In yesterday’s DM, I made reference to the anniversaries of January 6 and November 5 as being demarcations for our time of political apocalypse and what awaits us come January 20, inauguration day.
Having grieved those anniversaries, having dealt with the anger that grief awakens and the sorrow that it brings, many Americans have now undergone a kind of kenosis or emptying as a prelude for what comes next. One carries anger, sorrow and grief with one as we prepare to struggle and resist in the awareness that in less than two years there will be a new election and until that time arrives there is much work to do.
Mahatma Gandhi taught that spirituality and politics go together and those who do not recognize that do not know what religion means. He criticized Augustine’s dualism between religion and politics this way according to Gandhian scholar Raghavan Iyer, author of The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi: “The Augustinian contrast meant that the political order could never be elevated but could only be endured.”
Is politics something one endures–or is there another option?
Gandhi recognized another attitude toward politics, that of the non-dualist Thomas Aquinas who, “unlike Augustine, stressed the vital role of the political order as necessary for the attainment of the highest earthly good.”
If the political order is vital for the attainment of “the highest earthly good,” moral outrage is indeed in order when a fascist project like Project 2025 lurks on the horizon and oligarchs and their corporations line up to render offers and beseech favors at Mar-a-Lago.
As Thom Hartmann puts it, “the oligarchs are no longer just at the gates,” but are “moving into the White House.”
Latin American liberation theologian Jon Sobrino reminds us how we enter a process of “history as salvation.” And today’s science, as Brian Swimme reminds us, culminates in a new creation story centered entirely on history also—the history of our universe of which our species is a recent arrival, though our origins go back to the fireball 13.8 billion years ago.
A new word has been coined to name that reality: Cosmogenesis. The history is one of birthing, of calling forth our own evolution. The Via Creativa moves center stage. “History as creation, creation as history.” With genesis at its center, history, genesis and creation become central.
The ruptures occurring today in politics and human consciousness as a whole can be preludes to a new future. But survival requires that our future tackles “selfishness, greed and apathy,” as environmentalist Gus Speth observed in yesterday’s DM.
These are spiritual issues and science and gee-whiz technology cannot solve them alone. Spirituality and spiritual warriors are part of the required medicine. And that means all workers and all citizens.
To be continued.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, pp. 132-157, 156f., 277ff.
See also: Jon Sobrino, “Christian Prayer and New Testament Theology: A Basis for Social Justice and Spirituality,” in Fox, ed., Western Spirituality: Historical Roots, Ecumenical Routes, pp. 76-115.
See also, M. D. Chenu, “Body and Body Politic in the Creation Spirituality of Thomas Aquinas,” in Fox, Western Spirituality: Historical Roots, Ecumenical Routes, pp. 193-215.
See also: And Fox, “Spiritual Warriorhood,” in Fox, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths, pp. 404-422.
And Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation.
Banner Image: People power, reclaiming human waste: A volunteer team builds a composting outhouse at Parc y Dderwen permaculture smallholding, Pembrokeshire, UK. Photo by Permaculture Association on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
We are told by Gandhi that politics and spirituality together provide “an attainment of the highest human good.” How is that going for us? How can we unite to make it better? How does a new creation story that emphasizes cosmogenesis contribute to enabling the spiritual warrior in us all?
Recommended Reading
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
Western Spirituality: Historical Roots, Ecumenical Routes
In this book, Fox gathers scholars from various cultures and traditions such as Helen Kenik, Jon Sobrino, Nicolas Berdyaev, Rosemary Ruether, M. D. Chenu, Mary Jose Hobday, Ronald Miller, Monika Hellwig, James Kenney, Justin O’Brien and others to approach creation spirituality from many traditions and many angles.
“An exciting and important book…a pleasant alternative to the oppressive burden of the fall/redemption tradition.” ~ New Review of Books and Religion
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths
Matthew Fox calls on all the world traditions for their wisdom and their inspiration in a work that is far more than a list of theological position papers but a new way to pray—to meditate in a global spiritual context on the wisdom all our traditions share. Fox chooses 18 themes that are foundational to any spirituality and demonstrates how all the world spiritual traditions offer wisdom about each.“Reading One River, Many Wells is like entering the rich silence of a masterfully directed retreat. As you read this text, you reflect, you pray, you embrace Divinity. Truly no words can fully express my respect and awe for this magnificent contribution to contemporary spirituality.” –Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit
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
8 thoughts on “Politics, Science, Spirituality and Spiritual Warriors”
The only ‘new creation story’ came about as the New Covenant, more than 2,000 years ago with the birth of Jesus the Christ. In saying that, are we not to put on ‘the armour of Christ’ and follow ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’? Warriors in Christ or disciples in faithful service, call ourselves what you will. The Holy Spirit also resides in the ‘here and now’ and will deliver us in the ‘here and now’. — BB.
The New Creation story is no different from the Old. It is imagination that has been dumbed. Imagination begins with the realization that I AM, and that IT IS. Thomas Aquinas, Hildegard of Bingen, Mahatma Gandhi together with countless others needed no “New” Creation story. They were good with what already surrounded them and their own innate sense of Being. Jesus Christ, of course, had such realization to the highest human degree and out of it came wonderful political and spiritual advice, “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, give unto God what is God’s.” When we overemphasize the importance of politics in our lives we unwittingly minimize God. The roles and values need to be reversed. Wanting Greenland doesn’t mean getting it. If appointments are legally made, however distasteful, then only the democratic system can overturn them. Beyond that, a sufficient sense of outrage can be expressed through the media and on the streets or else by unsubscribing to a corrupted system. All the saints knew one great thing: that the only weapon to be deployed is Love; and that, in the words of Gandhi, “Prayer, properly understood and applied, is the most potent instrument of action.” Such makes for Spiritual Warriors.
Video with Kara Swisher is one of the best selections you have posted in a long time. Good job!
Counterbalanced with the unavailability of the video relative to MLK Day and the Inauguration. What gives?
Thank you for asking, Jsue – it appears that between our embedding that excellent, evenhanded video in the post yesterday and the post being published today, that YouTube account was terminated. Whether this was due to actual TOA violations in other videos, YT cracking down on left-leaning voices in advance of the First Felon’s inauguration, or compliance in advance on the part of the content creator, there’s no way to know. The video has now been replaced with another on protests against the upcoming inauguration.
So what do you think about CA becoming the 11th Province of Canada? Perhaps, along with WA, and OR, and even Alaska? Or perhaps, just the 4th Territory of Canada?
You would have so many benefits of goverance that would surprise and be extravagant for Creation Centred Spirituality.
Lovingly et Tree-Fully Si? Oui?
Our SOURCE~CREATOR’S SPIRIT of DIVINE LOVE ~Wisdom~Truth~Peace~Justice~Healing~Transformation~Creativity~Compassion~LOVING DIVERSE ONENESS… Is the Ongoing Story of Our Evolving Creation, Humanity, and Eternal Souls in Our Sacred multidimensional/multiverse COSMOS in the Sacred Process of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT….
Politics is of human origin and thus corruptible, and we should not rely on any politician or political movement but, rather, focus on the work of spiritual warriors like Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as leaders. There may be an ultimate but temporary positive effect on politics, but as we know, politics change, evil pops up again and again, and there must always be the strength to persist in good works through it all–and that comes only from faith IMO.
What most do not get is that as long as we nurture the illusion of our separateness, it does not matter what type of enlightened systems we imagine into being so we can cope with the consequences of this illusion, we will, in our separateness, manage to recreate the same or similar problems that our enlightened systems are designed to address, heal or eliminate. Our clinging to our separateness is the cause of these problems. Whatever enlightened systems we imagine into being to assist us in coping with this state of being are only Band-Aids on the symptoms of our deeper illness, they only temporarily hide the infection. They heal nothing because humanity loves his separateness and will always find a way to corrupt any enlightened system we imagine into being. Rather, if one wants to assist one’s fellow man to live in peace and harmony with others then teach him how to transcend the illusion of his separateness.