We ended Saturday’s DM with one of my favorite quotes from Teilhard de Chardin. It deserves our prolonged—and frequent— meditation: The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as humanity found itself facing the frost, the sea, and the stars. And since then, we find evidence of it in all our experience of the great and unbounded: in art, in poetry, and in religion.
I love it because it connects us to ALL our ancestors—right back to the start of Homo sapiens around 300,000 years ago (and to our other biped cousins as well). It connects us all to the universe, reminding us how the universe itself is foundational to all we do that is “great and unbounded,” including art, poetry, and religion.
Another way to talk about the awe and wonder and sacred that is born of a “cosmic sense” is to perceive the “Cosmic Christ,” “Buddha Nature” or Tselem (image of God) to be found in all beings in the universe, microcosm and macrocosm.
I laid out “six steps to redeeming worship in the West” in my book The Coming of the Cosmic Christ and developed them anew in The Reinvention of Work because ritual is such an important dimension of human existence. And of good work.
Ritual, by returning us to the whole and sacred cosmos, reinvigorates us for the good work we do while on Earth. It connects us anew to our ancestors—human and more-than-human—and to our Source. In good ritual, we gather the energy to carry on.
In my Cosmic Christ book, I close my section on redeeming worship this way. The Cosmic Christ Speaks on Worship: Come to me, all you who are burdened by lack of praise, lack of beauty, lack of vision in your lives. Look about you at the starry heavens and the deep, deep sea; at the amazing history that has birthed a home for you on this planet; at the surprise and joy of our existence.
Gather together—you and your communities—in the context of the great, cosmic community to rejoice and give thanks. To heal and let go. To enter the dark and deep mysteries, to share the news, to break the bread of the universe and drink blood of the cosmos itself in all its divinity.
Be brave. Let your worship make you strong and great again. Never be bored again. Create yourselves, re-create your worlds, by the news you share and the vision you celebrate.
Bring your sense of being microcosm in a vast macrocosm; bring your bodies; bring your play; bring your darkness and your pain and your grief. Gather and do not scatter. Learn not to take for granted, and learn this together. Become a people. Worship together.
To remember our ancestors, human and more-than-human, over 13.8 billion years of history, is to thank them. The opposite of remembering is forgetting. Another word for forgetting is: Taking for granted, something bourgeois culture is very prone to do.
Dark nights teach us not to take for granted, great losses wake us up to what really matters. So do sickness and death and other deprivations. “What really matters? What really counts?”
How easy it is to forget creation, our breath, spirit, 13.8 billion years of history that have brought us here, wonder, awe, the marvels, i.e., miracles of existence. That is why we worship: To remember and give thanks.
Healthy ritual connects the self to the Self. Big joy and deep transformation occur. We undergo big joy in worship, ceremony, ritual, or liturgy. I see it every time we celebrate a Cosmic Mass.
Banner Image: Ceremonial healing and release: Alessandra Belloni leading an ancient Italian tarantella ritual. Photo from AlessandraBelloni.com, with permission.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you undergo rituals or ceremonies that move you from self to Self? And evoke big joy and deep transformation? And connect you to ancestors human and more-than-human? And to the universe itself?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance, pp. 212-228
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations, p. 224
The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood For Our Time, pp. 249-295
Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest, pp. 8-16, 363-383
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality
The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times
Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering Book
Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century
4 thoughts on “Ritual: When self becomes Self Uniting to the Universe Awakening Joy”
I realize Selfness deeply in the communion ritual … but not in the teachings and homilies from the pulpit.
Watching, one after the other, the two videos in today’s DM left me overwhelmed and in tears. On one hand, Teilhard’s Mass on the World adapted by Greg Hildebrand is a masterpiece of spiritual poetry, on the other, the BBC animation “Is it time to reassess our relationship with nature?” could not be more clear about how the unholy trinity of Cartesianism, Colonialism and Industrialism is killing Mother-Earth. I was overwhelmed by the juxtaposition of these two videos because the author of The Mass on the World was ALSO a conquistador-like figure to whom a relentless assault on nature was a spiritual ladder. How can such a contrasting blend of light and darkness, penetrating vision and utter blindness cohabit in the human soul? How could Hernán Cortés and his thugs bludgeon and kill with a crucifix in one hand and a sword in the other? How could the Auschwitz murderers go home at night, kiss their wife and children and listen to the 9th Symphony before going to bed? And how can current American Christian nationalism be blind to its evil deeds? Today I will practice a ritual to find an anchor in this disorienting human landscape.
My morning ritual is to begin the day with Eucharist, meditation, Buddhist or Christian chants, readings, and writing–not all every day. During the Eucharist, instead of simply remembering Jesus, I ask Christ to embody my spirit. (I’m still working on experiencing that.) But as I think about your question, I realize that these are all ways to connect me personally with God/Christ; not rituals designed to move me from self to Self. It would be nice to be less self-centered.
Yet, there are some “self to Self” practices which I do engage in with groups. One chant begins, “Put your roots down. Put your feet on the ground. You can hear the Earth sing if you listen.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4CS7uMmlZU
I’m also fortunate to engage in communal movement as meditation with Meshi Chavez, and I share these body prayers in groups. Meshi’s practices allow for stillness, spaciousness, presence with oneself and others, and expanding awareness. Sometimes I do these practices alone in the morning. https://meshichavez.com
Contemplative, Creation, and Incarnational (lorian.org) Spiritualities and prayers contribute to my Faith and openness to the Divine Flow/Spirit of Loving Diverse Oneness in the Sacred Process of the Eternal Present Moment within and among Us in Sacred Mother Earth and Our Beautiful Sacred Co-Creation Evolving Cosmos, including physical/nonphysical spiritual dimensions and beings….