Yesterday was Fathers’ Day. When I think about my father, I recognize him as a person of character. He had values and tried his best to live by them.
In my book on The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human, I give the role of building character a special place among the “10 C’s” by which I name how to reinvent education. The section on “Character and Chakra Development” is the last of the “10 C’s” because it is born of a summary of the other nine “C’s.”
Here is how I put it: These 10C’s of education prepare the groundwork for character development and moral development. They are not sectarian or religious as such. They are humanitarian and represent universal values that can assure our sustainability as a species on this endangered planet.
It is said that Buckminster Fuller valued the power of personal integrity as a force in the world available to each of us…He saw this power of personal integrity as a force capable of steering humanity towards the realization of a world that truly works for everybody.
What if someone, say a leader, lacks character or personal integrity? Would that person be unable and uninterested in a “world that truly works for everybody?”
Fuller looked upon the current crisis of our species as an “exam.” The present evolutionary crisis of humans on planet Earth is that of a final examination for their continuance in Universe. It is not an examination of political, economic, or religious systems, but of the integrity of each and all individual humans’ responsible thinking and unselfish response to the acceleration in evolution’s ever more unprecedented events.
Integrity or character including unselfish response to an acceleration in evolution marks the future and ultimately whether we survive or not as a species. How are we doing?
Do we have the character to face the future and do so with integrity? Do we have leaders to show us the way?
Let us consider the other nine “C’s” that inform character building. The first is Cosmology and its sister Ecology, since “ecology is functional cosmology” as Thomas Berry reminds us. Without knowing where we come from, we are lost.
We come from the universe over a 13.8 billion year time period which is 2 trillion galaxies large, each with hundreds of billions of stars, and still expanding. Fuller says, “to learn anything you must start with the whole—with Universe.” Only that tells us the part that we and the Earth play. Children “want to understand the whole–Universe,” he says.
Educational pioneer Maria Montessori agrees. The important thing is to give a cosmic idea, one complete whole, the universe, for the child’s mind…seeks not only facts but their underlying causes, and you cannot properly see the connections until you have first seen the whole.
The second “C” is Contemplation or meditation including kenosis or emptying and letting go. Part of Maria Montessori’s pedagogy was to teach children to “make silence.” Humans are all capable of “making silence,” of calming our busy monkey brains and our action-reaction reptilian brains. Silence is necessary for the very survival of our species.
Kaleo Ching taught “Tai Chi and mask making” at the University of Creation Spirituality. When he taught the course in prison to a group of murderers, one of them said afterwards, “This is the first time in my life I have experienced quiet.”
Might teaching people to be still prevent murder? Studies of Vipassana meditation practices in prison show that calm displaces hyperactivity and hypertension. Joy begins to spread.
Why not teach joy and calm before prison in culture at large? Prison prevention therefore.
To be continued.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: Cartoon of President Warren G. Harding in 1921 by Art Young. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you recognize integrity and character development as integral to what a good father passes on to his children? And a good mother? And a good president? How does one make up for that if one did not receive that instruction?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human, pp. 105, 138f.
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors To Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 77-104.
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations.
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance.
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
Trump and the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality.
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation.
4 thoughts on “What If America Were To Have a President With No Character?”
How does one make up for not having received healthy parenting?
By becoming one’s own loving parent.
How does one become one’s own loving parent?
By having the courage to join an anonymous self-help/mutual aid group where one can SAFELY express the festering hurts and fears suppressed since childhood and free oneself from the shame and blame carried over from the past. Reuniting with the “child within” is a crucial step towards learning to accept and love oneself, and to grow up into healthy adulthood. It is never too late. [see for instance https://adultchildren.org/solution/%5D
Thank you, Matthew, for your wonderful stories of growing up, and for the video showing our place in the universe. It certainly puts things in perspective. It’s so important to understand the complexity of our parents’ lives, including what their lives were like before we arrived on the scene. I so wish I had asked more questions of my parents: What were their teenage lives like? What was life like for my mother when my father was off to war? What were their hopes and dreams when they were little? All the things I never asked. Sadly, most of us never really get to know our parents, except in relation to their parenting of us. Did my parents live with integrity? Not really. But I know they tried, and they were good parents. They gave me many, many gifts, but integrity was not one I got from them. Their approach to life confused me. Luckily, I received the importance of integrity and walking one’s talk from my grandfather, who I always emulated, even when I strayed from his conservative view of Christianity. Thank you for your wonderful stories and reflections.
Very grateful for this reflection this morning, as I enter a week of consciousness raising with others (racism) and doing some of my own educational planning for the Fall. Will wonder how it can relate. thanks again..
Yes! Yes! Yes! As men and women on our spiritual journeys, we are all spiritual sparks and interconnected in our Loving Diverse Oneness with All of Life, including all physical and nonphysical spiritual dimensions/beings, in Our Living ongoing evolving Co-Creation Sacred Cosmos….