I write this on the morning of Election Day. A lot of waiting and patience awaits us all today and maybe tomorrow.
Today is also my father’s birthday. Were he still living, he would be 110 years old today. I write this at my desk with his picture on it, actually a picture of him and myself standing side by side on a beach in Florida in the background. My hair is all brown, no white whatsoever. We both have smiles on our faces and the wind is blowing his jacket open. His hair is all white. I have lit a candle to accompany the picture.
My father voted Republican most of his adult life (my mother, Democratic). But I don’t think he would recognize that party today with what Trump has made of it. I remember how disturbed he was by Watergate and how let down he felt by Nixon. After Watergate, he barely spoke of Nixon ever again.
He would be appalled by the lack of character in the man Trump. His bullying of others, his put-down of women, his pettiness in not being able to admit he lost an election and his willingness to overthrow the government on January 6 (last night in his final talk of the election he used the “b” word to denounce Nancy Pelosi).
My father was what they used to call a “man’s man.” He escaped poverty and the Irish ghetto by way of sports that got him a football scholarship to Villanova. Then on to coach at the University of Wisconsin. He had a strong sense of moral conscience and, as a football coach, a way to teach young men to be men. One thing about sports—you learn to lose as well as win with dignity.
He died in late October, 1989, and I flew to Atlanta to lead his funeral which we held on November 5th, his birthday. Six weeks later I went silent for a year as demanded by Cardinal Ratzinger then head of the Doctrine of the Faith. My family members and I felt it was a blessing that he passed not knowing that I was being silenced by the church.
When I visited him on his death bed to say my goodbyes, I said to him, “I bet you wish I had just been an ordinary parish priest, don’t you?” He squeezed my hand tightly and said in a firm voice, “Yes, I do.” And I replied, “Well, Dad, I don’t think I could have done what I have done as a priest theologian without the courage you taught me.”
Dad was a very sincere and practicing Catholic. On the day of my first Mass he said to me, “this is the happiest day of my life.” He respected women, including my strong-hearted mother and his three daughters. He loved nature and music and was pleased to have raised his family in Wisconsin.
I received this prayer from Pope Francis in the mail today and it seems fitting for this moment in (American) history. It is part of his important encyclical on saving the sacred Earth, Laudato Sí.
God of love, show us our place in this world
as channels of your love
for all the creatures of this earth,
for not one of them is forgotten in your sight.
Enlighten those who possess power and money
that they may avoid the sin of indifference,
that they may love the common good, advance the weak,
and care for this world in which we live.
The poor and the earth are crying out.
O Lord, seize us with our power and light,
help us to protect all life,
to prepare for a better future,
for the coming of your Kingdom
of justice, peace, love and beauty.
Praise be to you!
Amen.
See Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest, pp. 54f., 60-62, 183, 373f.
And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ; A Handbook to the 2024 Election.
And Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine.
Banner Image: “The Peaceable Kingdom” woodcut by Fritz Eichenberg for The Catholic Worker, 1950. Image uploaded to Flickr by Jim Forest.
Queries for Contemplation
What memories do you hold of your father that inspire you? What do you feel on reading Pope Francis’ poem about the sacredness of the earth and how it speaks to our current election?
Recommended Reading
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest (Revised/Updated Edition)
Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. Five new chapters in this revised and updated edition bring added perspective in light of the author’s continued journey, and his reflections on the current changes taking place in church, society and the environment.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible spiritual revolutionary enlivens the mind and emboldens the heart — must reading for anyone interested in courage, creativity, and the future of religion.”
—Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self
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
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.
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God
9 thoughts on “Election Day and My Father’s Birthday”
The earth is the earth and it does not speak to or of elections. Just as the sun, the moon and the stars do not rotate around the earth as its centre, the earth does not rotate around the US, with or without its election, as its centre. — BB.
November 6, 2024
This is the darkest day in my life as an American. Please tell us all, how do we survive the next four years with this man who wants yo destroy American democracy? I thought of our founders, the writers of our precious Constitution. I wonder if they are crying at what has become of our blessed America. All the beautiful animals you named, they are at peril of being wiped out forever. Please tell us Matthew, how do we go forward when this man will try to overthrow the very foundation of our country?
Many of us, including our Beautiful Sacred Mother Earth and Her living creatures, are grieving this morning for the loss of Kamala Harris’ bid for presidency, and the challenging times ahead with the Trump administration the next four years. Hopefully, most of our democratic institutions and leadership will survive and remain strong. Spiritually I feel so sad, and with the thought, ‘Why have You abandoned Us?’
However, my Faith does not allow me to despair, and God’s Spirit of Love~Light~Life sometimes works in mysterious ways beyond our human comprehension…
The prayer from Pope Francis at the end of today’s DM can help console our grief and Faith….
Me, I refuse to do what I did in 2016 — be in stunned shock for weeks. I’m sick of living in a state of existential dread. 8 am Wednesday morning, I’m already looking for women’s self-defense classes, and I haven’t even had my coffee yet. It’s time for li’l’ol’ 65-year-old cancer-surviving me, to finally learn how to fight back against bullies.
I am speaking from Cumbria on the North West coast of England ( Opposite the land of your forbears)on this saddest of days for our world. I echo Rosalie’s words and ask you Matthew how do we keep hope in our hearts with this man at the head of the most powerful nation.
What do I do with the RAGE?
The Bible is used as a justification for patriarchy and male dominance.
But our deepest Soul, our True, Biblically-attested, highest-level Spirit-Soul, says otherwise.
Remember that, and stand strong.
The Mystical Truth, clearly and boldly woven into key theological passages such as Genesis 1, the proclamation of God to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM”, and the Gospel John’s Prologue, are each a clear message, that the core Biblical Mystical Revelation, which Jesus and the New Testament authors proclaimed as Highest Truth, are ESSENTIAL within the Christian faith. And that Mystical Truth is one of EQUALITY.
Jesus told women NOT to “just shut up” and stay within expected roles (Martha) — he welcomed them as students and sisters, equal to the “brothers” (disciples) he taught.
The male disciples fought back, of course: Mary Magdalen was denied her equality and rightful recognition.
Some things never change.
But the Mystical Message in the heart of both Old and New Testaments has NOT CHANGED. It is built into the human soul; “we are made in God’s Image.” That’s a clear Mystical reference, a bold neon arrow saying “see the One direct-Mystical-Revelation as Illustration for this message.” The same Revelation is built into EVERY human soul. No distinctions of gender or class, in message or in mystics. All are welcome in the Spirit.
Remember that, when men try to deny women our voice, our equality, our dignity.
amen
Thank you for this wonderful tribute to your dear father and for the prayer. My father was a deeply flawed man, but he always encouraged me as a severely disabled girl and woman not to be held back by the many barriers, structural and attitudinal, that I had to deal with. He was also committed to the protection of the environment. At this time of deep fear and concern, not only by us in the U.S., but also by the many in the world who looked to us as a model of democracy, I think we need to develop a perspective that reminds us that there have been many crises over the centuries, and people of faith have always dug deep and continued to work for peace and justice–even when the situation looked hopeless. This election touches my family as my son in law, who has been in this county since age 7, had to keep his Philippian citizenship and did not have time to go through the process of U.S. citizenship because he had to travel to the Philippines whenever his elderly mother needed him. She has since died, so he can pursue citizenship here. Of course, he has worked, paid taxes, etc., but under the new administration he would be in danger of deportation; imagine how many others are in peril, especially those of color like him. This would be a good time to pray without ceasing.