Franz M.A., “Going for the Gold: The Apostle Paul and the Isthmian Games.” BibleArchaeology.org

**Kristal Parks, Re-Enchanting the World: A Call to Mystical Activism (Denver: Celebration Press, 2003), pp. 2, 82, 16, 24, 6.  For more information on Kristal and her work, see www.PachydermPower.org  and  www.KristalParks.com.

Banner image: Joyful swimmer. Photo by Benjamin L. Jones on Unsplash

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