In a DM last week, I celebrated the get-together of Pope Leo XIV and the king of England, for 500 years the head of the Anglican Church, to pray together in the Vatican. This was a symbolic moment, of course, but with deeper meaning as well. Pope Francis first approved of the idea, but he did not live long enough to see it through.
It is a historical moment to see two church leaders attempt to “bury the hatchet” between the two traditions, a hatchet that saw a number of martyrs over the centuries on both sides of the historic divide. It signals an end to the Reformation violence and a steering of Western religion to reconciliation and acknowledgment of differences and diversity.
I have a certain skin in the game myself, since I was a priest in the Roman Catholic church for 25 years before I joined the Episcopal/Anglican church in order to continue my ministry as a theologian and to develop a post-modern form of Liturgy which we call the “Cosmic Mass.”
A few months before his death, Pope Francis called for a “new form” for the Liturgy, and I am happy to report that 30 years of practice have, I believe, set forward a new form that in its structure links to the tradition but fills it out by including dance and body and images and stories that post-modern art forms like dj, vj and rap can readily elicit.
Forms that replace merely reciting words about our sins with grieving together on all fours; and minimize words and reading to and being preached at, in favor of the shared spiritual experience of dancing to common images telling deep stories.
In last week’s DM, I noted the appearance of a new book on Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism entitled Interspirituality, with an endorsement from the Dalai Lama, a Foreword by me, and an Afterword from Ken Wilbur. Just the fact that this book is appearing at this time, with over 120 contributors from various world religious traditions, is good news.
It is a healthy sign of our times that people everywhere are waking up and eager to move from religious confrontation to spiritual intercommunion. The title implies putting experience, namely spirituality, ahead of institutional religion as such. That is how religion gets renewed after all.
Also this past week, Pope Leo marked the 60th anniversary of the important document of the Second Vatican Council called Nostra Aetate that speaks to the common ground to be found in all the world’s religions. Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism therefore. Pope Leo invited many religious leaders of diverse traditions to the Roman Colosseum to speak with one voice vis-à-vis peace, not war.
In this regard, it is important to remember a warning from the Dalai Lama that the biggest obstacle to interfaith is a bad relationship with one’s own spiritual tradition. Those who talk and practice so-called “Christian nationalism” have a very bad relationship indeed to the teachings of Jesus—he who took on an empire in his day and died at its hands.
When Christians remain ignorant of their own mystical tradition, that too guarantees a bad relationship to their own tradition. The purpose of a 24-week course I am currently teaching with the Shift Network is to make that connection alive again, including the mystical and prophetic roots of Jesus.
But also the issue of the democratization of mysticism—how we are all called to become our deepest selves in love with the world. How it is practiced in letting go and letting be and undergoing personal and communal suffering, but rising to create and co-create and relieve one another’s sufferings by way of justice and compassion and fighting for the common good.
And how we share a very rich lineage of ancestors who attempted to do exactly that in their time on earth.
The mystic and prophet in all of us represents the best in all of us. Signs of hope arise where we commit to such a deep spiritual journey.
Banner Image: Mercy, Justice, Beauty – LGBTQ+ banners at the famously interspiritual (United Church of Christ) Old South Church, Boston, MA, USA. Photo by Jonathan Deamer on Wikimedia Commons
Queries for Contemplation
Do you find some hope in the advancement of deep ecumenism or interfaith/interspirituality in our times? And the Cosmic Mass, with its post-modern structure and mysticism, being democratized?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from World Faith Traditions
“The Cosmic Christ and Deep Ecumenism,” in The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance, pp. 228-242.
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
“The Cosmic Mass: Reinventing Worship and Religion,” in Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest, pp. 363-383.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation by Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox
7 thoughts on “Good News: Interspirituality, The Cosmic Mass, Democratizing Mysticism”
There is a body of living souls both seen and unseen, numbering in the billions, and we are but ‘a dot among them’. But ‘a dot’ among the billions can be powerful, like the analogy of the mustard seed. The mustard seed participates in its ‘true nature’ but will we?
Do we live for hope or do we live ‘to be’? Are our daily comings and goings a directionless grind or awakened with ‘our Cross and path’ should we take ourselves to another place, a transformative place? Are we resigned or righteous?
Can we be both attached and detached from all other the ‘other dots’ or souls at the same time?
For each of us there is ‘our Cross’ to bear whether we choose to pick it up or not, whether we pick it up every day, or some days and not others.
For ours is not a calling to head to a church and wander about within it. We have been invited into the Mystery, into ‘the banquet’, and into the great revelation of Christ consciousness. This is not a priestly calling – this is ‘our calling’. Do we answer it and if so when?
We, ‘the dots’, were all born of ‘soul and spirit’, long before we came out of an earthly mother’s womb and saw the light of an earth day. And our same ‘soul and spirit’ will continue on far after, eternally after, our earthly body enters the grave. Collectively, that ‘we be’. – BB 10 26 25.
I had just finished reading your comment to today’s DM (thank you!) when a yellow leaf spiraling in the wind in front of my window repeated: “And our same ‘soul and spirit’ will continue on far after, eternally after, our earthly body enters the grave.” It spoke of both attachment and detachment, of gratitude for springs past and future, summer lushness, fiery autumnal letting-go’s and contemplative winter gestations past and future. It is a great privilege to be a deciduous leaf, a dot among the billions that ornate the canopy of the tree eternally growing in the middle of the Garden.
Nicely said.
Are cosmic masses still actively being organized? Now seems like such a ripe time for them. I have been feeling this way for some time and would love to be a part of organizing one here in Omaha, NE.
Tia Leving’s video and writings show that christian nationalists are to Christianity what islamists are to Islam: merchants in the Temple.
Yes! Yes! The recommended book, “Interspirituality,” in today’s DM seems to be a good one!
The universal mystical traditions and teachings of all genuine religions in human history, including the Shamanic Indigenous, remind us that we all need to be aware/conscious of the compassionate mystic/prophet within each of Us in our own uniqueness/Eternal Souls as Sacred manifestations of the Divine Source~Creator of LOVING DIVERSE ONENESS on Our daily personal and Communal spiritual journeys within All Spiritual Dimensions of Our evolving Cosmos in the Sacred Process/Flow of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT….
I do find some hope in the advancement of deep ecumenism. I see it all over the place. One thing that struck me as I watched King Charles and Camilla with Pope Leo, is not just that after 500 years an Anglican king and a Roman Catholic pope were praying together after not doing so for 500 years, but that Charles is divorced and remarried and so is Camilla. After all, the breach happened 500 years ago because the English king wanted to divorce his wife and marry another woman, and here, the pope accepted Charles (and Camilla) as head of the British crown and worthy of prayer with him.