We are now in the first days of Lent. As I write this, yesterday was Ash Wednesday when traditionally many Christians receive a cross made of ashes on their foreheads to remind them that “thou art dust and into dust thou shalt return.”
I received an e-mail, however, that reminded me that today’s new cosmology offers a different perspective and message on Ash Wednesday if one cares to heed it. It went like this:
Matt ~ I might’ve shared this with you for Ash Wednesday, “Stardust thou art, and to the stars thou shall return.” You taught me that we part & parcel are all descended from the whole universe. Love ~Randy (Randy is founder of gladdeninglight.org.)
Might this blessing, born of the new cosmology, provide an empowering message for all the work that awaits us at this pivotal time in human and planetary history?
A second take on Lenten season comes from Sister Emily TeKolste, Grassroots Mobilization Organizer for Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, a social justice movement headed by Catholic Sisters (think of “Nuns on the Bus”). Sister Emily asks the question: “Have you thought of giving up billionaires for Lent? And not just for Lent but for after Lent too!”
Sister Emily sees the very existence of billionaires as both a policy failure and a moral failure and points out—and rightly so—that Catholic social teaching demands that we tax billionaires.
Why? To protect access to the fruits of creation for all people. When private ownership fails to do that, “Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good” (Catechism, 2406).
The idea of the “common good” is a pesky thing if you want to own the planet or to run it. It is long past time that Congress makes billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.
Sister Emily tells us that this year we’re giving up billionaires for Lent. Beyond Lent, we’re committed to coming together to elect leaders who will make the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share of taxes so that we can live in a world that looks more like the Kingdom of God: where everyone has clean water to drink, healthy food to eat, a safe place to live, and time to spend with our loved ones.
She is hoping that such a fast can “culminate with our Easter call to tax billionaires out of existence, so that all of us can share in the fruits of creation!”*
To be continued.
*For more information on Sister Emily TeKolste and Network Lobby, see Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice.
See Matthew Fox, “Warriors for Ecological and Economic Justice: Meister Eckhart Meets Dorothy Stang, Karl Marx, David Korten, Serge Latouche, Anita Roddick, and Howard Thurman,” in Fox, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times, pp. 221-230.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
Banner Image: Network Lobby community organizers Christian Watkins and Sister Emily TeKolste participate in a mission action in San Francisco. Photo from the Network Lobby files, used with permission.
Queries for Contemplation
Ashes vs Stardust: Both blessings carry a message worth hearing. How do you see them interacting? Which speaks most deeply to you today? What are you giving up for Lent (if anything)?
Recommended Reading
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Time
While Matthew Fox recognizes that Meister Eckhart has influenced thinkers throughout history, he also wants to introduce Eckhart to today’s activists addressing contemporary crises. Toward that end, Fox creates dialogues between Eckhart and Carl Jung, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Heschel, Black Elk, Karl Marx, Rumi, Adrienne Rich, Dorothee Soelle, David Korten, Anita Roddick, Lily Yeh, M.C. Richards, and many others.
“Matthew Fox is perhaps the greatest writer on Meister Eckhart that has ever existed. (He) has successfully bridged a gap between Eckhart as a shamanistic personality and Eckhart as a post-modern mentor to the Inter-faith movement, to reveal just how cosmic Eckhart really is, and how remarkably relevant to today’s religious crisis! ” — Steven Herrmann, Author of Spiritual Democracy: The Wisdom of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Forward
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
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.
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
6 thoughts on “Lent Reconsidered: Stardust vs Ashes, Fasting From Billionaires”
I’m giving up fear for Lent. What does that look like? First, while staying engaged, I’m limiting the amount of news I read and hear. Generally, that means I read quality articles from established writers in the New York Times, on SubStack, or on TV–writings that 1) keep me informed, and 2) that I present things I can do something about. I summarize those articles and/or explain more difficult concepts to others and spread the word. I tune out nonsense. I stop when I know I’ve had enough. I attend rallys as a designated peacekeeper and I write or call my representatives weekly. I give money. These actions allow me to exercise power. That limits fears that try to rear their ugly heads. I understand that I may not be able to eliminate all fear (such as fear that Pope Francis may soon be replaced by someone like Ratzinger) but as my Buddhist partner points out, it may be enough to recognize my fear and sit with it. It’s the unconscious fear, the nebulous, murky fears that really undermine our peace.
“The ‘Consolable’ Live Within the Expectations of Reality”
We are manufacturers of love, peace, truth, joy, justice, mercy, charity and healing in the world. If we are inconsolable then, we like our God before us and after us, have seen our scattered seeds thrown onto rocky ground and where they have been trampled under ‘men’s feet’. Has not Jesus told us that it happens that way? Is that ‘the reality’ we do not want to face and then become inconsolable? Not every seed and every action becomes the fruit of paradise.
Like the able ‘ploughman’, we are to do the hard work of tending to and turning over the soil. It is then that the ‘seed of the Word’ has the ability to grow and flourish. If we look to plough, plant and harvest within ‘the killing fields’, we find drought, weeds, scorching sun and our time to tend the field is limited. That is ‘reality’, so we look to plant, tend and grow in the nearby fields where the soil is being reclaimed for future harvests. Our ‘consolation’ always comes from God and looking to find men and women everywhere to have our ideals and faith is to put ourselves on a pedestal that even God dares not go. The ‘consolable’ live within the expectations of reality. – BB.
“Ashes & Stardust,” what beautiful spiritual metaphors or symbols for our human and Divine Natures! They’re both blessings about who each of Us Is as a unique human and Divine Being and Sacred part of Our Source~Co-Creator’s LOVING EVOLVING DIVERSE ONENESS…
In Faith, openness and humility we have to contemplatively remain open to God’s Spirit of DIVINE LOVE~WISDOM guiding Us with LOVE~COMPASSION to serve one another with Our unique gifts on Our Unique and Evolving Eternal Spiritual Journeys in the Sacred Process of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT….
We are in the Season of Nonviolence – Jan. 30 (anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination in 1948) and April 4 (anniversary of MLK’s assassination in 1968). Two Gandhi quotes come to mind:
“The world has enough for everyone’s needs, but not for everyone’s greed.”
“Live simply so that others may simply live.”
Good messages for the billionaires.
Jan. 30 (anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination in 1948) and April 4 (anniversary of MLK’s assassination in 1968)
Two more recent assassinations of Russian patriots murdered in Putin’s prisons for devoting their lives to relentlessly exposing Putin and his oligarchs’ dark money machinations, aggrandizing themselves at great cost to the citizens of Russia. Like Isaiah and other prophets of the past, Sergei Magnitsky and Alexei Navalny’s prophetic activities remain influential around the world. Their spirits continue to shine a bright light on the darkness of the dark money theft of soulless dictators and their enablers. Putin has not been successful in his attempt to silence dissidents. “The truth will set you free” is an ancient meme.
We are Divine Energy, who volunteered to become Matter, and we will again return to Divine Energy.