February 3, 2025: Deepening Our Spiritual Warriorhood with John of the Cross & Others
A reader asked, “How can we sustain ourselves in such trying times?” As we wrestle with our call as mystics, prophets and spiritual warriors, Matthew suggests the Four Paths as a spiritual tool. He cites St. John of the Cross as a powerful example of one who faced terribly difficult times in the face of daily beatings and abuse within a Carmelite prison and who used his creative gifts to persevere. His poem on the Dark Night reveals that challenging time. He speaks of the power of silence and emptying, the Via Negativa, and the healing power of art as the Via Creativa and Transformativa. His poem, The Canticle, is a shining example of the Via Positiva.
February 4, 2025: The Four Paths: Practice for the Spiritual Warrior in Us All
As fascist authoritarianism and oligarchy invades our country from within, it is time for our spiritual warrior to stand up and be counted. Matthew says in Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ that we must be like camels that fill their hump with water in order to walk through a dry and parched desert. This means a spiritual warrior must be ever more in love with life, ever more committed to biophilia, ever more thankful for life and breath and one’s time on Earth. Drinking all that beauty in is what the Via Positiva is all about. And this will give us energy to walk through the dark valleys and parched deserts.
February 5, 2025: If the Anti-Christ Were President, He Might Be Thinking This….
I will destroy democracy and replace it with an Autocracy or Oligarchy of billionaires who will be beholden to me. I will expel all government workers who do not kneel and adore me. This includes all FBI personnel who investigated the 1600 people who, on my orders charged the nation’s capitol in a violent fashion on January 6 to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. I will fire all DOJ lawyers who investigated the same event. I will appoint a head of FBI who will go after my enemies. I will appoint a head of DOJ who goes after my enemies. I will require no-conscience obedience from all congressmen and women in my party and they will surrender to my every declaration. I will kill as many environmental laws as I possibly can—to hell with Climate Change and the future of the planet. I will expel all Palestinians from Gaza and build a resort there. I will expel millions of immigrants and their families and lock them up in Guantanamo Bay prison.
February 6, 2025: Actions People are Taking to Combat Today’s Purge, Coup & Democracide
One fine organization that has arisen to take action during this time is Indivisible. It bears all the marks of a community of spiritual warriors, such as we have been meditating on lately. Here is one action you can take: If you are concerned with a president giving an unelected individual, Elon Musk, access to your personal information as maintained by the Treasury Department, The Privacy Act of 1974 states: No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of the individual to whom the record pertains……. Send this, with your signature to privacy@treasury.gov.
February 7, 2025: The Coup & You & US: Time For Spiritual Warriorhood
This is a time for spiritual warriorhood, of this there is no doubt. Here are some headlines from a concerned and thoughtful press, the very press that the current regime, under the aegis of Elon Musk and his co-president, is trying to destroy. Regarding Trump’s promise to “take over” Gaza and “own” it, with Netanyahu smiling at his side, David Remnick says: Such a policy represents ethnic cleansing. Morality is of no interest where there is a real estate deal to be made.* Michael Moore: The actual Coup in DC is underway. Moore says that we can stop him through the courts, in Congress, mass actions of civil disobedience, calling on police to join with us “to block the only person the Supreme Court has declared can break the law.”** From Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: “Of course it’s a coup: Miss the obvious, lose your republic.”***
February 8, 2025: Bad Religion’s Role in the Current Coup
Russell Vought, the newly voted-in Director of the OMB, is a Christian nationalist and a prime architect of Project 2025. But Vought’s Christianity is clearly at odds with a healthy Christianity that teaches truth-telling, love, justice and compassion.
Matthew says that Project 2025 is full of antichrist values. Interestingly, the day Vought was approved by the Republican senate this week, President Trump appeared at the National Prayer Breakfast and announced that he would be signing a new executive order to appoint AG Pam Bondi to head a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” in the government, and would create a new “presidential commission on religious liberty” headed by televangelist Paula White. So much for the separation of Church and State. And who determines what is “Christian” and what is “anti-Christ Christian”?
* David Remnick, “The Madness of Donald Trump,” The New Yorker, February 5, 2025.
** Michael Moore, “The Coup D’Etat has Begun.”
*** Timothy Snyder, “Of course it’s a coup: Miss the obvious, lose your republic.” Substack
Banner image: Time for spiritual warriors to rise up and slay the beast. “David and Goliath.” Painting attributed to Charles Errard the Younger. Wikimedia Commons.
Recommended Reading
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.
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
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
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
3 thoughts on “Week of 2/3-8/2025: The Four Paths & Overcoming Evil”
Matthew, I have been recommending your prophetic powerful little book written before the presidential election — “Trump and the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ “ — because it still summarizes what you predicted would happen to American democracy/values and our humanitarian way of life, as we’re now experiencing under Trump. Too bad more Americans did not read your book and also didn’t heed the warnings of many other social experts and leaders. Now, many US citizens, congressional/social leaders, and courts are fighting back together to defend our Democracy and democratic values such as Truth, Peace, Justice, Equality, Freedom Healing, Compassion… with Faith in God’s Spirit within and among Us….
Check this out spiritual warriors! https://www.facebook.com/AltUSNationalParkService?mibextid=wwXIfr
(Alt US National Park Service). Over 3 million followers, many of whom are federal employees (not just national park employees). Others, like me, are a coalition doing research and posting in comments. This is a potent vehicle for the resistance. News is reported here before I see it in legacy media like the NYT!!
When something is cheered by Moscow and Beijing it can’t be good for us. Even if your spirit is so insensate that you don’t give a damn about eradicating child hunger and disease, (1) think about the farmers in Republican states who are already saying they fear for their future because their grain (thus their income) is no longer being bought by U.S.A.I.D. for distribution around the world; or (2) think about national security. From the article: “U.S.A.I.D. is no longer monitoring bird flu in 49 countries as it was three weeks ago; it has stopped working with at-risk youth in Central America to prevent gang violence that spurs migration; it is not cleaning up fields poisoned by Agent Orange in Vietnam; it is not eradicating polio; it is not collaborating with communities in countries like Syria, Morocco and Kazakhstan to reduce vulnerability to radicalization. The costs of dismantling these programs — and thus perpetrating these harms — will be felt for generations to come.” The chickens will come home to roost sooner than you think, and they may be bringing bird flu with them.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/opinion/usaid-trump-samantha-power.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwY2xjawIVwftleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHevaWt7osgcebmSoCSIle7c6FfM2Mes6297PRvQ_mTqOZZ21JER2K2pFhw_aem_5yT20XydbZ6fQQkOXSYTsQ