I might be able to drive up next week in the nearby Alps, just to lie on the grass and watch the clouds. Though I am not rich by Western standards, I am surely privileged. I am not under siege, hungry, or in any way at risk. I care though for those who are, and whose children are killed or maimed daily. I wonder daily about what more I could do for them.
To the young Westerners who care, Nigerian musician Seun Kuti has recently brought a powerful challenge during a performance in France:
I know you want to free Palestine, you want to free Congo, you want to free Sudan, you want to free Iran… there is a new one every week… Free Europe! Free Europe from right-wing extremism, free Europe from fascism, free Europe from racism, free Europe from imperialism! As soon as you do this job, Gaza will be free, Congo will be free, Sudan will be free, Iran will be free… Forget about us, don’t worry about us! Free Europe!
To my dismay, I have seen an avalanche of negative comments posted to the video of his message, the most recurring being “Go back to your country!”
Those comments, ranging from hateful to stupid, certify to me that Kuti is right, that the problem resides not so much in Palestine, Congo, Sudan etc. but mostly in the Western countries.
It has been said, but needs to be repeated, that Netanyahu could not do anything of what he does in Gaza if he was not backed up by the U.S. government. In Europe, some governments are taking strong stances, such as Ireland and Slovenia, by instituting boycotts against Israel, but most speak good words while they keep sending weaponry to Tel Aviv. Weapons that kill the children whose death the same governments will lament the next day.
The problem is the West, who has become so willfully blind in order to protect its interests, to the point of being a scourge to the rest of the world.
Neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism, which are the true names of the forces at play, are words ignored by the Western masses, who both profit and are enslaved by those same forces.
The ICE raids in the USA are an expression of the same Western violence as the Israeli colonies in the West Bank. They only look different. It would be good to see more Palestinian flags at the ICE protests. That would mean that people understand that it’s one and the same fight.
So what I am doing by going to a mountaintop to watch the clouds?
I don’t do it for putting my heads in the clouds, but for the opposite reason: to get perspective, to see what happens from a vantage point where my anger is soothed before it becomes violence, and thus is redirected into understanding and projects.
It has become a habit of mine to do cloud-watching in the mountains around the time of the Feast of the Transfiguration (see yesterday’s DM). For a long time I have known that my job in this world is that of helping people reconnect with their mystical side. So I hope next week to get counsel from the clouds, again, on how to go about it.
See Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Also see Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
Also Fox, Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
Also Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering Book
And Fox, Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Banner Image: Cloud-watching from the heights. Photo by Ilia on Unsplash.
Queries for Contemplation
What do you do for gaining a deeper perspective? And for putting into a larger perspective your job in this world?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
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
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
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
By Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jen Listug
In the midst of global fire, earthquake and flood – as species are going extinct every day and national and global economies totter – the planet doesn’t need another church or religion. What it needs is a new Order, grounded in the Wisdom traditions of both East and West, including science and indigenous. An Order of the Sacred Earth united in one sacred vow: “I promise to be the best lover and defender of the Earth that I can be.”
Co-authored by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Berit Listug, with a forward by David Korten, this collection of essays by 21 spiritual visionaries including Brian Swimme, Mirabai Starr, Theodore Richards, and Kristal Parks marks the founding of the diverse and inclusive Order of the Sacred Earth, a community now evolving around the world.
“The Order of the Sacred Earth not only calls us home to our true nature as Earth, but also offers us invaluable guidance and company on the way.” ~~ Joanna Macy, environmental activist and author of Active Hope.
Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering Book
A centering book by Matthew Fox. This book of simple but rich meditations exemplifies the deep yet playful creation-centered spirituality of Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart was a 13th-century Dominican preacher who was a mystic, prophet, feminist, activist, defender of the poor, and advocate of creation-centered spirituality, who was condemned shortly after he died.
“These quiet presentations of spirituality are remarkable for their immediacy and clarity.” –Publishers Weekly.
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
As Matthew Fox notes, when an aging Albert Einstein was asked if he had any regrets, he replied, “I wish I had read more of the mystics earlier in my life.” The 365 writings in Christian Mystics represent a wide-ranging sampling of these readings for modern-day seekers of all faiths — or no faith. The visionaries quoted range from Julian of Norwich to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Thomas Merton to Dorothee Soelle and Thomas Berry.
“Our world is in crisis, and we need road maps that can ground us in wisdom, inspire us to action, and help us gather our talents in service of compassion and justice. This revolutionary book does just that. Matthew Fox takes some of the most profound spiritual teachings of the West and translates them into practical daily mediations. Study and practice these teachings. Take what’s in this book and teach it to the youth because the new generation cannot afford to suffer the spirit and ethical illiteracy of the past.” — Adam Bucko, spiritual activist and co-founder of the Reciprocity Foundation for Homeless Youth.
10 thoughts on “Clouds – part 2”
Thank you, Gianluigi. Each morning during my cycle ride, I always stop in the park to lie in the grass and stare upwards at the sky. It is very refreshing to watch clouds, birds, the faint traces of a waning moon or whatever else lives above us. It does bring perspective. I shall think of you as I do the same this morning.
I also use mystic prayer called The Twelve Blessings which I have linked. I have used this practice for over 40 years and find it extraordinarily enlightening and a powerful way to send out light into the world, helping to bring a spiritual transformation.
❤️
Thank you Gianluigi for today’s DM message about how Western society needs to reflect and be more aware of its own shadows of continued historical imperialism, racism, greed/materialism, power, inequities, dualism, and anti-humanitarian values/injustices in its capitalism/institutions/multinational corporations/militarism around the world. This requires profound inner and outer personal and communal healing and spiritual transformation in Our human evolution as a species and realizing Our LOVING interconnectedness/interdependence/ONENESS with —Sacred Mother Earth, All sentient Beings, and All physical/nonphysical spiritual dimensions and Spiritual Beings of Our Sacred Evolving Creation Cosmos and Eternal Angelic Spiritual Realms… COMPASSIONATE COSMIC CHRIST/BUDDHA CONSCIOUSNESS….
Love hearing your perspective Gigi 🦋 and the cloud transfiguration this past week.
Meg
“Weapons that kill the children whose death the same governments will lament the next day.”
Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Palestinian-Canadian medical doctor who wrote “The Wombs in Gaza will bear the scars of war…. To be pregnant in Gaza is to carry a child under siege. It means enduring warplanes, displacement, starvation, dehydration and blocked health care….Chronic maternal stress floods the fetus with cortisol which which can alter how a child will respond to fear and regulate emotions….. A child in Gaza is not born into a neutral body. They carry the molecular signatures of war, imprinted before they draw their first breath…. We must call it what it is: a crime not just against Palestinians, but against motherhood – against life itself.” The Globe and Mail, August 1, 2025.
Thank you for today’s and yesterday’s perspectives, Gianluigi–for framing the current time as an opportunity to engage the Via Negativa. I had not been thinking of these dark times that way. As you say, “Either we let the via negativa experiences mold us and be for us a springboard to the via creativa, or we are committing cultural suicide.” I am reflecting on how to approach this time of demolition of democracy, shredding of the balance of powers, installation of authoritarianism, felling of education, elimination of science, and loss of the free press as the Via Negativa and how I can use it to grow spiritually without abandoning my obligation as a citizen activist. Then, today to reinforce the need for the Via Positiva. Getting counsel from the clouds, the mountains, the ocean, from yoga, and engaging in Buddhist mantras when some of the aforementioned natural places are unavailable to us and even when they are–these are all helpful ways of discovering our mystical sides. I’m doing them all right now to get through these times.
Thank you, Gianluigi ! Anger and sorrow are palpable in this DM and in the voices of so many who did not succumb to the smoke and mirrors of consumerism, gaming, e-gadgetry, AI, etc. and who witness the rapid sinking of humankind into the abyss of insanity and spiritual coma. Seun Kuti is right when he repeats in his own way the proverbial injunction: “healer, heal thyself!”
“Our only health is the disease/If we obey the dying nurse/Whose constant care is not to please/But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,/And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse” [Eliot, Little Gidding].
May your time between the Earth and the clouds be regenerating.
I am always comforted and inspired by being in and praying in nature. It does not matter where. Thank you, GG, for the truth that the evil is not just in one country or area but stems from the arrogance and greed of the West, in relation to the tragedies in Gaza. I constantly remind my so called representatives in Congress that they are complicit in genocide and the murder of innocents by violence or starvation, but I refuse to be. These DM’s and others, especially those of Richard Rohr, help to give me a wider perspective. There are the CAC and other organizations that also provide a framework of seeing the whole picture, or as much as is humanly possible. It is easy to get caught up in the immensity of the depravity affecting the U.S. government and others, but we need to remain in solidarity with those who are suffering and with those who are working to bring about justice–and find how we are called to serve. My experience with Amnesty International Urgent Action is both heart rending at the horrible things that we are capable of and also inspiring that people even in extremis refuse to give in–the courage in the face of terrible suffering is truly awesome and gives me hope. Right now, there is an opportunity to help a Palestinian pediatrician, Dr, Safiya. https://act.amnestyusa.org/s/8377678/38S65OM8
I was reminded of when I taught elementary school decades ago. The class was studying weather, and we did things like keep track of sunset and sunrise times, watched clouds, kept track of temperatures etc. One day, at a recess time, I was at my desk and Marco came in very excited. (Marco who learned his 7 times tables first because they corresponded to football touchdowns. Generally a tough guy.) He shouted, “Ms. Maestre, you gotta come see these clouds! ” So of course I did. A sweet memory.
Dear GG,
This is a beautiful and true meditation! I love that you bring yourself to the contemplation of clouds in the alps around this feast of the Transfiguration. And I love that you say neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism are the problem, and thus we must look at our own culture here and in Europe, to bring about the needed change. I just read the book “King Leopold’s Ghost” and it was a scourge, to understand what he did to the Congo. Thank you for this attention to our willful blindness.