In my recent DMs, I have been praising the power of human creativity—to make the world a better place. The power of the Via Creativa cannot be underestimated for solving problems, healing, building community, celebrating the common good, creating a better democracy and a world that “works for everyone.” And resisting.
Of course our creativity also makes evil more powerful. Lying, destroying, working out of self-hatred that culminates in sadism toward others–that too takes imagination. That is why Otto Rank defines neurosis as the artiste manquee. And Erich Fromm found that sadism is born of self-hatred.
And why Thomas Aquinas can say that one human being is capable of doing more evil than all the other species put together.
Potter M. C. Richards insists that a “primary goal” of education is to develop imagination and “moral imagination.” To imagine and create “what is not yet.”
It is why poet Denise Levertov says that Man’s capacity for evil, then, is less a positive capacity, for all its horrendous activity, than a failure to develop man’s most human function, the imagination, to its fullness, and consequently a failure to develop compassion.*
Let us unpack this powerful, practical and insightful observation by Levertov a bit. First of all, she is calling our imagination our “most human function.” Is it? If she is right, are we giving imagination the attention it deserves in our educational systems? Are we nourishing it and stretching it and above all giving it some guidelines toward what is good and beautiful and just?
Art as meditation does that. This is why I employ it in all my efforts over the years in teaching spirituality. Whether in workshops or master’s or doctoral or inner-city high school programs, I have seen powerful and positive results. Art as med employs what Einstein called the “intuitive brain” (as opposed to just the “rational brain”) and therefore values.
Values, he insists, come only from the intuitive brain and not from the rational brain as such.
Levertov insists that the fullness of imagination is Compassion. Think about that—the most “ripe” or “mature” (terms very dear to Jesus in the gospels but mistranslated often as “perfect”) use of our “fullest capacity” is: Compassion.
This means that those who teach and practice compassion—whether Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Jesus or any of us—are exhibiting the culmination of what it means to be human. And divine.
Just like Jesus said: “Be you compassionate as your Father/Mother in the heavens is compassionate.” That compassion directs the work of the universe and it certainly deserves to direct the work on earth. This is why one prays that heaven and earth may come together, cosmos and psyche, the divine and the human. The best use of our imaginations is to put them to the service of compassion.
I love the news that just appeared today. A headline announces that “Neither the United States nor China, this small country of 50,000 people came up with an idea to create energy from the Moon.”
A small country wrestling with the number one moral issue of our time, the survival of the planet, offers a clean and effective energy breakthrough—one that aligns itself to lunar gravity and captures tidal energy from an underwater kite system. Targeting the predictable power of ocean currents affected by the moon’s gravitational pull, it works 24 hours per day and is cheap to harness all round the world.
God bless human imagination. And steer it from evil to the true common good.
*Cited in Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, p. 229.
See also: Matthew Fox, “Deep Ecumenism, Ecojustice, and Art as Meditation,” in Fox, Wrestling with the Prophets, pp. 215-242.
See Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion.
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
Banner Image: Hedy Lamarr moonlighted as a WWII co-inventor of the technology that powers today’s WIFI, Bluetooth, and GPS, among other inventions. U.S. Navy graphic by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Andrew Eder, Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree that imagination is humanity’s “most human function”? Do you get excited about those who are putting our powerful human imaginations to work in science and technology to solve existential problems like displacing fossil fuels with lunar tide-driven energy?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
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
Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life
In one of his foundational works, Fox engages with some of history’s greatest mystics, philosophers, and prophets in profound and hard-hitting essays on such varied topics as Eco-Spirituality, AIDS, homosexuality, spiritual feminism, environmental revolution, Native American spirituality, Christian mysticism, Art and Spirituality, Art as Meditation, Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism and more.
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
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
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
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.
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6 thoughts on “Moral Imagination, Immoral Imagination & An Energy Breakthrough”
I am reminded in today’s DM about the spiritual potential of Our human~Divine nature for God’s Divine Love~Compassion Present within and among Us expressed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
“The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of Love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.” 🔥🌎💜🙏
Teilhard lived in the first half of the 20th century, in times of colonization and scientific euphoria. Then came Silent Spring (1962) and Limits to Growth (1972), two wake-up calls that were muffled by the collective infatuation with the consumption fueled by the industrial age. If he were alive today, Teilhard might have given priority to the harnessing of the energies of love lest the harnessing of ether, winds, tides and gravitation turn the most immediate divine revelation called planet Earth into a waste land. There may not be much love to harness on a devastated planet.
Since Teilhard’s death (1955), Thomas Berry (1914-2009) has reset our priorities for a viable future in his writings like “The Dream of the Earth” (1988), “The Great Work” (1999) and “Evening Thoughts (2006).
I have always understood Imagination to be our only creative faculty and, as valuable as it is when applied to science and technology, it is even more powerful when applied to the concept of God and the Universe. I find our Western concepts (and imagination) strangely limited to Old and New Testaments when, in an age of crop circles and UAPs (UFOs) we should be asking “what was the ‘Star’ of Bethelem?; what were those biblical ‘fiery chariots’ in the sky?; how do people ascend in ‘clouds’?” Human spirituality needs to open itself to a greater Cosmic Spirituality applying our imaginations to very literal manifestations beyond our present comprehension.
!!! Thank You Matthew !!!
1] For Sachs bringing a broad and more hopeful perspective to the current global crisis….
2] For John Denver’s Hawk which reminds me of the broken connection between Falcon and Falconer in Yeats’ prophetic poem The Second Coming
3] For your participation in the Aspen wisdom which I viewed yesterday and have shared with family and friends.
Wow to the imagination of Faroe Islands. We are dead without imagination, morally and spiritually. A friend shared this with me yesterday. Another wow for something I knew nothing about but which is spectacular and inspiring to see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gGltfcBUtQ
Dear Fr. Matthew,
Thanks for this post on creativity, and problem-solving for the common good! I love the new clean-energy sources that are made using tidal flow in the oceans, and thus from the moon! I have been reading Richard Rohr’s “The Tears of Things” and came to a helpful line about “law”– it is “a boundary for inflated ego, and a protector of the common good.” In this time of lawlessness, and loss of awareness of what is true, this is a good handle for me, about why laws matter, and what due process means. And we need what helps us to work together for the common good! I love that you insist on energy flow, with the Via Creativa being a big part of human endeavors.