February 24, 2025: Elon Musk: The Mad King’s Mad Hatter?
If Trump is a mad king, then his co-conspirator seems to fill the role of mad hatter. In many adaptations of Alice in Wonderland, the hatter is the male lead despite being a supporting character. This seems to parallel Musk’s current role in the White House. Musk, of course, bought not only the election by pouring $290 million into it, but also solidified his non-elected place of power within Washington, where he is systematically demolishing our government. He is feverishly slashing personnel in all governmental departments from the IRS to FAA to FEMA, USAID, and the rest. He is walking proof that in America money can buy anything. But it doesn’t end there. He is also boosting far-right politics around the globe.*
February 25, 2025: How to Stand Up to a Mad King and His Mad Hatter
Some wise and practical advice has been circulating online about how to stand up to the current chaos being inflicted in Washington and around the country. Matthew has added a few suggestions of his own. Here is a sampling: Don’t use the wannabe king’s name. Refer to his policies and actions, but not his appearance or mental state. Don’t argue with his supporters. It only makes them feel important. No more hopeless/helpless talk. When you talk or post about his actions, assign them to “the Republican administration.” This will force Republicans to take responsibility for what is happening (and their lack of courage in stopping it.) Plus, they will get very concerned about their re-election.
February 26, 2025: Ways to Ground Oneself in Fierce Times of Apocalypse & Antichrist
It’s no secret that we are living in the times of the antichrist and the apocalypse. Fortunately, “apocalypse” also means revelation. Things are being revealed to be healed. Matthew gives us some ideas on how to stay grounded during these challenging times. Here are a few of them: Do not deny the darkness of these times. Ground yourself in the Via Positiva—beauty, nature, the cosmos. Find spiritual warriors to connect with as allies. Connect with Jesus, another powerful yet loving spiritual warrior. Read and study the mystics. Practice gratitude. Remember the Via Negativa—silence, emptying, letting go. Allow for your grief to have a voice. Practice art as meditation: painting, singing, dancing, etc. And remember to take care of yourself: rest, read, laugh, eat well, get outside.
February 27, 2025: A Meditation on Greed: Hildegard & Aquinas vs. Trump, Musk & Co.
As Trump, Musk, and other billionaires try to run our country into the ground, one man is standing up and speaking out, and that man is Bernie Sands. Going to key red districts to rail against the oligarchy, Bernie is drawing overflow crowds. He declared that it is “morally outrageous” when “the richest person on earth—who is a billionaire 384 times over—is ending health care to the poorest among us.” He further says: I’ll tell you about the most serious addiction problem we have in this country: That is the uncontrollable greed of this billionaire class….They want more wealth. They want more power. And they just cannot stop themselves. Thus we are asked to choose between the common good and the “handful of multi-billionaires [who] not only have extraordinary wealth but unprecedented economic, media and political power.”
February 28, 2025: Hildegard & Aquinas Speak Truth to Power Re: Avarice & Greed
Republicans have now passed a budget that cuts $860 billion from Medicaid and $250 billion from SNAP. One reason democracy was born was to help the superrich tone down their addiction to power. But as Aquinas said, “the greed for gain knows no limit and tends to infinity.” In addition, we see tRump and Musk, Vance and Thiel sidling up to Putin and his oligarchs and voting alongside them in the United Nations against democracies world over. Both Hildegard and Aquinas tell us that avarice/greed render the human heart cold and hard. Avarice is the opposite of compassion. Like the antichrist is the opposite of Christ.
March 1, 2025: Aquinas’s Medicine for Greed–Listen up, y’all!
Aquinas offers medicine for confronting greed in oneself or others. Since greed “knows no limits and tends toward infinity,” he proposes that people look elsewhere than money for the limitless and the infinite. And where is that to be found? In the spiritual. And he offers three instances. 1) He points out that humans can “never love too much.” 2) He says that the infinite is also found in knowledge. 3) A third and authentic way to experience the infinite, says Aquinas, is through our creativity. Such a life of love, knowledge, and creativity will not render you hard and coldhearted in your quest for the infinite—rather, you will make good friends, build community, share joy, and find meaning.
* How Elon Musk is boosting far-right politics across the globe.
**John Nichols, “Bernie Sanders Is Sending a Piercing Message About Musk and the Oligarchy,” The Nation, February 26, 2025.
Banner image: Gazing at a sunset. Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
Recommended Reading
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
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
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.
3 thoughts on “Week of 2/24-3/1/2025: Antidotes to Greed, Madness & Chaos”
…. “COSMIC CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS ~ DIVINE LOVE~WISDOM…. “ – Amen
— This is the ending of my prayer from yesterday’s Comment section.
Thank you for these powerful meditations.
Somehow, we have come to believe there is this one group of co-conspirators with Trump, and then there is the rest of us normal Americans. We normal ones are just trying to make lives work for ourselves and our nuclear families under the difficult circumstances that our belief in the illusion of our separateness has created of our world. If this is “normal”, we are all co-conspirators. Trump is just a manifestation of who we have collectively become as a people. What we do not understand is that we have entered into the era where we must transcend this illusion. We can’t have our cake and eat it too, meaning we can’t have what it was we once considered to be “normal” and also be able to see an end to the craziness we see materializing around us. We must adapt or die. What will occur, is occurring, is that our lives will become surreal under the conditions that our belief in our separateness has created. What will change this for all of us, and what we are manifesting as “normal”, is our existence will become so crazy and ugly that we cannot stand it anymore. Then, the healing will begin.