Looking toward a New Year is often a time for evaluating the year we have just undergone. From the point of view of a new presidency, things have not been pretty. Not at all.
Headlines I have seen just in the last 24 hours include the following:
“Trump says broadcast licenses should be terminated…networks are ‘almost 100% Negative’ about him”; “DOGE Failed to deliver on every promise: $323 billion in uncollected taxes due to IRS downsizing; Social Security offices gutted; Global aid program dismantled, costing hundreds of thousands of lives abroad”; “Trump Administration announces plans to dismantle, defund, and eliminate the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)—the nation’s top climate and weather research center”; “The top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 93%”—and are getting big tax breaks.
As I was wondering how to summarize all this darkness in a few daily meditations—since our stated purpose in launching the DM seven years ago was to “pray the news” together—I received a phone call this weekend from a senior citizen and student of creation spirituality. He told me how he was recently re-reading my major book on Evil, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society, and how full of rich ideas it was, so rich that he wanted to send a copy to some university libraries.
This conversation reminded me that in that book, I lay out a template for discussing Evil and its consequences, created from a marriage of the Eastern teachings on the seven chakras and the Western teachings on the seven capital sins. This might provide us with a bird’s-eye overview of how to evaluate the present administration.
So I will begin an evaluation in light of that template of Evil in my next DM, which is this Saturday.
For today, I would like to offer some Good News that is very much in line with yesterday’s DM on the importance of art as meditation to lift our spirits and deepen our courage so we can face evil with grace and purpose and effective action.
I recently received an end of the year newsletter from Lily Yeh and her Barefoot Artists organization. Her non-profit serves poor people in Rwanda, Kenya, China, and the US.*
The Dandelion Mural Project for migrant workers in China offers a large-scale mosaic mural project and is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Art is central to its identity as a school. In Rwanda, Barefoot Artists has been operating for 18 years and helps families learn to cultivate land, grow home vegetable gardens, and plant fruit-bearing trees, providing nutritious foods they once gathered in the forest. Barefoot Artists also provides school supplies and uniforms for many children.
In Nairobi, Lily led workshops for aspiring young artists and helped design a Tree of Life mural that the community painted. As Artist in Residence at Harvard Divinity School, working with Terry Tempest-Williams during a “Grief Week,” Lily led a week-long workshop on grief and art.
In January, Lily led a series of workshops following Hurricane Helene. Said the organizer, “Lily’s visit and life’s work has quietly shifted all of us.” Lily worked with inmates at Grateford Prison whose art is now on exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Together, Lily and the prisoners also published a book written by a girl—now a woman—who was a genocide survivor from the 1994 massacre.
Lily’s work is a major witness to the power of art to heal. Meditation is not just sitting on a cushion; it is also art that heals, celebrates, and returns joy to lives and communities. Art as meditation is “the way of the prophets,” and Lily’s work is testimony to that. Tax-deductible donations to her work can be made here.
Banner Image: 2025—the anguish and the healing. (L) A bombed-out building in Gaza, January 2025. Wikimedia Commons. (R) The Alfajiri Street Kids—former street kids—create a Tree of Life as part of a community healing project in one of the oldest slums in Nairobi. From the Barefoot Artists website. Published with permission.
Queries for Contemplation
How are you digesting the good news and the bad news of 2025? Does art as meditation assist you? And other forms of meditation as well?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
“Deep Ecumenism, Ecojustice, and Art as Meditation,” in Fox, Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life, pp. 199-214
The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human
Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society
Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
The Return of Father Sky: A Cosmic Mystery for Kids of All Ages
The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time
4 thoughts on “Evaluating the Past Year: The Bad News & The Good”
Wow! What a year! Most of us are trying to survive Trump’s authoritarian regime! Hope most of our democratic institutions and leaders continue resisting! Hope the Democrats do well at the mid-term elections in order to further resist his control and save our democracy! We’re all being challenged in our spiritual and communal spiritual journeys with God’s Spirit of Love~Wisdom~Truth~Peace~Justice~Healing~Strength~Transformation~Creativity~Joy~Com-passion~ LOVING DIVERSE ONENESS… within and among Us each day of the New Year!
Thank you for featuring Lily Yeh’s global community art work. She actually dropped into our lives here when she landed in Philadelphia in 1986 right about when I was reading Original Blessing. Arthur Hall was an activist and dancer who hired her to work in what evolved in the Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philly. You can see the evolution of the community at the link below. It is still strong and supporting the arts. It continues to be an inspiration as to the importance of the arts in building and keeping our communities strong with young and old.
I think I took MC in for a visit at one point. One of my Art students did her senior project about the Village too.
I also brought one artist who worked with Arthur Hall and Yoruba teachings into my HS Art classroom as Artist in Residence. Perhaps as well as protest signs etc. we need to be making healing art together maybe inspired by other cultures to strengthen us , create community and get us through these times.
Philly Roots- Re-Birthplace of our Country
Arthur Hall, Jojo, Lily and Big Man
https://villagearts.org/about/#more
It’s been quite a year…
I was glad I had already written about my personal experience/knowledge of Mysticism in the previous years (archived, in the “comments” sections), because I had a stroke in April and have spent the months since then, ever-so-slowly recovering. I can’t (yet) access much of the eloquence I had before, so I stay mostly silent, picking up the pieces of thought as best I can. I am deeply troubled about the path the country is taking, but, again, I often can’t speak or write very well about it. My frustration has few words but much experience…
Prayers for continued recovery.