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.
October 6, 2025: Elephants in Danger: African Droughts, A Sign of Our Times (MF)
In addition to the loving spirit of Jane Goodall, we have Kristal Parks, who is a champion for the elephant nation. She is in Botswana this week to join a couple who have made it their passion to assist elephants with watering holes, of which they are in dire need because of global warming.* Elephants can smell water 12 miles away, and the droughts in Africa have created a desperate situation. In the 19th century there were 26 million elephants in Africa. Today, there are 350,000. Kristal is trying to determine the best way to help them. If you want to support African elephants and those who are caring for them as best they can, you are welcome to give a tax-free donation at Matthew Fox Legacy Project, a 5013c. We will see that 100% of the donation goes to the elephants via Kristal. Write “elephants” on your check.
October 7, 2025: Celebrating the Life & Gifting of Joanna Macy at Grace Cathedral (MF)
On Saturday, 1200 enthusiastic people gathered at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco to celebrate the extraordinary life and work of Joanna Macy. The evening followed this format, which parallels perfectly the journey of the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality: Coming From Gratitude; Honoring Our Pain for the World; Seeing with New & Ancient Eyes; and Going Forth. Included were: poems from Rilke that Joanna had translated from German and a composer friend had put to music; poetry from Drew Dellinger and Thich Nhat Hanh; author Marge Piercy praying the Kaddish; a short eulogy from Anne’s husband on Mary Magdalene encountering the risen Christ (Anne was Joanna’s longtime executive assistant); and the “Five Vows” that Joanna had created. Those of us who care about the world would do well to follow in Joanna’s powerful footsteps.
October 8, 2025: Joanna Macy & Jane Goodall: Great Souls, Great Teachers (MF)
Two great women died this year: Joanna Macy, Buddhist teacher and deep ecologist, and Jane Goodall, researcher and lover of the animal kingdom. These women were living saints, and now they are our ancestors. In Joanna’s first book, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, she dared all to face and wrestle with despair. She named the Via Negativa starkly when she said, “When your heart breaks, the whole universe can pour through.” She honors gratitude as a grounding for our lives even in the hardest times. She also wrote a book called World as Lover, World as Self. Next week, Matthew will share more about Jane Goodall, but he wanted to mention both of these amazing women together. Their gifts of wisdom are part of the fierce Divine Feminine calling out to us to wake up and change our ways before it is too late.
October 9, 2025: Understanding and Awareness (GG)
We all need frames of reference. There a number of frames that we use daily but subconsciously. Authors such as Freud and Newton have changed our perception of reality much more that we think. A frame of reference likely used by many readers is the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, as rediscovered by Matthew Fox through his studies of the Western mystics. It is of the utmost importance, of course, to counteract the forces of evil that are maiming children, starving entire populations, encroaching essential habitats, etc., but meaningful action can only proceed from critical understanding, which then begets global awareness.
October 10, 2025: Feeling(s) as Source of Values (GG)
Gianluigi tells us that One of the frames of reference for interpreting reality that I adopt is the Jungian theory of the four psychological functions (sensation, feeling, intuition, and thinking), which I have paired with the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality (via positiva, via negativa, via creativa, and via transformativa). Jung discovered that a person whose dominant function is thinking finds it hard to deal with feelings, and likewise, a person whose dominant function is feeling may find it hard to think and act clearly. One of the takeaways from this is that values are born not in the head but in the heart.
October 11, 2025: Balancing as a Spiritual Act (GG)
According to Jungian theory, each human being must develop all four psychological functions to become whole. And, according to Creation Spirituality, one must consciously walk the Four Paths to become whole. Western societies in 2025 seem to suffer not only from weak thinking and weak feeling, but also from the same excess of sensation already diagnosed by Jung and the same scant recognition of intuition that Jung lamented. We all have a lot of work to do in order to find more balance in our lives, do we not?
*Elephant Refugees. Official trailer.
See Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
And Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality.
Also Fox, The Spirituality of Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
And Fox, Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
Banner image: A line of elephants walking across the Tarangire National Park, Arusha, Tanzania. Photo by ray rui on Unsplash
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
Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Selected with an Introduction by Charles Burack
To encapsulate the life and work of Matthew Fox would be a daunting task for any save his colleague Dr. Charles Burack, who had the full cooperation of his subject. Fox has devoted 50 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His more than 40 books, translated into 78 languages, are inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and have awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. Essential Writings begins by exploring the influences on Fox’s life and spirituality, then presents selections from all Fox’s major works in 10 sections.
“The critical insights, the creative connections, the centrality of Matthew Fox’s writings and teaching are second to none for the radical renewal of Christianity.” ~~ Richard Rohr, OFM.
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
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.
