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.
December 15, 2025: Prophetic Responses to ICE: Mangers With a Message & a Non-Sentimental Christmas (MF)
In a Nativity scene at St. Susanna Roman Catholic Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, the Christ child is missing this Christmas. So too are Mary and Joseph. Instead, there sits a hand-painted sign: “ICE was here.” At another Chicago suburb church located near an immigration and Customs Enforcement facility where protesters have frequently amassed, a sign at the manger reads: “Due to ICE activity in our community the Holy Family is in hiding.” St. Susanna’s has supported ten refugee families since 2019, and worked alongside the federal government to do so. “It’s not a stunt. We work on a daily basis with refugees….We were always taught: when you’re unsure, ask, ‘What would Christ do?’
December 16, 2025: Carl Jung, Murray Stein, Steven Herrmann & Christianity’s Future (MF)
Jungian analyst Steven Herrmann has gifted us with significant books on topics such as Spiritual Democracy, Walt Whitman, Jung and Meister Eckhart, Vocational Dreams, and much more.* Now he kicks off a new series on Neo-Jungian studies with a book on Murray Stein, subtitled “Individuation, Transformation, and the Ways to the Self in Jungian Psychology.” Stein, an internationally renowned Jungian analyst, combined theology and Jung through 50 years of influential work. Matthew remains curious about how Jung’s work, updated by Stein and Herrmann, can assist the Christian movement as it evolves from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius and post-modernism that now beckons us. Stein recognizes our post-modern times as being infected by a “virus of superficiality.” He says, Perhaps now is the time to listen more intently to the spirit of the depths.**
December 17, 2025: Deep Feeling, Not Sentimentalism
How can one differentiate between deep feeling and sentimentalism? GG realized at one point, with dismay, that the church is filled with sentimentalism and hypocrisy, and that those two go side by side. Whereas, he says, Creation Spirituality has offered a great antidote to sentimentalism. Matthew Fox was writing as early as 1978 on “desentimentalizing spirituality” in the magazine Spirituality Today. Compassion, says Matthew in that book, is not only distinct from sentimentalism, but the latter is the utter negation of the first. GG says: There was a time in my life when — partly to escape sentimentalism — I was letting my “thinking function” grow exponentially to the detriment of the “feeling function,” but that was a mistake because the four Jungian functions — just like the four paths — are… indispensable.
December 18, 2025: Sustainability as a New Word (GG)
Last week’s reference to the word “sustainability” sparked a bit of debate. Sustainability, says GG, is a word that did not exist when he was in high school. It was introduced by the U.N. Brundtland Commission in 1983, which also provided the concept of “sustainable development” in 1987. Upon further research, GG discovered that the word “sustainability” actually existed since 1713 in the German language as Nachhaltigkeit. It meant that if you want to cut trees in a forest, you ought to do it in such a way that the forest does not die, but keeps healthy and grows enough new trees for the next generations. The elephant in the room that few want to see is this: continued economic growth is not compatible with the life of biological organisms — including humans. The capitalistic economic model has been successful in the short run, but it’s suicidal in the long run.
December 19, 2025: The Face of the Other (GG)
Sometimes ecologists are denigrated as “tree huggers.” Such an accusation implies that feelings should be excluded from the ecological issues facing humanity. Emmanuel Levinas, the French Jewish thinker, has famously grounded ethics in the experience of “the face of the other.” GG says: I claim the right to be emotionally shattered — not just moved — by the face of a starving child in Palestine or Sudan, and I consider such an experience the correct grounding for my reasoning about the problems affecting those regions of the world. The same holds true for the face of Mother Earth, which keeps being violated…. In conclusion, says GG, I want to be able to see in the face of the child Jesus all the children hurt and abandoned by the Herods of our time.
December 20, 2025: A Surge in Loneliness (MF)
Matthew has been noticing lots of articles recently about loneliness, which tends to be more pronounced over the holidays. According to one article, recent studies have found that the loneliest people in America today are middle-aged people between the ages of 45 and 49, of whom 49 percent report loneliness. In a study of university students in the UK, two-thirds of those living in halls or dorms reported feeling “lonely or isolated.” An over-reliance on phones and technology apparently was a large contributing factor. Samantha Rose Hill, who is writing a book on loneliness, in a guest essay for the New York Times, warned how tech companies promise “relief through connection, but this kind of connection isn’t the solution; it’s the problem.”
* To see all of Steven Herrmann’s books, see Matthew Fox’s Creation Spirituality bookstore HERE.
**Steven Herrmann, Murray Stein: Individuation, Transformation, and the Ways to the Self in Jungian Psychology, pp. 23, 13, 36f.
Banner image: “We are all immigrants.” Photo by Bob Morris on Flickr. Creative Commons.
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action (by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jen Listug)
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Natural Grace: Dialogues on creation, darkness, and the soul in spirituality and science (by Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake)
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
3 thoughts on “Week of 12/15-20/2025: ICE, Jung, Sentimentality & Sustainability”
Sit and ‘be nothing’ for a while and be refreshed. Do not be, do not solve, do not fret, do not think about anyone or anything, especially yourself. ‘Be nothing’ for a while and be quiet, still, and simple. We will find that the world is still revolving when we get back, but we get back refreshed. Let the mountains we envision move and shrink by themselves. Be nothing other than ‘soul refreshed’ and give up ourselves for a period of time. We will find that we always belong, but we are in not in need of being that important. Love is intentional. Importance is manufactured. — BB.
Happy Birthday, Matt! Today we celebrate the Winter Solstice.
We Welcome the return of light your work and. being promises!
speaking from the northern hemisphere….
Carolyn
This is a meditation on Divine Love Present within and among Us by Lee Irwin in his book, “Divine Feminine Gnosis: The Lesser & Greater Mysteries of Sophia” (2025):
“The Sophia of love, that is the Wisdom Love that can guide and inform the heart and mind, is a shared reality of soul, not simply a personal experience. My love is made stronger by the love I receive and my capacity to give or share love is a living, deep well whose soulful depths are infinite, not individual. The depth of the well is measured by my capacity to open and receive, not just to give or make sacrifice, but to be a vessel through which love flows into the world without effort or precondition. This requires the discipline of ‘transparency.’ There is no ownership in Sophianic love, only the free exchange of care, concern, and kindness directed toward the growth, maturity, and health of self and others… This Is What I Mean by Loving Kindness — It Is A Dynamic of Love that Is Fully Alive, Consciously Present, Right-Minded, and Transparently Communicated As Life-Vitality, As Soulfulness, Through An Energizing, Nurturing Presence (my capitalization for emphasis). This field is co-created by loving individuals, persons and animals, whose presence and warmth creates a feeling of openness and a welcoming sense of support. It is the quality of our love, its depth and fullness, that is the means for the creation of a loving world; through such soulful love, the world is transformed.”