In yesterday’s DM, I asked the question whether the crashing down of so many elements of our “civilization” might suggest we ought to start over by beginning with the cosmos itself. When we lose a sense of the whole, we become lost.
That is why peoples the world over consider creation stories as being central to what they teach their children and to how they envision the universe and their place and responsibility in it. One reader responded by telling me of her teaching children such things in a Maria Montessori school. I have celebrated Montessori’s work in my book on The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human and elsewhere.
This is why the Bible begins with a creation story that emphasizes the goodness and very goodness—the “original blessing” that all of creation, humanity included, is.
If a culture fails to begin with the big picture, human greed and envy and violence fill the void. As the aboriginal people of Australia teach, “Our Dreamtime teaches the rules for living in the environment.” And “dreamtime” is about entering into the continuous creation and our place in it.
That is what Rabbi Heschel warned us about when he said, “forfeit the sense of awe and the universe becomes a marketplace for you.” Thomas Berry called us to the same reality when he said that using the Earth like it is an object to be bought, sold and abused will destroy it and us.
And when the sacred is lost we can only recover it by returning to the wonder that the universe provides us daily.
Oligarchy is born of such greed, envy and violence. The power of the few becomes the law of the land. It even becomes the arbiter of truth, because truth itself becomes a means to serve the purposes of the few.
This is apparent in today’s media world where billionaires like the Murdochs at Fox and Musk at X and those who link up with them own the means to overwhelm the airwaves with their version of what truth is. It is whatever they say, even if it is lies.
A culture without a living awareness of the cosmos is a narcissistic culture and is set up not only for oligarchy but for consumerism as if one’s identity is named by what one buys. “I buy therefore I am.” Or, “I can’t buy, therefore I barely exist.” Or, “I am so rich, I can buy up the housing market or SCOTUS or the presidency or the media or any other project that will make me ever richer and more powerful. I can buy politicians and make all the laws that favor my agenda.”
Today, with the news of our vast universe appearing daily with Webb Telescope and the rest, there is no excuse to fall ever deeper into narcissism and oligarchism.
To be continued
See Matthew Fox, The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human, pp. 105, 108.
And Fox, “Gifts of Wisdom: Rules for Living in the Universe,” in Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth, pp. 43-72.
And Fox, “Chapter 4: Cosmic, Universalist: Harmony, Beauty, Justice as Cosmic Energies,” in Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, pp. 66-80.
And Fox, Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations, pp. 361-365.
Banner Image: “The Planting of Seeds in the Fifth World: In the first days of the Fifth World, where we now dwell, the people and animals assumed the forms they now have. In the sky, the sun and moon took their places and the days and nights were brought into being.” Detail of a card by Navajo shaman/artist David Paladin.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you see a connection between the rise of Oligarchism and the demise of a cosmic awareness in our educational institutions, professions and media? How can we rise to the occasion to confront the despair this causes and the opening it provides for the super elite to buy up everything—media, government and education too—to accomplish their aims?
Recommended Reading
The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human
The A.W.E. Project reminds us that awe is the appropriate response to the unfathomable wonder that is creation… A.W.E. is also the acronym for Fox’s proposed style of learning – an approach to balance the three R’s. This approach to learning, eldering, and mentoring is intelligent enough to honor the teachings of the Ancestors, to nurture Wisdom in addition to imparting knowledge, and to Educate through Fox’s 10 C’s. The 10 C’s are the core of the A.W.E. philosophy and process of education, and include: compassion, contemplation, and creativity. The A.W.E. Project does for the vast subject of “learning” what Fox’s Reinvention of Work did for vocation and Original Blessing did for theology. Included in the book is a dvd of the 10 C’s put to 10 video raps created and performed by Professor Pitt.
“An awe-based vision of educational renewal.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox. He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
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
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
As Matthew Fox notes, when an aging Albert Einstein was asked if he had any regrets, he replied, “I wish I had read more of the mystics earlier in my life.” The 365 writings in Christian Mystics represent a wide-ranging sampling of these readings for modern-day seekers of all faiths — or no faith. The visionaries quoted range from Julian of Norwich to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Thomas Merton to Dorothee Soelle and Thomas Berry.
“Our world is in crisis, and we need road maps that can ground us in wisdom, inspire us to action, and help us gather our talents in service of compassion and justice. This revolutionary book does just that. Matthew Fox takes some of the most profound spiritual teachings of the West and translates them into practical daily mediations. Study and practice these teachings. Take what’s in this book and teach it to the youth because the new generation cannot afford to suffer the spirit and ethical illiteracy of the past.” — Adam Bucko, spiritual activist and co-founder of the Reciprocity Foundation for Homeless Youth.
5 thoughts on “A Sense of the Whole and the Holy vs. a Rampaging Oligarchy”
Remembering too that Rabbi Heschel also emphasized the the “goal of religious education is to develop a sense of wonder and the capacity for radical amazement”……Consider to the foundational work of both Jane Goodall (with chimpanzees) and Suzanne Simard (with trees) is established upon the Sacred Connectivity of all living things, “of all my relations”, of “Namwayut”, of “Ubuntu” depending upon the cultural lexicon being spoken.
Thank-you, Rev. Spence for referring to Suzanne Simard and Jane Goodall. I did not know about Suzanne and will now seek out her books.
Yes!! The spiritual, religious, social, and political answers to your questions Matthew are found in many of your books on Creation Spirituality, especially the ones reviewed and recommended in today’s DM: “Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth” and “Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.” Of course our individual responsibility is not only to read these spiritual books, but to be inspired by them in order to integrate them in our own unique ways on our personal and communal spiritual journeys with one another, with-in Beautiful Sacred Mother Earth/Nature, and With-in Our Ongoing and Present DIVINE LOVE~Wisdom~Co-Creative SOURCE SPIRIT in Our Eternal Souls and LOVING EVOLVING DIVERSE COSMOS and SPIRITUAL REALMS….
The awe of the cosmos, as provided by the James Webb and Hubble telescopes, is courtesy of generations of scientists and engineers, especially in the US, who shared their awe with us.
But the US is losing these cosmic explorers.
For decades, Republicans have been cutting funding to public schools and diverting money to unregulated, often substandard for-profit schools. STEM classes are decimated.
Ironically, the tech bro billionaires from India, and their “superior” programmers on tech visas, benefited from the INDIAN GOVERNMENT’S massively subsidized, extremely successful INVESTMENT in educating a generation of programmers, scientists, mathematicians — and English-language speakers, who are now being used by US companies to handle OUR phone messages, fill OUR tech service jobs remotely — and take OUR programmers’ jobs while working as cheap visa-slave labor.
If we want students to feel like enthusiastic participants in that cosmic majesty, we need to take back our schools from profiteers. We must demand a prioritized level of funding and pride by OUR government for science, tech, mathematics, and public education, and strongly condemn the lying, anti-science, conspiracy-theory-weaponized propaganda by right wing media and politicians. They have an agenda, paid for by billionaires,, to undermine OUR education.
Yes!