Because we are talking about apocalypse and revelation at this time of Climate Change and of a critical election in America, I found myself picking up my book on The Coming of the Cosmic Christ.
It was born of a powerful dream I had that culminated in the statement: “Your mother is dying.”
My literal mother was nowhere near death at the time I had the dream and so I examined the statement for its deeper meaning. I felt it was, as many dreams are, a wake-up dream not just for myself but for the larger community, indeed for our species. And I still believe that.
The first chapter of the book accordingly lays out eight ways in which “our mother is dying” and all seem pertinent to today’s world 34 years later including the 2024 election. In so many ways, our species is busy “killing the Mother.” The dream that your mother is dying might be spoken differently and more starkly and more apocalyptically today this way: “Your mother is dying and you (plural) are killing her.”
This is why, as I wrote last week, I dedicated my latest book on Christ and antichrist to those who are committed to saving Mother Earth. Because to deny the suffering of Mother Earth today is to be actively killing her. It is to be participating in evil or the work of antichrist.
My book on The Coming of the Cosmic Christ is very much about us all being other Christs or mystics who recognize the holiness and sacred all around us in nature, in our existence, in the 13.8 billion years that have brought our amazing and lucky species into existence on this very graced planet that finds itself in dire straits because our species has lost its way.
Allow me to list the varied ways in which I name the theme of “your mother is dying” and which I call a “crucifixion story for our times.” Because it is when we name the darkness that light can break through anew.
Mother Earth is dying.
The mystical brain is dying.
Creativity is dying.
Wisdom is dying (knowledge alone is king).
The youth are dying (suicide is the second leading cause of death among ages 10-34).
Native people, their religions and cultures, are dying.
Mother church is dying.
Mother love—compassion—is dying.
Yes, our mother is dying—but she is not yet dead. To be dying is not to be dead. And we can be part of the resurrection and turn apocalypse to revelation if we are willing to do the work, inner and outer, that is being asked of us today.
To do so we have to wake up both to Evil (the antichrist) and to its opposite, the Sacred. Christ and Cosmic Christ are two names for the sacred but there are many other names as well.
To be continued.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance, pp. 1-37.
See also Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
And Fox, Passion For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart.
And Fox, Trump & MAGA as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Banner Image: Permaculture practitioner Dennis Doyon cups his hands under a spring revived through the tree-plantings he and his family did ten years ago in the almost completely slashed-and-burned Atlantic Forest, known as Mata Atlantica, in Brazil. Their land was one of the first to receive 100 trees from IGiveTrees.org. Learn more about their story HERE. Learn about IGiveTrees’ ongoing work HERE. Photo published with permission.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you recognize a dying earth and dying wisdom and a dying church and a dying youth, etc.—but also the possibilities of waking up and rising up and resurrecting?
Recommended Reading
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
In what may be considered the most comprehensive outline of the Christian paradigm shift of our Age, Matthew Fox eloquently foreshadows the manner in which the spirit of Christ resurrects in terms of the return to an earth-based mysticism, the expression of creativity, mystical sexuality, the respect due the young, the rebirth of effective forms of worship—all of these mirroring the ongoing blessings of Mother Earth and the recovery of Eros, the feminine aspect of the Divine.
“The eighth wonder of the world…convincing proof that our Western religious tradition does indeed have the depth of imagination to reinvent its faith.” — Brian Swimme, author of The Universe Story and Journey of the Universe.
“This book is a classic.” Thomas Berry, author of The Great Work and The Dream of the Earth.
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
Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart
Matthew Fox’s comprehensive translation of Meister Eckhart’s sermons is a meeting of true prophets across centuries, resulting in a spirituality for the new millennium. The holiness of creation, the divine life in each person and the divine power of our creativity, our call to do justice and practice compassion–these are among Eckhart’s themes, brilliantly interpreted and explained for today’s reader.
“The most important book on mysticism in 500 years.” — Madonna Kolbenschlag, author of Kissing Sleeping Beauty Goodbye.
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
8 thoughts on “A Healing Dream for a Time of Apocalypse Like Ours”
Thank you for your continued postings, Matthew.
As I read with sadness the aspects of the evidence of dying, I must admit that I am not sad to hear of the church dying … for me this institution has veins of corruption and has been quite damaging to many people with its hypocrisy and misogyny.
For the most part, for me, it is quite “un-Christlike”.
Mother Earth is dying – earth as a welcoming place for inhabitation is diminishing.
The mystical brain is dying – Consciousness and soul awareness is our goal. We only have ourselves to blame is we choose ‘darkness over light’. The ‘system’ or institutions have no real control or power over our souls.
Creativity is dying – I would say that it is flourishing like never before. Show us otherwise.
Wisdom is dying (knowledge alone is king). – ‘Wisdom of Spirit’ is eternal without diminishment.
The youth are dying (suicide is the second leading cause of death). – the death and destruction of human potential from addictions is an epidemic now.
Native people, religions and cultures, are dying. – many Christian denominations closing and making themselves less relevant to younger generations.
Mother church is dying. – We are the ‘true church and temple’. Faith is waning when people convince themselves of not having control and start believing all the doom and gloom, like this article.
Mother love—compassion—is dying. There are more charitable foundations and causes to battle disease, feed, shelter and cloth both domestic and foreigner than at any other time in history.
There will always be work to be done and the labourers are few. This is what we have been told, so no surprises there. There is no judgement or apocalypse on those in Jesus’s fold whom rise above and themselves do not judge. — BB.
Yes! Another profound DM that sensitizes us to the destruction of our Beautiful Sacred Mother Earth/Her living creatures/Her graceful essential abundance, and humanity’s immanent extinction. The main hope for resurrection seems to be small sustainable communities, like Indigenous peoples, that live peacefully with one another and with Mother Earth.
Do you worry, Mathew, that calling Trump the “anti-christ” is the very kind of inflammatory rhetoric that is causing dangerous division politically? I’m very surprised that you are doing this?
I’ve appreciated your “meditations” since you began publishing them but now feel that meditation that evokes peacefully is my preference.
To turn apocalypse to revelation, perhaps serious consideration needs to be given to add a SACRED QUARTERNITY to the HOLY TRINITY.
A Sacred Quarternity would be to identify the four basic elements of Creation…… Earth, Air, Fire, Water
Earth gives us Birth
Air gives us Breath
Fire Inspires us
Water Nourishes us
Thus, forming an awareness that Reverence and Divinity is found not only in the ways of personal relationships with the Divine, but also formed personal relationships with all that is Created.
Thus, emphasizing the notion of “all my relations”, or “Namwayut” (to use an Indigenous word).
I am thinking that perhaps, this notion of a Sacred Quarterity aligns well with the argument of the teaching of the Cosmic Christ.
Or the teaching in On Becominga Musical, Mystical Bear, and Original Blessing.
I welcome your thoughts.
Tree-Fully
DAS
One addition re water: It nourishes us but it also cleans us up if we don’t foul it up…………
A dream like Matthew’s deserves to be held with reverence. I too had a dream about the collapse of the Roman Catholic hierarchy/church even before we knew anything about the financial corruption or sex scandal (I’m now 83 yo). Now we see that collapse in progress. We on this site all know our “mother is dying”; that’s why we are working to turn it around and we see efforts by some corporations and businesses and our government also trying to counter her “death.” I suggest that if there are some exaggerations in Matthew’s post, let them be; recognize that a prophet sometimes speaks in hyperbole.
Its so heartening to see such bold and powerful statements in the Christian world around healing the earth and cultivating a sustainable environment. Thank you.