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.
January 11, 2026: Keeping Our Hearts & Souls Alive, Fresh, Young, Green & Inspired amidst Dark Times (MF)
How do we keep inspired in the face of such dark times? One way is to pray. To Matthew Fox, that 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. Practicing gratitude is another very important tool. Another suggestion is to enter into the silence. Entering into suffering and darkness, grief and loss, is an especially deep prayer. Rather than try to escape the grief with various addictions and distractions, we can ask, “What do you have to teach me, my broken heart?” Our creativity can also be deeply transformative.
January 12, 2026: Resilience, Resistance, Interfering & Practicing Our “No” as a Prayer (MF)
As we explore ways to survive these days of darkness, let’s also remember the power of the Via Transformativa. It, too, is a “radical response to life.” When we follow the four paths—the Via Positiva, Negativa, Creativa, and Transformativa—the mystic is alive in us, allowing us to taste the Divine. “The prophet is the mystic in action,” as William Hocking puts it. Growing spiritually means being true to both our mystical and prophetic vocations. We need to “pray with our feet,” as Rabbi Heschel explained to his daughter after returning from marching with Martin Luther King and others. This may mean protesting ICE’s deplorable actions in the point-blank killing of Renee Good and other acts of daily cruelty. To protest is to pray; to resist is to pray; to say “No!” in the most creative and effective ways possible is to pray.
January 13, 2026: Overcoming Divisions (GG)
More than a century ago, some enlightened individuals deeply understood how the conflicts among Christians were a horrible counter-witness for spreading the message of Jesus Christ. Today, churches celebrate the Week for Christian Unity, starting every year on January 18. More recently, the day of Jewish-Christian friendship, observed on January 17, was established. But by and large, these celebrations have become devoid of passion. Often, once a passionate project is taken over by institutions, they suffocate it. In this spirit, how can we find common ground with people who believe some of the things that the evil people in power espouse? It’s up to people capable of sharing their common humanity to become the beacon of hope in our days.
January 14, 2026: Enjoyment in Troubled Times (GG)
GG highly recommends Matthew’s WHEE! We, wee: A Guide to Sensual, Prophetic Spirituality. He says, “It’s not everyday one encounters a theologian who identifies ecstasy as the center of spiritual experience.” Pleasure and enjoyment are very important to Fox because they represent a forgotten or repressed element of Western spirituality. If God creates the universe and rejoices in all creatures, the creatures themselves must share in such divine enjoyment. Spiritual ecstasies are not islands of joy in a ocean of suffering as long as we are able to weave a tapestry with them. Passionate conversations, silent contemplation, nature, deep artistic experiences, loving sacred sex, folk dances, poetry, music, sacred rituals, etc. can help save us and keep us truly alive.
January 15, 2026: Our Wee-ness
The Gestapo and the rise of Nazism is sadly evident in the violent and racist actions of ICE. It is quite clear that their intent is to terrorize, and the point-blank shooting of someone in broad daylight escalated this terror. What can we do in times like these in order to not lose hope? Matthew wrote way back in 1976: We are small, truly small, before Chartres Cathedral or Beethoven’s Last Quartets or a ripe sunset over the sea; and we are small, also, standing on the soil of Dachau, hearing of FBI, CIA, and presidential abuse of the people’s power, or kneeling when hearing of the assassination of a beloved leader…. We are, in a word, wee-ful folk. Then, as well as now, the answer is not falling into despair because of our wee-ness, but opening ourselves to the vastness of love and pain, remembering what a miracle it is to be human. GG says: I think that Renee Good was enjoying life, that her enjoyment gave her the strength to act in defense of others, and that the ICE thug who murdered her saw that enjoyment on her face and heard it in her words. He misunderstood it as a taunt, as deeply broken people do, and fired to kill not just her, but his own hope of redemption.
January 17, 2026: Minnesota Bleeding
With the point-blank shooting of Renee Good, ICE has unleashed even more terror and violence in the streets of Minneapolis than before. And, unfortunately, the man behind it all, is talking of sending the military into the blue cities of America. Yes, only into the cities of those who didn’t vote for him. Matthew has a soft spot for Minnesota, and now Minnesota is bleeding. At 4 a.m., this poem came to him: Minnesota Bleeding, Democracy reeling, Justice receding, Necrophilia feeding, Fascism succeeding, SCOTUS achieving, Antichrist seeding, Reptilian brain achieving, Patriarchy preening, Violence screaming, Lies & untruths beaming, Humanity needing. Hearts cold? Or feeling?
Banner image: “Backyard group dinner” and music can be a wonderful antidote to despair. Photo by Considerate Agency on Unsplash
Related Reading by Matthew Fox
WHEE! We, wee All the Way Home: A Guide to Sensual Prophetic Spirituality
Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works: With Letters & Songs
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation by Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox
Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century
3 thoughts on “Week of 1/11-17/2026: Finding Resilience & Joy even in Dark Times”
This is a profound spiritual quote from Steven Hermann’s (Jungian analyst) ending essay, “C.G. Jung and Teilhard de Chardin: Peacemakers in an Age of Spiritual Democracy”:
“… We find the same basic teaching in Meister Eckhart, who said about the infinite depths of the feminine Godhead: “The innermost and highest realms of the soul — these two are one. There where time never penetrates, where no image shines in, in the innermost and highest aspects of the soul God creates the entire Cosmos” (Matthew Fox, “Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality in New Translation”, p. 65). This Humboldtian vision is a common thread that unites the psychological with the religious paths in Chardin’s and Jung’s
writings, it is spiritually democratic way to arrive at world peace,”
— “Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Carl Gustav Jung Side by Side,” edited by Fred R. Gustafson,
2015.
I am an activist who lives in Minnesota. I met and had a “talk” with Matthew Fox during the 1983 Tekakwitha Conference, a Conference that was held in Minnesota. Minnesota is now the primary state that Trump is attracting. When Matthew and I had our “talk” during the Tekakwitha Conference I told him about my one world hippie mission around the Indigenous word wahkon (holy). I live in the City of Wahkon. A friend of mine who lives in Wahkon recently bought an old Volts Wagon hippy van with a hippy peace sign still on it. When I asked him asked him why he bought it he said: “The government is killing protesters again, and that he bought the hippy vw van to let them know that we are still here.”
Thank you, Thomas, for this remembrance. I recall that Tekakwitha Conference was where I underwent my very first sweat lodge and I was still recovering from my serious car accident 7 years previous. When I exited the sweat lodge, my back felt the best it had since before that car accident. I have been blessed by many sweatlodges since that first one. So thank you for reminding me that Minnesota was also my introduction to the power and wisdom of indigenous ceremony.