This is a weekly summary of the previous week’s Daily Meditations. Some are written 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.
November 9, 2025: Peter Thiel, Democracide & The Authoritarian Stack: The Antichrist, cont’d (MF)
Billionaire Peter Thiel is kingmaker to the current administration. His company Palantir has taken in billions in defense and ICE contracts since 2015. He has declared that “freedom and democracy are no longer compatible.” “Freedom” for Thiel means freedom from regulation, as Palantir has been using AI to catapult spying to a new level. And regulation, to Thiel, constitutes the very essence of the antichrist in our time. Mussolini’s definition of fascism? The marriage of government and industry. A particularly scary dimension to this alliance is the “Army’s Executive Innovation Corps” where Silicon Valley executives are being commissioned into military ranks. This feels like the antichrist, does it not?
November 10, 2025: No Regulation: A Government Replacing Democracy with Greed (MF)
While 42 million Americans were about to lose their SNAP benefits, the occupant of the White House was throwing an enormous Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-lago. Disgraceful. What is a government without regulation of its richest and most powerful citizens? It is surely not a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Most spiritual traditions talk about the sin of Greed or Avarice. Thomas Aquinas teaches that “the greed for gain knows no limit and tends to infinity.” Author David Korten warns that some type of regulation is necessary for survival of the planet as we know it. “To accept the reality of physical limits is to accept the need to limit greed and acquisition in favor of economic justice and sufficiency.”
November 11, 2025: Lady Love and Her Queen (GG)
Mechthild of Magdeburg is yet another beguine who lived in the 13th century, like Hadewijch and Marguerite Porete (see DMs Nov. 6 and 7). Each of these women is remembered as the first woman to have written a book in the language of her people. But what especially unites them is that they consecrated their lives to God in ways that are very explicit and were pretty scandalous to many. As Matthew Fox has remarked, it is not that the mystic women of the Middle Ages disavowed the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, but they reframed it. In her book, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, for instance, Love/God calls the soul “Queen” and desires only to embrace her. The patriarchal world managed to silence the voices of these three women by hiding their texts for quite a while. Fortunately, they’ve been rediscovered, and they speak volumes to a world desperately in need of love.
November 12, 2025: Culling Flowers on a Bright Pathway? (GG)
Scholars of Dante agree that the character of Matelda in Purgatorio is a person not weighed down by original sin. Dante composed the poem a few decades after she died. This means the essence of her spirituality was understood and respected. As Dante walks on the Other Side, he encounters Matelda joyfully culling flowers from a garden. When Dante asks about her joyful demeanor, she answers that her smile comes from always contemplating the works of God in the universe. Can you get any more via positiva than that? Meanwhile, in Mechthild’s works, we find a whole via negativa side, which she experienced fully in her life. She talks about “sinking into the night!” Whenever we can, having walked through all the dark valleys, we can have a life of gratitude, singing, and dancing. This is the message of Mechthild and Dante.
November 13, 2025: The Sacred Heart (GG)
Mechthild found sanctuary at the Cistercian monastery of Helfta. The abbess, Gertrude of Hackeborn, welcomed her. Fortunately Mechthild’s wisdom was recognized and celebrated there, and she became a teacher to two young women named, amazingly, Gertrude and Mechtilde! Mechtilde of Hackeborn was a great musician as well as the author of a book called The Book of Special Graces. And Gertrude of Helfta wrote a book called Herald of Divine Love, These two slightly younger women are credited with originating devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Originally, the Sacred Heart had to do with how divine beauty pervades the universe, and how divine love keeps the universe alive. More via positiva!
November 15, 2025: Billionaires Behaving Badly & Other Lessons from the Epstein Story (MF)
Headlines about Epstein and Trump abound. We are all discovering that those with concentrated wealth and power can, for many years, cover up the pedophilia committed by some of the richest and most powerful men in the world. These same billionaires are among those who own over 85% of the media in our country and who have bought the Supreme Court and 60% of the politicians in our country. Do we really want men like these to set the agenda for our media, for our politics and policies, our schools and children, our companies and businesses, and our Supreme Court? Do we really want them to make decisions about war and peace and the future of our planet?
* The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires are Building a Post-Democratic America — and Why Europe is Next
Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, translated by Lucy Menzies (Martino Publishing, Mansfield Center, CT, 2012)
Mechtilde of Hackeborn, The Book of Special Grace
Gertrude of Helfta, Herald of Divine Love
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
Banner image: “Say No to Billionaire Takeover of our Democracy.” Protest sign in suburban Pennsylvania in 2025. Photo by Cynthia Greb. Used with permission.
2 thoughts on “Week of 11/9-15/2025: Greed & Democracide vs. Love”
David Spangler, reviver of Incarnational Spirituality (lorian.org), in the introduction to his recent book, “Partnering with Spirit” (2024), shared a vision he had while walking on a trail of the Golden Gate Bridge: “… about twenty feet in front of me, a glowing green sun rose up out of the earth and hovered in the air in front of me… As I stood there watching this vision, I heard a voice very clearly in my mind. It said, “The Earth is a star of life.” Then, the green sun sank back into the earth and disappeared.
This image of our world as a vibrant green star of life, radiating vital living energies out into the cosmos, has stayed with me ever since. It is an important image in my own understanding of Gaia, our living planet. It says that each and every living thing on Earth, from the tiniest microbe to the largest whale or the tallest tree, is the means by which this vibration of creative life is generated and shines into the universe. We are each of us a star of life, replicating in the microcosm what the Earth is in the macrocosm of the cosmos.
When we partner with other life — whether that life is with the subtle realms that mystical or religious terms don’t really describe what I experience… For me, the subtle realms are an ecology — Earth’s “second” or “expanded” ecology… “
What a lovely image! Thanks for sharing.