In Saturday’s DM, we meditated on the lessons of Extravagance, Generosity, Magnanimity and Expansion that the universe teaches us. And in yesterday’s DM, we meditated on Interdependence and Compassion as habits of the universe that can become incarnated in us.
The word for “compassion” in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic comes from the word for womb or rehem in Hebrew. In calling us to compassion, we are reminded that the universe is God’s womb, a place of gestation and fertility and creativity therefore. A very vast womb indeed, science is now telling us: Two trillion galaxies big and still expanding. Creativity and birthing and interdependence are everywhere.
It follows that another habit of the universe is creativity. This is clear in our current view of the universe, but we cannot overstate how unlike this is in comparison to the machine universe of the modern era. Newton saw the universe as a machine. Rupert Sheldrake describes Newton’s universe this way: There was no freedom or spontaneity anywhere in nature. Everything had already been perfectly designed.
What we now know is that from the first millisecond of the Fireball 13.8 billion years ago, the universe has been teeming with creativity. Birthing, begetting, dying, and being reborn—all this happens to stars and planets, galaxies and microbes, as well as plants, birds, animals and humans. Creativity is baked into the universe.
As Meister Eckhart put it: “What does God do all day long? God lies on a maternity bed giving birth.”
Eckhart calls compassion “an ocean” on more than one occasion. One feels the fetal waters of grace as he develops that image ever richer. Compassion means that God sets the soul in the highest and purest place which it can occupy: In space, in the sea, in a fathomless ocean, and there God works compassion. Therefore the prophet says: ‘Lord, have compassion on the people who are in you.
Panentheism reminds us that we are swimming in a sea of divine grace called compassion. We breathe compassion in and out daily if we are awake and aware. He cites from the first epistle of John (4:16f):
Anyone who lives in love lives in God,
and God lives in him or her.
Love will come to its perfection in us…
because even in this world
we have become as he is.
We are in God and God is in us. Compassion is the best name we can give to God, Eckhart teaches, and we, as sons and daughters and images of God are sons or daughters of compassion. It follows that God’s peace prompts fraternal service, so that one creature sustains the other. One is enriching the other, that is why all creatures are interdependent.
Our creativity, vast and wondrous and diverse as it is, is to be used for spreading compassion and justice. This is the way we imitate God, as Thomas Aquinas reminds us. This is our acting as co-creators with God. How are we doing?
Adapted from Matthew Fox, “Compassion is an Ocean—The Mystical Side to Compassion,” in Fox, Passion For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart, pp. 440-446.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth, p. 47.
And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, pp. 178-187.
And Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet.
And Fox, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp. 245-383.
And Fox, “Chapter Four: Creativity and Compassion: From a Fetish with the Cross to an Exploration of the Empty Tomb, in Fox, “A Spirituality Named Compassion, pp. 104-139.
Banner Image: “Hubble Sees the Force Awakening in a Newborn Star — In the center of the image, partially obscured by a dark, Jedi-like cloak of dust, a newborn star shoots twin jets of superheated gas out from its rotation axis into space at more than 100,000 miles per hour as a sort of birth announcement to the universe. This celestial lightsaber lies not in a galaxy far, far away but rather inside our own Milky Way.” Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI
Queries for Contemplation
If our divinization and God-likeness is manifest in our marrying of our creativity and the many ways we birth compassion whether in our politics, economics, art, education, religion and parenting, how do you think we are doing? How can we do better?
Recommended Reading
Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart
Matthew Fox’s comprehensive translation of Meister Eckhart’s sermons is a meeting of true prophets across centuries, resulting in a spirituality for the new millennium. The holiness of creation, the divine life in each person and the divine power of our creativity, our call to do justice and practice compassion–these are among Eckhart’s themes, brilliantly interpreted and explained for today’s reader.
“The most important book on mysticism in 500 years.” — Madonna Kolbenschlag, author of Kissing Sleeping Beauty Goodbye.
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
Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet
Because creativity is the key to both our genius and beauty as a species but also to our capacity for evil, we need to teach creativity and to teach ways of steering this God-like power in directions that promote love of life (biophilia) and not love of death (necrophilia). Pushing well beyond the bounds of conventional Christian doctrine, Fox’s focus on creativity attempts nothing less than to shape a new ethic.
“Matt Fox is a pilgrim who seeks a path into the church of tomorrow. Countless numbers will be happy to follow his lead.” –Bishop John Shelby Spong, author, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Living in Sin
Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox renders Thomas Aquinas accessible by interviewing him and thus descholasticizing him. He also translated many of his works such as Biblical commentaries never before in English (or Italian or German of French). He gives Aquinas a forum so that he can be heard in our own time. He presents Thomas Aquinas entirely in his own words, but in a form designed to allow late 20th-century minds and hearts to hear him in a fresh way.
“The teaching of Aquinas comes through will a fullness and an insight that has never been present in English before and [with] a vital message for the world today.” ~ Fr. Bede Griffiths (Afterword).
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
3 thoughts on “Creativity & Compassion: More Lessons from the Cosmos”
Innovators in science, psychology, education, government, and sociology are constantly coming up with ways of addressing the problems of our post-modern world. As soon as we as a people identify problems, innovators come up how to solve them. We are a creative species and good at solving problems. I believe the main reason problems remain is because those in charge—politicians and heads and boards of corporations and just selfish people—prefer the status quo. In some way, the status quo serves them. Educators, for example, know how best to educate students, but parents and politicians (thinking they know better or just because they want the power) keep teachers from doing so. Innovators know how to sustainably create electricity, but big oil companies constantly impede our progress. The issue is not knowing how to solve problems, the issue lies elsewhere. Listening to the actual experts in each field of endeavor would go a long way toward solving the issues facing society.
There are many ordinary people of Faith around the world who are daily doing many acts of compassion and kindness in their daily responsibilities with others. Most of these daily acts are probably unrecognized and unappreciated by others, including ourselves, so we need to open our hearts, sensitivities, and awareness of gratitude and it’s expression for one another because of our interdependence and fundamental Sacred Loving DIVERSE ONENESS of All Living Beings, Creatures, elementals in Our Beautiful Sacred Mother Earth and within All Spiritual Dimensions of Our Evolving CREATION & COSMOS… GOD’S SPIRIT of DIVINE LOVE~WISDOM~CREATIVITY IS IMMANENT & TRANSCENDENT within, through, among ALL of US… in the Sacred Process of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT….
As Canada grows into becoming the 51st State (or rather, perhaps, the USA becoming the next province of the Canadian identity), may the transition be done with compassion; with reciprocity, conviviality, et symbiosis.
May the way forward maintain the Canadian relationship with the Crown vital and vibrant.
May the way forward recognize that to make American Great Again all it needs is Canadian sovereignty.
May the way forward hold steadfast to the biophilia et ecospirituality foundational principles Canadiens value and espouse; (and “mul8” — that is, emulate).
May the way forward emphasize, not so much economics but moreso in ecumenology.
May the way forward across the heath and landscapes of the real 49th parallel, fill our souls and spirits with the fullness of being “heathens” for the 21st Century.
Need I say more?
DAS