Veterans Day, 2024

I am thinking on this Veterans Day 2024 of the veterans in my family, and how they would respond to the election of this past week. 

I am thinking of a great, great, great, great uncle (not sure I have all the “greats” counted correctly), who we are told was an officer in the Union army during the Civil War. He was in a tent with a general who was playing cards at the time, when a Confederate spy broke into the tent and started to shoot. My ancestor put his body between the general and himself and took the bullet for the general and died. His name was Sill (my mother’s maiden name), and Fort Sill, southwest of Oklahoma City, is named after him.

I am thinking of my father’s brother, Uncle Bob, who was a marine during WWII in the Pacific, and who was in many of the most excruciating battles including Okinawa and Guadalcanal if I am not mistaken. 

I am thinking of my Uncle George on my mother’s side (who was my godfather) who served in Europe, and who was part of the troops who liberated Dachau. He told me stories of that life-changing experience. Near the end of his life, he told me that serving in WWII to stop Hitler and Naziism and antisemitism was the high point of his life. When he came to my ordination as a priest, he wrote me a letter saying I was joining the only army that ever really mattered: an army of persons aspiring to deepen peoples’ spiritual lives. (He was a non-practicing Catholic.)

And I am thinking of my brother Nat, recently deceased, who served in Vietnam. He lived long enough to become a soil engineer and return to Vietnam as an advisor to the government there, and made friends with persons whom he had fought against in the Vietnam war. And of my brother Tom, also recently deceased, who was in the army in Germany in the 1960’s.

And I am thinking of my friend and colleague Buck Ghosthorse, who came back from the Vietnam war deeply wounded in soul, but who recovered his Native American spiritual practices thanks to Wallace Black Elk, and devoted his life to healing others.

I wonder what these persons and millions of other men and women over the years who sacrificed life and limb, would say about the most recent presidential election. The one when America elected as its leader a person who mocks the disabled, lies without end, has declared that people who die in war are “suckers and losers,” admired Hitler, inspired a riot that killed seven policemen, interfered with the American election process, and is committed to freeing 1500 people in prison for that riot when he is sworn in. And called January 6th “a day of love,” though we all saw something else on our televisions that day. And so much more.

I spoke to a wise and caring man this week who is shattered by the election, and what it tells him of his fellow Americans who voted to put Trump into the highest office in the land and, one might argue, in the world. He said he was talking to a friend who was forbidden to vote for president because he was a felon who went to prison twice, but who noted that America has just elected a felon 34 times over as president. He and his friend are black.

There is much to grieve this Veterans Day 2024. And much to be grateful for, including millions of veterans over the centuries who sacrificed for democracy and just causes. Let us be grateful for what we can and those who, in Lincoln’s words, offered their “last full measure of devotion” so that a government “of the people, by the people and for the people, might not perish from this earth.” 

See Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest.

And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.

And Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering Book.

And Fox, Trump and the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election.

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.

Banner Image: Soldiers of the U.S. 64th Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, celebrate the Armistice on November 11, 1918 — the day that was eventually enshrined as our annual Veterans’ Day. Photo from the U.S. National Archives. Wikimedia Commons. 

Queries for Contemplation

What are your feelings and remembrances on this Veterans Day, 2024?

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

Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering Book

A centering book by Matthew Fox. This book of simple but rich meditations exemplifies the deep yet playful creation-centered spirituality of Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart was a 13th-century Dominican preacher who was a mystic, prophet, feminist, activist, defender of the poor, and advocate of creation-centered spirituality, who was condemned shortly after he died.
“These quiet presentations of spirituality are remarkable for their immediacy and clarity.” –Publishers Weekly.  

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.