I am thinking of the funeral of my oldest brother Tom taking place today in the land of the aurora and great lights, Iceland, where he and his artist wife Anna, who is from Iceland, retired and have been living for nine years.
Yesterday our family mailing list of about 24 persons received a beautiful gift from one of my brother Nat’s step-children, Charlene Kaye, who is a singer and song writer and movie producer. She tells the story behind it here.
Hello beloved Fox clan,
I hope everyone is holding up all right and taking care of themselves. I wanted to share a song I wrote about Nat (and unintentionally, about Tom!) I’m a musician and I’ve always understood the world in this way. It’s music that has accompanied every milestone in my life and has gotten me through my toughest times. This loss is no different.
In Nat’s final months, Mom, Liann and I would go sing to him, and it was the one thing that lit him up and connected us to each other without the necessity of verbal speech.
In a previous email, I had written how when I was 15, my first guitar broke on a flight to summer camp (because I had forgotten to detune the strings, the neck snapped! I’ve never made the same mistake) and I was devastated. Nat wrote to me and said, “Don’t worry about the guitar, Lene. We’ll buy you a new one. You can turn it into a psychedelic art piece. Hang it up on the wall. Look for the silver lining. Smile and pretend you are happy, and soon you will be.” I loved his unfaltering positivity – it’s one of the qualities I miss about him most.
In the lyrics of the song, this imagery came to me of an aurora in the sky, as if Nat has joined the cosmos in the form of those psychedelic colors. Only until after it was written did I realize that the aurora, or the northern lights, is what Iceland is so famed for. So when we look up at the sky and see the stars and colors – I like to think it’s Nat, Tom and everyone else we love who has passed on, shining down on us together and dancing in light.
One thing I like about sharing this story with DM readers is that a death in a family affects all of us and multiple generations. It is a blessing to hear wisdom from the younger generations and experience how intergenerational wisdom thrives in families amidst whatever differences also take place there. My sister, in flight to Iceland for the funeral, very much experienced the storied aurora above Iceland.
Thank God for artists!
As Otto Rank reminds us, ultimately only the unio mystica heals our deepest wounds and the “mystical union” happens “in love and art.”
See Matthew Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet.
And Fox, “Otto Rank on the Artistic Journey as a Spiritual Journey, the Spiritual Journey as an Artistic Journey,” in Fox, Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life, pp. 199-214.
And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
And Fox, Prayer: A Radical Response to Life.
Banner Image: Bands of the aurora borealis open a celestial portal. Photographed in Iceland by v2osk; on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
How has art in whatever expression helped to heal you at times of loss and grief in your life?
Recommended Reading
Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet
Because creativity is the key to both our genius and beauty as a species but also to our capacity for evil, we need to teach creativity and to teach ways of steering this God-like power in directions that promote love of life (biophilia) and not love of death (necrophilia). Pushing well beyond the bounds of conventional Christian doctrine, Fox’s focus on creativity attempts nothing less than to shape a new ethic.
“Matt Fox is a pilgrim who seeks a path into the church of tomorrow. Countless numbers will be happy to follow his lead.” –Bishop John Shelby Spong, author, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Living in Sin
Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life
In one of his foundational works, Fox engages with some of history’s greatest mystics, philosophers, and prophets in profound and hard-hitting essays on such varied topics as Eco-Spirituality, AIDS, homosexuality, spiritual feminism, environmental revolution, Native American spirituality, Christian mysticism, Art and Spirituality, Art as Meditation, Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism and more.
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
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
How do prayer and mysticism relate to the struggle for social and ecological justice? Fox defines prayer as a radical response to life that includes our “Yes” to life (mysticism) and our “No” to forces that combat life (prophecy). How do we define adult prayer? And how—if at all—do prayer and mysticism relate to the struggle for social and ecological justice? One of Matthew Fox’s earliest books, originally published under the title On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear: Spirituality American Style, Prayer introduces a mystical/prophetic spirituality and a mature conception of how to pray. Called a “classic” when it first appeared, it lays out the difference between the creation spirituality tradition and the fall/redemption tradition that has so dominated Western theology since Augustine. A practical and theoretical book, it lays the groundwork for Fox’s later works.
“One of the finest books I have read on contemporary spirituality.” – Rabbi Sholom A. Singer
11 thoughts on “Art and Artists and Healing Times”
The art of walking, the art of shedding tears and feeling / sorting emotions run through, the art of reflection and repose, the art of healing that bringing the grieving together provides. – BB.
Dear Matthew, thank you for sharing your beautiful family with me. Blessings and much love for all you do to help heal our broken world.
Thank you Mathew for your reflections given to us each day. Thank you for sharing your amazing family. Yes, ART does help to heal our grief. I DANCE grief to music from our wonderful musicians . Nat’s daughter’s song touched me and brought me back to my dad’s death and my walk in the dark in the country in the middle of the night . I gazed at the stars and talked to him.
My sympathy to your family in the passing of two talented brothers Nat and Tom . Thank you Mathew for all you are and do to help the unfolding of our amazing UNIVERSE STORY. Continued blessings!
Dear Matthew, Pure grace that you shared Charlene’s love song today. I am sending it to my young godchild, whose husband went from “shadow to light” yesterday when he died in a canoe accident. She is a singer and music has also meant so much to her through many trials. I have been so touched by your stories of your family in these past DM, thank you for sharing your sweet and inspiring messages, as a retired teacher especially appreciate the difference your brothers and you have made in many lives with your creativity. With love and blessings, Christine, IHM.
Thank you for this lovely image of our departed smiling upon us in the aurora borealis.
I just listened to the beautiful song dedicated to Nat written by his step-daughter Charlene Kaye and her words truly brought me to tears. However, they weren’t so much tears from thinking about loss but actually of joy as they got me to reflecting on my own death, one day, as well as on the passing of my own friends and family in a different light. I say this because Charlene’s words “So when I look up at the sky I like to think it’s Nat, Tom and everyone else we love who has passed on, shining together and dancing in the light” now brings me some peace when thinking about death. So, the next time I look up I will now be filled with hope from the thought that although we may be gone from this world we still remain together as one with the universe. As a result of this song I will never look at the heavens in the same way again. Thank you Charlene for creating it and thank you Matthew for sharing the song and the story behind it. Blessings!
DIVINE SPIRIT of LOVE IS ALWAYS with-in Us in Our Unique Sacred Eternal Souls and the many LOVING Beautiful Diverse manifestations of ongoing Wholeness~ONENESS Creation~Evolution in the Sacred Process of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT… COSMIC CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS….
Dear Matthew,
Thank you for inviting us to share Tom’s funeral with you and your wonderful family! I have been so moved that you shared the stories of your family on the Daily Meditations! How blessed I feel to have the opportunity to learn so much from you all these years that I’ve subscribed to your DMs! You and your family are in my prayers for comfort and joyous remembrance of Tom and Nat at this time of loss at their transition from this life! May they rest in peace! Much love and gratitude for you! Linda Hill-Phoenix
Oh Rev Fox / that song had me in tears. Not only was it such a beautiful song but her voice just gave me chills. Please know you and all of your family are in my heart. I am an artist and often create during times of sadness and grief. But I also connect on a deep level with music! My dad wanted When the Saints Go Marching In (he LOVED a jazz) at his funeral. I worked at Notre Dame and this wonderful student, Eugene Staples, played that for him during his service (he was a senior and this happened during senior week right before graduation. Eugene didn’t hesitate one minute when I asked him. He was (and is – such an amazing soul) my saint. It was deeply moving and I know my sweet Dad was smiling.
Wow!
I woke up this morning without the usual shadows and with DE-LIGHT!
Had gone to bed reading pages 13 to 18 of your MAGA book – about Christ / Godness as LIGHT, LIGHT, ORIGINAL LIGHT. It lit up my soul.
In my morning meditation I got the message to stop struggling and to • Align with the Divine, • Dance with De-Lights and • Be in Harmony.
Today’s sunrise stopped me from moving for 10 minutes as I beheld the beauty and the sun twinkling through the trees like sparkles of little Lights ready to dance with me throughout the day and the rest of my life.
Then I read today’s blog and listened to Charlene’s song. Oh my gosh! I just want to float through life with awe.
Thank you, Matthew, for being you. I’ve come to you late, but will never leave, for your words inspire me to awe and action.
Sending you heartfelt love, compassion in this time of grieving for your brothers, and immense gratitude for the mystic and master teacher that you are. I feel blessed to have found you, albeit late in both of our lives.
God bless you immensely !!!!
As my hearing dwindled, I was working in retail in our local airport. A shopper, carrying a musical instrument case, and I chatted a bit. I must have said how blessed and fortunate he was, to have music in his life, and how it was deeply painful to me to have lost much of it. To my astonishment, he opened his music case, pulled out his flute, and began to play a classical flute song, just for me. I couldn’t hear some of the notes, but the music was still faintly audible, and very lovely. People gathered round to listen to the impromptu flute serenade. The musician looked a bit abashed at the attention and perhaps wished for a convenient off-ramp, but gamely played the whole piece. The crowd clapped enthusiastically when he stopped and quickly packed up. I was close to tears at the generosity of this spontaneous kindness, and thanked him from the bottom of my heart.
That amazing gift of flute music was the last music I heard.
My hearing took another steep nosedive, but I cherish the memory of that impulsive, impromptu flute solo, the swan song to my hearing. That lovely man gave me far more than he could have guessed.
When you hear good music, walk into its blessing and let it embrace you. Breathe it into your whole being and let it dance in your soul.
The re-enchantment of sound — that is my wish for you.