This is a weekly summary of the previous week’s Daily Meditations. Some are penned by Matthew Fox (MF), and some by Gianluigi Gugliermetto (GG). You can click on the title of a DM in order to view the original piece in its entirety. Also, please note, we will continue to offer a video teaching by Matthew each Monday.
September 22, 2025: Humor Repressed, Savage Capitalism Alive & Well in the Media (MF)
It is a sad and dangerous day when the president of the U.S. teams up with large corporations to kill humor and satire in the country. Such goings-on are a canary in the coal mine of American democracy. Those who yearn to be strongmen are rarely gifted with a sense of humor—and never toward themselves. They hate being laughed at. So it was with Putin, so it is with the current White House resident. Mussolini defined fascism as “the marriage of government and corporations.” That marriage is tightening daily in today’s America. Savage capitalism is greed with no guard rails. Welcome to an America where our only gods are Greed and Grievance.
September 23, 2025: Peter Thiel, Carl Schmitt, & Silicon Valley’s New Religion (MF)
The billionaire in the White House is busy gilding the White House itself while calling the media an “enemy of the people.” Let us consider one big influencer, Peter Thiel, who contributed over 13 million dollars to Vance’s senate campaign in Ohio, thus buying him his political future. Thiel is currently teaching a four-part seminar in the heart of Silicon Valley on the topic of “The Anti-Christ.” The Weimar Republic was a historical period of the German state from 1918 to 1933. During that time, Carl Schmitt advised President von Hindenburg to bypass Parliament and rule by presidential decree. (Does this sound familiar?) When Hitler outmaneuvered them, Schmitt joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and helped coordinate their seizure of power. Schmitt became Thiel’s mentor, and Thiel is Vance’s. It is clear we will have to fight for our democracy. Meanwhile, Matthew and two others are going to offer a Counterpoint to Thiel’s narrative in October.
September 24, 2025: Vows (part I) (GG)
Last’s week meditation on the Order of the Sacred Earth made GG reflect on the concept of vows. One vow that many of us make is the wedding vow. GG has found that many people experience great angst when they are unable to continue with a marriage, blaming themselves for breaking a vow. GG counsels thus: We need to understand that we don’t carry our vows, and we are not morally responsible for them. It is our vows that carry us, as long as they can. A vow is the expression of a deep hope, a cry of the heart. It’s an ideal. He continues: What is truly spiritual about a vow is that we utter it in response to a call from the divine depth of our hearts. We are not at fault if we utter it in complete sincerity but subsequently find it was perhaps not the correct vow for us. A vow needs to be deep enough to support a series of moral commitments through life, but broad enough to accommodate different circumstances that may arise. Most especially, it must warm our heart and kindle our imagination. Each and every day.
September 25, 2025: Vows (part II) (GG)
Making a solemn vow is a powerful antidote to distraction. It focuses your thinking and especially your actions. When there is something wrong with your vow or the manner in which you took it, it may feel like a cage, but when things are correctly aligned, your vow is a source of energy. It is common when people with good intentions gather for rituals and vow-taking that the Shekhina, Holy Wisdom, emerges. Making a vow is a very powerful tool, especially in trying circumstances. Who am I? I am one who is becoming whom I pledged to become, and there is no amount of evil that can change that.
September 26, 2025: Vows (part III) (GG)
Matthew, in his book Order of the Sacred Earth, teaches about how the making of vows can be re-envisioned during these postmodern times. For instance, when men take vows to become a monk, there are essentially four vows: poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability. Poverty can mean a commitment to simple living and the rejection of overt consumerism. Because sexual relations can be very holy, perhaps Chastity can mean foregoing wanton or casual sex. Obedience can be promised to an ideal or a community. Stability used to mean never leaving the monastery. Perhaps now it can be reinterpreted as faithfulness to a bioregion, which can be properly defended only when it is well-known and well-loved. May we become fierce and loving in defense of both our Earth and our democracy.
September 27, 2025: Original Blessing & “Innate Goodness” as Medicine During Dark Nights (MF)
In times of struggle and darkness, it is important to reconnect to the cosmos and to our own selves and our place in it. When the book Original Blessing came out 32 years ago, it greatly disturbed the Vatican, which at the time was heavily invested in the concept of original sin. In their fury, they forgot their own lineage, as when Thomas Aquinas talked about “original goodness” and Hildegard spoke about how love ruled the world from the beginning.* Recently, Matthew was drawn to two contemporary people thinking along these same lines. One is Aaron Stern, co-founder and president of the Academy of the Love of Learning, who offers a powerful story triggered by a poem called “Safety Net” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trammer. Aaron writes about “the presence of innate goodness,” a “wellspring of goodness,” saying “it was somehow who I was.” You can read both the full poem and essay, HERE.
Matthew Fox, Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century, p. xiii
Banner image: “Solemn Vows 2019.” Photo by Province of Saint Joseph on Flickr.
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
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.
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
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.
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
How do prayer and mysticism relate to the struggle for social and ecological justice? Fox defines prayer as a radical response to life that includes our “Yes” to life (mysticism) and our “No” to forces that combat life (prophecy). How do we define adult prayer? And how—if at all—do prayer and mysticism relate to the struggle for social and ecological justice? One of Matthew Fox’s earliest books, originally published under the title On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear: Spirituality American Style, Prayer introduces a mystical/prophetic spirituality and a mature conception of how to pray. Called a “classic” when it first appeared, it lays out the difference between the creation spirituality tradition and the fall/redemption tradition that has so dominated Western theology since Augustine. A practical and theoretical book, it lays the groundwork for Fox’s later works. “One of the finest books I have read on contemporary spirituality.” – Rabbi Sholom A. Singer
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
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
1 thought on “Week of 9/22-27/2025: Sacred Vows & Defending Democracy”
For followers of Matthew’s DM, I wanted to reintroduce the tradition of Incarnational Spirituality which is very compatible with Creation Spirituality. David Spangler (lorian.org) revived Incarnational Spirituality and two good introductary books by him are “Journey Into Fire” and “Partnering With Spirit.” This quote is from “Journey Into Fire, “ (p.3):
“… The larger point is that everything is generative in some manner. We live in a universe of generative beings, just as our sun exists in a cosmos of generative stars. Some stars are larger, some are smaller, some are brighter, some are dimmer, but all stars are radiating as a result of internal processes.
In this context, we are each a star.
I believe that humanity is struggling to shift away from the sun/satellite model of creation and into one that I call a “galactic” model: that of a community of generative beings, radiant stars with no one star at the center providing energy for all the others. Rather, all stars interact with and energize each other, each contributing its unique presence and energy to the galactic whole. It is a shift from a centralizing perspective, in which one being or organization holds all the significant power and obedience to the center is held as a primary virtue, to a partnership cosmology in which collaboration and co-creation among participants, each of whom has something unique and important to offer, is paramount… “