Week of 10/14-19/2024: Politics, Resentment & Forgiveness

October 14, 2024: Blessed Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2024!
Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Matthew remembers fondly those indigenous elders who have had a great impact on his life. Among them: Buck Ghosthorse, Lakota teacher and friend; Sister Jose Hobday, Seneca elder and Franciscan sister; Eddie Kneebone, Aboriginal elder and activist; and Rod McAfee, an Akimel O’odham elder and husband to Linda Neale, author of The Power of Ceremony: Restoring the Sacred in Our Selves, Our Families, Our Communities. Matthew wishes that all peoples of the earth could learn to pray as indigenous peoples teach us. Maybe then we would work together to save the Earth and recover a common sense of the Sacred that surrounds us every day in every way.

“The Power of Ceremony” book cover by Linda Neale. Image from Better World Books.

October 15, 2024: Will America Replace a Weak Democracy with a Strong Theocracy?
If Trump wins, the same gang (Opus Dei) that gave us six Supreme Court judges who want to exonerate presidents of crimes committed while in office, also want a far-right-wing Catholic VP one step away from the presidency. And they have that in JD Vance. In contrast to Biden’s and Nancy Pelosi’s life-long Catholicism, with its emphasis on social justice, Vance’s version of Catholicism, which he adopted five years ago, is in tune with that of Kevin Roberts. According to The Guardian: “Kevin Roberts, architect of Project 2025, has close ties to radical Catholic group Opus Dei.” Roberts’ book on Project 2025, scheduled for release this autumn, was pulled at the last minute after Vance was nominated as vice president. It  includes a Foreword by Vance in which he praises Roberts for articulating a genuinely new future for conservatism…. Those who vote for Trump/Vance are clearly voting for Opus Dei and displacing a democracy with a theocracy.  Is this really what Americans want?

October 16, 2024: Thom Hartmann on a “Secular” or “Political” Antichrist
These days, it’s difficult not to make comparisons with one particular presidential candidate and the Antichrist. Hildegard of Bingen raged in the 12th century about how the Antichrist had entered Mother Church, bloodied her, and tried to take her over. Four hundred years later came the fresco painted by Luca Signorelli which inspired Matthew’s new book on MAGA and Trump as the Antichrist. And now we also have political commentator Thom Hartmann publishing an article the morning of the presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris called “Will Donald Trump Reveal Himself Tonight as the Antichrist?” Hartmann cites Jesus’ warning about “false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.” He is a “father of lies” and we need to know that “by their fruits you will know them.” Trump’s “fruits” are pretty obvious to anyone paying attention.

Trump, if not the biblical Antichrist, is at least a political one. Thom Hartmann proposes that the antichrist is here and running for president… again! Thom Hartmann Program

October 17, 2024: Rupert Sheldrake on the Politics & Science of Resentment
How it is that Donald Trump, for all his obvious shortcomings, has so great a following among American voters? In the book, Natural Grace: dialogues on creation, darkness, and the soul in spirituality and science, which Matthew co-authored with Rupert Sheldrake, they talk about grief and resentment. Rupert says that when we’re in a state of resentment, we link with those who’ve been in a state of resentment. He points out that Jungians such as James Hillman treat archetypes not just as existing in the collective unconscious, but as beings that possess us. I would say that we turn into them. He says: Our souls are influenced by the souls of others and by the collective psyches of our families, our nations, our religious traditions. How can we free ourselves from this resentment?

October 18, 2024: Resentment & The Politics of Resentment, continued
Matthew believes that resentment is the simmering hatred that makes itself known in the present. He says: “We fool ourselves if we underestimate its power for destruction.” Politicians, for instance, love to exploit resentment for their own purposes. Hitler knew a lot about resentment and the trick of creating scapegoats; otherwise he could not have achieved his programs of destruction. Meanwhile, in today’s presidential politics where one candidate talks openly of imprisoning his rivals and executing others, resentment is a sign of the Antichrist. Matthew says: “There is only one cure for resentment and that is forgiveness.”

2017 LGBT Solidarity Rally in front of the Stonewall Inn in solidarity with every immigrant, asylum seeker, refugee and every person impacted by Donald Trump’s policies. Wikimedia Commons.

October 19, 2024: From Resentment to Forgiveness: A Path to Freedom
The opposite of Resentment is Forgiveness, and Forgiveness can be a path to freedom. In order for forgiveness to happen, what is required is a great love, a love that beckons one to another place, another relationship. Forgiveness happens. Forgiveness is possible. Matthew once met a woman whose teenage son had been murdered in a drive-by killing in Los Angeles. They convicted the killer, who was about the same age as her son. She visited him in prison frequently and gradually they became friends. It turns out he grew up without a mother. She told Matthew that the friendship gave meaning to her son’s death. It also gives us meaning and hope to know that the human heart is big enough that it can move beyond hate and resentment to forgiveness.


Banner image: “Forgiveness is like the scent of a flower that clings to the heel of the boot that crushed it.” Photo by Judith Jackson on Flickr.

Recommended Reading

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.

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

Natural Grace: Dialogues on Creation, Darkness, and the Soul in Spirituality and Science 
by Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake

Natural Grace, a 208 page inspired dialogue between theologian Matthew Fox and scientist Rupert Sheldrake, unites wisdom and knowledge from unconventional angles. Considering themselves heretics in their own fields, Matthew and Rupert engage the conversation from postmodern and post-postmodern perspectives, deconstructing both religion and science—while setting the foundation for a new emerging worldview. Having outgrown the paradigms in which they were raised, both Fox and Sheldrake see it as part of their life missions to share the natural synthesis of spirituality and science rooted in a paradigm of evolutionary cosmology.


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2 thoughts on “Week of 10/14-19/2024: Politics, Resentment & Forgiveness”

  1. In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day on October 14, 2024, and All Blessed Days:

    “Upon suffering beyond suffering, the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world…. I see a time of seven generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things, and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for their wisdom. I salute the Light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that Center within and I at that place within me, we shall be as One.”
    — Lakota war leader Crazy Horse

    Quote taken from “Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for A World Falling Apart” (2024), by
    Brian D. McLaren; chpt. 8, p.101: “Seek Indigenous Wisdom”.

  2. October 20, 2024
    Please talk more about forgiveness. Does it mean that you say ” Oh, it’s OK, I forgive you.” My SOUL needs to understand this.
    Thank you,
    Rose

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