Keeping Our Hearts & Souls Alive, Fresh, Young, Green & Inspired amidst Dark Times

I ended our Saturday DM with the following question: “How do you keep your heart and soul alive and fresh, young, green and inspired, even when the news is bleak and painful?” Here I would like to offer some soul-food that helps accomplish that purpose.

One way is to pray. What does that mean? I propose in my book, On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear: Spirituality American Style (now called Prayer: A Radical Response to Life), that it means to respond deeply to Life, the good and the bad of it, the joy and the sorrow, the ecstasy and the pain of it.

And that we are praying whenever we are doing that, whenever we put into practice our deep Yes or our deep No. The former names our mystical life, the latter our prophetic response to life.

It is this dance and dialectic that keeps us going and that truly names our spiritual journey.

How many ways are there to say Yes? To pray prayers of Yes? Visits into nature surely; the arts, listening to our deepest music, contemplating our brightest paintings, laughing at our funniest comedians who, until they are expelled from corporate-owned media under pressure from certain politicians, practice the art of laughing at the news; time with friends—both two-legged and four-legged companions; walking, exercising, swimming, running.

Practicing Gratitude is one of the most fundamental modes of prayer. It arises organically from paying attention to and practicing the Via Positiva. The Via Positiva releases thanks and gratitude and also reverence and respect and awareness that one is a receiver in this life. We did not make our life; life made us.

There is a reason why Thomas Aquinas defines the very essence of religion this way—“religion is supreme thankfulness and gratitude.”

The new cosmology of cosmogenesis not only names the goings-on of the past 13.8 billion years that have brought us here, but is also now literally showing us the pictures of stars, supernovas and galaxies that have gestated us. I am convinced that the Webb Telescope, and so much science discovers and creates, is a huge source of revelation of creation. Studying this new science is also a very deep prayer and a source of awe and inspiration as well as gratitude. Bring your heart to such a study.

Another kind of prayer is to enter into silence and contemplation. Deep listening derives from learning to be at home with solitude and stillness, emptying and being emptied, and just being-with. Very useful habits of letting go and letting be are learned in such meditation.

Furthermore, this deep emptying of the Via Negativa prayer feeds and nourishes the Via Positiva experiences and thereby deepens the awe and wonder, surprise, gratitude and reverence that arises in the Via Positiva. It also prepares us to undergo the vicissitudes of the struggles in life such as we are undergoing as a species today, and as people who want to see a living democracy in preference to a vicious dictatorship of cruelty and narcissism.

Entering into suffering and darkness, grief and loss, is also a very deep prayer. Not to run from it or pile up addictions of all kinds to escape it, but to enter it and ask: “What do you have to teach me, sorrow?” “What do you have to teach me, fear?” “What do you have to teach me, my broken heart?”

Of course the art of letting go applies to addictions from social media and drugs and alcohol and work, so as to live and love more truly and from a deeper and emptier place.

The Via Creativa is also a place, a temple, a sacred site from which we pray and learn how to incarnate imagination to give thanks. And to convert it to action and taking of responsibility and linking up with others, thus creating community.

The word “community” comes from two words meaning “sharing a common task together.” I subtitle my book on creativity with “where the divine and the human meet” for a reason.

The Holy Spirit calls us and invites us into our creativity just as it did Mary at the time of the annunciation. We are here to birth nothing less than the Christ (or Buddhahood or image of God) in ourselves and our society. Such birthing is itself a prayer and an affirmation, a Yes to Life.

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.

Banner image: Take the time to be outside and smell the flowers. Photo by Cynthia Greb. Used with permission.

Queries for Contemplation

How do you practice gratitude on a regular basis? And stillness? And emptiness? And birthing? And thus resilience? How many ways do you say ‘Yes’? Do you say ‘No’?  And thus pray?

Related Reading by Matthew Fox

Prayer: A Radical Response To Life.

The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times, pp. 41-44.

Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality.

Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond.

Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint For Our Times.

Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times.

WHEE! We, wee all the way home: Toward a Sensual, Prophetic Spirituality.

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.