On a wall in my bedroom, there is a painting about four feet by five feet by my good friend, former co-worker, and faculty member, M.C. Richards. (See banner picture above.)
M.C. is best known for her iconic book, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry and the Person, a book I discovered at the very time I launched our Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality (ICCS) at Mundelein College in 1977. I wrote an article about it, for it very much supported my pedagogy of art as meditation.
We started corresponding after that article appeared, and she often showed up when I was lecturing on the East Coast. When we moved our program to Oakland, California, she joined us in 1992, teaching clay as meditation and more. M.C. was an admirer of Rudolf Steiner and lived in a community for mentally handicapped adults in Camphill Village in Pennsylvania. Her community gave her permission each year to come to ICCS to teach with us (and later at the University of Creation Spirituality, in downtown Oakland).
She stayed in the convent on Holy Names College campus, and remarked to me how she never dreamed she would ever live in a convent! But she loved it and found many kindred souls among the Holy Names sisters and faculty.
MC took up painting at 70 years of age, saying, “It’s too late for technique,” but loved the color and shaping of forms. We once spent the better part of a day painting together in her studio on campus, and I remember her shouting mantra-like, “color, color, more color!”
She often attended my classes, including one on Meister Eckhart, and one of my teachings that very much stayed with her was about doxa. Glory. The doxa or glory in everything truly seized her imagination. The Cosmic Christ (or image of God or Buddha Nature) in everything. So she painted it.
Her painting of the first word out of the angel’s mouth at the first Christmas is reproduced here: A very loud red trumpet announcing “Glory!” (“Glory to God in the highest….” Lk. 2.14).
She also painted a red barn with a halo of glory around it.
Her painting in my bedroom, which is the last thing I see when I fall asleep at night and the first thing I see when I wake up, is also a picture of “Glory” and of the Nativity itself. Mary is in red, and she embraces a golden color; the newborn Christ is glory incarnate.
Other colors in the painting include blue (fifth chakra, healing), earthy brown/black/rose, and the frame is a subtle green (fourth chakra, heart chakra). The gold can also be construed as yellow (third chakra, where compassion begins, often with moral outrage).
The red which bathes Mary is the color of the first chakra, and stands for vibration and all creation (every atom in the universe is vibrating after all), and our grounding in the earth. It begins in what is called the sacrum or “holy bone” at the base of our spine and is triggered when we dance. It connects to the cosmos that is vibrating and the earth, which is doing the same, “ecology is functional cosmology,” as Thomas Berry teaches. Thus, her painting tells us the whole earth and cosmos are busy birthing the doxa of the divine.
Mary is bending over the doxa in M.C.’s painting, honoring the child. We all are. We bow to it as we do to all beauty. It is awesome and bigger than us, surely bigger than our egos, and it invites us to join it in awakening brightness, sheen, positive energy, and good news to the world.
This is a painting, therefore, of creation spirituality.
Banner Image: “Mother and Child.” Painting by M.C. Richards, from Matthew Fox’s collection. Published with permission.
Queries for Contemplation
What do you see in M.C. Richard’s banner painting and her other painting in this DM? How does the concept of doxa or glory inspire your spiritual journey, including the work you do in the world? Do you see your work as midwifing doxa?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
“Deep Ecumenism, Ecojustice, and Art as Meditation,” in Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life, pp. 215-242
Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, pp. 108-111
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
3 thoughts on “Doxa, Glory, M.C. Richards: A Good Way to Start the Day”
Thank you, Matthew, for sharing this with us again. I remember enjoying the art, video and story the last time you shared it. It seems even better on Take 2, if that is possible.
Glory, indeed!!
Doxa painting by M.C. Richards reminds me of the birth of my first born child over 60 years ago. I was a practicing Catholic, but I was not learning about human divinity. It was in the giving birth that I realized I had given birth to God. That every child born was God being born. It was my first real connection to the ALL. Over the years I became anti war, and anti disconnection knowing that (via the Dakota people’s prayer: We are all related) being disconnected is what sin is. If we disconnect from others including people, animals, the earth, we can harm them. When we harm the “other” we harm ourselves. God/The Divine/Doxa is presented to us continually. We are called to respond – reciprocate with love. Not just for the benefit of the other, but for ourselves also. Love is the most precious gift we have to share with others. It is abundantly available to us to give and to receive. It is the healing power and connection that will save us.
Beautiful!