Week of 11/11-16/2024: Navigating These Times

November 11, 2024: Veterans Day 2024
Matthew reflects on the veterans in his family. A long-ago uncle served as a Union officer in the Civil War. He was in a tent with a general who was playing cards. A Confederate spy broke in and started to shoot. Matthew’s ancestor placed his body in front of the general and took the bullet. Fort Sill, near Oklahoma City, is named after him. Matthew’s Uncle Bob served as a marine in the Pacific during WWII. Matthew’s Uncle George was one of the soldiers to liberate Dachau, a highpoint of his life. Matthew’s brother, Tom, recently deceased, was in the army in Germany in the 1960’s. Matthew’s brother, Nat, who also passed recently, served in the Vietnam War, as did Matthew’s friend, Buck Ghosthorse. Buck experienced great soul suffering as a result of the war but experienced healing through the power of Native American spirituality as shared with him by Wallace Black Elk. Let us be grateful for 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.” May their sacrifice not be in vain.

November 12, 2024: From Buddhism: More Spiritual Practices To Deal with Grief
A fine book came out this year: We Were Made For These Times: 10 Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption, by Kaira Jewel Lingo. Kaira Jewel is African American and her father was a minister who worked with Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He became a “devoted student of Thich Nhat Hahn” and was ordained a Buddhist Dharma teacher in 2008. She cites her father: When we see ourselves as victims, that is the separate self.  When we see ourselves as beloved, that is no-self. Her husband happens to be Father Adam Bucko, with whom Matthew co-authored the book, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation. Together, Kaira and Adam are creating a center dedicated to both sacred contemplation and sacred activism. One part of Kaira Jewel’s book is: My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.*

November 13, 2024: Are We Made For These Times?  More Practices from Kaira Jewel
Are we really made for these times? What does it take, spiritually speaking, to be up for times like ours? We are considering some practices as laid out by Kaira Jewel Lingo from her tradition as a nun in Thich Nhat Hahn’s community in Plum Village, France, and other places around the world. Here is one: Moving throughout your day notice the people, animals, plants, situation in your life and silently remind yourself, ‘This is me.’ On seeing a flower or a tree, ‘this is also me.’ Encountering other persons, ‘they are also me. I am also them.’ You may also recite this Plum Village song: And when I rise, let me rise like a bird, joyfully. And when I fall, let me fall like a leaf, gracefully, without regret.

November 14, 2024: What Happened Ten Days Ago Today?
Ten days ago, an apparent majority of Americans linked hands with Christian nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Putin to return to the White House a man who is a convicted felon and rapist, who stole hundreds of classified documents and stored them in unsecured places, and who instigated a violent insurrection of our government and then ridiculously called it “a day of love.” The death of American democracy and the hope it extended to others be damned. Climate change be damned. The world may never be the same again. How do we fight this? How do we resolve this?

November 15, 2024: Otto Rank on Curing a Weakening Democracy
As post-mortems continue to emerge on the recent election, one concern is evident: 87 million Americans eligible to vote chose not to—the greatest number of non-voters in American history. Clearly democracy has to reinvent itself today. And it is not just in America that democracy is undergoing deep rupture, Europe is also beset with breakdowns. And they can no longer look to America for some hope. Americans, by apparently voting for the man who appointed the right-wing majority of the unsupreme court, also voted to kill all checks and balances on presidential overreach. Psychologist Otto Rank, a great thinker and soul of the 20^th century, said, regarding a weakened democracy: The only remedy is an acceptance of the fundamental irrationality of the human being and life in general. Contrary to “typical intellectuals,” we need “a real allowance” for the irrational and “its dynamic functioning in human behavior, which would not be lifelike without it.” The irrational includes the mystical and the arts and what religion brings to the table.

November 16, 2024: Love, Mysticism, Anger: Healing  of Democracy via the Irrational?
Like us, psychologist Otto Rank was living during a time of rising fascism. His remedy has to do with calling on the “irrational.” He is calling our attention to the excessive rationality of the modern era and its mechanism and reductionism, indeed patriarchy itself. What is included in the irrational? Such things as music, art, tenderness, forgiveness, myth, love…. Without these, we would lose our zest for living. The irrational is that which “does not fit into our scheme of things.”  He and Einstein are on the same page, that values come not from the “rational brain” but from the “intuitive brain” as Einstein puts it. We need, says Rank, a whole new civilization—one that includes the irrational—because “human nature is at bottom irrational.” 

*Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made For These Times: 10 Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

Banner image: Fight for Our Future. This photo was taken during the Pittsburgh Earth Day Climate Strike on 4/22/22 but is clearly as important now as ever. Photo by Mark Dixon on Flickr.

Recommended Reading

Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation

Authors Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox encourage us to use our talents in service of compassion and justice and to move beyond our broken systems–economic, political, educational, and religious–discovering a spirituality that not only helps us to get along, but also encourages us to reevaluate our traditions, transforming them and in the process building a more sacred and just world. Incorporating the words of young activist leaders culled from interviews and surveys, the book provides a framework that is deliberately interfaith and speaks to our profound yearning for a life with spiritual purpose and for a better world.
“Occupy Spirituality is a powerful, inspiring, and vital call to embodied awareness and enlightened actions.”
~~ Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist and author of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

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.